Promoting products or services is a must for companies, but if you aren’t careful, you could end up wasting money on ineffective or unsuitable promotional tactics. To help you avoid this pitfall, Appco Group UK’s Director of Business Development Rob Gibbs presents a brief guide to maximising your marketing ROI.
Choose the right channels
You will increase your chances of gaining the best value for money from your campaigns by ensuring you target the right people, and this means choosing the most suitable marketing channels. To do this, you’ll firstly need to profile your target audience to make sure you have a clear idea of exactly who you’re trying to appeal to and how best to reach out to them. For example, as well as understanding the demographic variables relating to the people you’re selling to – such as age, gender and income group – you should get clued up on the more qualitative aspects of your audience, such as their aspirations, shopping habits and internet behaviour. This will help you to focus your marketing campaigns and means you don’t waste money trying to communicate with a broad range of people who may not be interested in your offer.
Keep your costs in check
Of course, you have to be prepared to spend money on your marketing efforts. However, there may be ways that you can tighten your purse strings without harming the effectiveness your campaigns. For example, if you use any third-parties to help promote your business, make sure you’re getting good value for money for their services. At Appco (part of the Cobra Group of Companies), we appreciate that businesses don’t have money to burn, which is why we run a performance-base model that means clients only pay for results, making it easier for them to keep their expenditure in check.
Another way to save money is to ensure you make the most of social marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. These sites enable you to speak to prospective customers with minimal financial outlay and, as long as you use them wisely, they can represent an effective means of raising your profile and driving additional sales.
Measure outcomes
Make sure you measure your marketing outcomes carefully. This will help you to identify the tactics that are working and those that are ineffective and/or offer poor ROI. It’s true that the success of promotional campaigns can be hard to quantify, but there are ways of keeping tabs on their effectiveness. With face-to-face marketing and customer acquisition, for example, it’s possible to quantify exactly how many people sign up to your product or service as a result of the campaign. In addition, gathering data about your customers’ journeys from first hearing about your products or services to actually making a purchase is useful. And tools such as Google Analytics are great for monitoring the effectiveness of your online marketing strategies. It may take some careful thought to accurately measure outcomes, but doing so will help you to hone your campaigns for optimum ROI.
Following these steps can help ensure you benefit from optimal marketing ROI and, as a result, you may be able to make your firm more competitive and better equipped to thrive in today’s tough marketplace.