How Much Should You Invest in Your Reopening Marketing Plan?
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Getting customers back after your business has been closed for a while can be a major challenge. Right now, many businesses are still recovering from the initial hit of the pandemic. Indeed, businesses in areas that have had on-and-off shutdowns for the better part of a year are facing substantial challenges when it comes to retaining customers.
Having the support of the local chamber of commerce will certainly help; however, you’ll also need to level up your marketing to really catch peoples’ attention and get your business back on track. Courtesy of bradgood.net, here’s how to figure out how much you should invest in marketing, as well as which forms of marketing can provide the best return on that investment:
Evaluate Your Starting Position
It’s impossible to make a smart financial decision for your business if you don’t have a strong and accurate picture of your current financial position. An income statement, or profit loss statement, will give you a big-picture view of what you can afford to spend on marketing. You’ll have all the details related to earnings and losses as well as your cash flow. Having these figures will give you deep insight into your business’s financial performance, as well as help you recognize patterns that help — or harm — your company. If you’re a financial novice, there are even templates you can download — all you need to do is plug in your numbers and they do the work for you.
Focus on Digital Options
Traditional marketing is many business owners’ first go-to, but right now, digital may be the better approach. There are several reasons for this. First, the pandemic has increased the time spent online for most people. That means that the opportunities for digital advertising to reach your audience are substantially higher than they were even a year ago.
Moreover, digital advertising can be budget-friendly. You can invest in massive online marketing campaigns if you have the funds, but you can also take a creative, piecemeal approach that relies more on spending time than on spending money. For example, social media engagement and content marketing can conceivably happen in-house if you have the talent and interest on staff. Even hiring a freelance writer to handle your content marketing needs is typically a far more budget-friendly form of marketing than the traditional advertising route.
Lean On Your Network
Another great, budget-friendly way to increase your marketing reach is to engage with your professional network. Former clients, business partners, old coworkers, and more are all excellent resources when it comes to spreading word of mouth. This is especially useful for B2B companies, as these types of connections can help you build up your client list and point you towards especially useful leads.
Evaluate Effectiveness
Finally, make sure you go into any given marketing technique with a clear idea of how you’ll evaluate its effectiveness. Otherwise, it’s functionally impossible to get any sense of your ROI. When you’re working on a small budget to begin with, it’s absolutely vital to ensure that the money you spend on marketing is actually working. Without that information, you’ll never know if you’re just wasting funds.
There are several ways you might measure marketing effectiveness, such as increased engagement on social media, a higher SEO ranking, or improved site traffic. Ultimately, however, your best indicator will be those profit statements we talked about earlier. If you’re not seeing any difference in your bottom line over time, you need to re-evaluate your approach.
Bringing clients and customers back after a pause in operations can be a major challenge, and good marketing can make it easier. However, it’s important not to panic and to avoid spending blindly. With budgets tight, maximizing ROI with effective, but lower-cost forms of marketing is the far wiser choice.
The experts at bradgood.net can build a website for your business that will help you get a foothold on success. Visit our contact page to leave us a message!