Cost Effective Marketing for Small and Medium Business

The CEO or owner of a business is responsible for growing their business.  So what does this have to do with cost effective marketing?

Isn’t marketing just for the marketing department?  No, and that’s why we first have to agree on  what marketing is all about, before we try to understand  cost effective marketing for small and medium business.

Who Is Responsible For Growing Your Business Profitably?

Most people think that marketing is all about the 4P’s: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.  To a large degree, that is true.  However, at a higher level, marketing is all about growing profitable revenue.

The CEO or owner must be actively involved in developing appropriate strategies, called marketing strategies, to grow their business.  The CEO understands how much they want to grow the company and how much they can afford to spend to get there.   Marketing can get pretty sophisticated, so it makes sense to have a marketing specialist in charge of all their company’s marketing activity.

The CEO will obviously rely on their marketing department to execute those growth strategies, but for any company to achieve increased profitable revenue, it is always better to have a partnership between the CEO and head of marketing.

Can Outsourced Marketing be cost effective?

Marketing Outfield Marketplace

When thinking about the cost of marketing, it is much more than just the cost of a creating a press release versus the cost of a brochure.  It really has a lot to do with how a company goes about executing their marketing plan.

In many small and medium businesses, adding another marketing specialist to the team reflects a long-term cost commitment to train and retain that employee.  Sometimes it can be more cost-effective to have an outsourced contractor or agency provide services rather than hiring an employee, particularly when these providers are already specialists in a particular marketing area.   Larger companies can afford the $10k to $50K retainer fees per month for an advertising agency or public relations agency or search engine optimization agency; large companies have a huge marketing budget where they can spread the costs, so these “expensive” services do not dominate their overall marketing plan.

For small and medium business, retaining an outsourced marketing specialist can reduce marketing costs, particularly when you can use a portion of their time on an ongoing basis.  After all, these contractors will become more effective and efficient as they better understand your unique business, just like a new employee would.

Outsource Specific Deliverables, Not Bodies

Often, the best approach to reduce cost is to outsource selected marketing services, such as writing a press release or creating a website, rather than trying to hire a contractor on an hourly basis or trying to train an employee to become a specialist.   This allows a small and medium business to execute marketing services across a broader spectrum of marketing tactics without the cost associated of hiring full time help.

How do you know your Marketing is effective?

This is most critical question for any marketing expense.  If your advertisement wins the Chloe award for design, was this effective?  Not necessarily and probably not.  If your Facebook business page gets 20,000 Likes, isn’t that effective?  Maybe, but it depends.  Remember, the goal is to increase profitable revenue, not just increase Likes or awards.  You can’t just assume that having a popular ad will increase business.  We’ve all seen fantastic Super Bowl ads but can’t always remember the company or the product that the ad was pitching! 

It can be difficult sometimes to measure the impact of a specific marketing action in terms of revenue generated, but you can get much closer than the majority of businesses.   For example, if people that saw your ad were taken to a page on your website where you try to sell them a product, then you could easily tell how many prospects the ad delivered to that webpage, and how many of those prospects actually bought something.  For example, if the 20,000 people that gave you a Facebook “Like” also became new subscribers to your newsletter, and you knew that one out of 20 subscribers purchased your product within 30 days, you could quickly figure out that this marketing expense  was indeed effective.

Get the most out of every dollar spent on Marketing!

So cost effective marketing for small and medium business is about generating the most profitable revenue for every dollar spent on marketing.  The most cost effective marketing approach:

• Supplement your current marketing team with outsourced marketing services, so you can test new campaigns before committing to any long term program.
• Buy marketing services with defined deliverables, so you can measure the results.
• Buy fixed-price marketing services, so you can be confident it fits within your budget.
• Buy marketing services with a promised delivery date, so you know it can meet the deadlines within your marketing plan.
• Measure the results and determine the ROI of every marketing campaign, so you can choose the best marketing campaigns for your business.   Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be:  Measure where you can, estimate where you can’t.

Marketing Outfield can help you grow your company’s profitable revenue with outsourced services from independent service providers that best meet your unique requirements.  It extends your marketing team, allows you to get more marketing done within a limited budget, and gives you higher confidence in executing your marketing plan and growing your profitable revenue.   Marketing Outfield is your marketplace for the most cost effective marketing for small and medium business.