How SMEs Can Save Money on Their Marketing Budgets

Marketing is crucial for any small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) looking to grow, but it can also put a significant dent in the budget. With savvy planning and smart strategies, however, there are numerous ways SMEs can reduce their marketing spend whilst still gaining traction and reaching new audiences.

Do an Audit

The first step to saving money is to carry out an audit of current marketing activities and expenditure. Look at what channels, tactics and campaigns are being invested in, how much they each cost, and analyse what is and isn’t working based on measurable results. This creates clarity on where the budget may be wasted on inefficient activities so these can be cut back or stopped altogether.

Focus Spend on Highest ROI Areas

Once there is transparency from the audit on what marketing elements drive the greatest return on investment (ROI), the budget can start to be redistributed towards these highest performing channels and campaigns. For most SMEs, this tends to be owned media like email, social media, SEO and content marketing, which engage audiences for low financial outlay compared to paid ads.

Leverage Existing Customer Bases

Rather than constantly seeking new leads, SMEs should tap into existing customer bases via loyalty programmes, special offers and email nurture campaigns. Not only do existing customers have higher conversion rates due to established trust and awareness of the brand, but engaging them through targeted communications also costs little compared to continually acquiring new names.

Partner with Complementary Brands

Strategic partnerships between SMEs who share similar target audiences can be hugely beneficial for boosting visibility whilst sharing costs. This could include guest blog posts, co-branded social content, competitions, cross-promotions and more. It cuts down marketing spend whilst expanding reach.

Optimise Social Campaigns

Whilst paid social ads can be costly, SMEs can optimise organic social media to ensure any tiny budgets go further. Posting engaging, relevant content consistently, using optimal hashtags and handles for discovery and leveraging user-generated social content like reviews are all free opportunities to be leveraged.

Do It Yourself

Rather than hiring agencies, which is a significant expense, SME marketing activities can be handled in-house. For small teams, this might mean upskilling in areas like content creation, graphic design, community management and email marketing through online learning platforms. Useful free or low-cost marketing tools like Adobe Express are also now easily accessible.

Re-Activate Lapsed Contacts

Re-engaging old, cold contacts like unsubscribes or dormant customers can tap back into already-known audiences who have awareness. Tactfully re-sparking their interest to give a brand another chance takes some finesse, but it pays off by turning previous loss into revenue once again for minimal marketing expenditure.

Go Grassroots

Embracing grassroots, word of mouth and guerilla tactics can reap significant results with little financial investment. Brainstorming creative, low-budget street marketing stunts to hand out samples or content can quickly gather traction both on and offline. Likewise, incentivising existing customers to share content or invite friends for special perks leverages community goodwill.

Invest in Retention

It’s far easier to get repeat purchases from existing, satisfied customers than continuously convincing new people to buy. Allocating some of the budget to loyalty and retention efforts ensures the lifetime value of already onboard customers is maximised. This includes surprise and delight touches, loyalty perks, customer service reviews to tackle pain points, and of course, stellar products or services to keep people coming back happy.

Track and Measure

Putting in place comprehensive analytics and tracking ensures there is always clarity on how the marketing budget is being spent and the tangible impact on ROI. Where evidence shows certain activities are not delivering desired outcomes, funds can be quickly redistributed to better-performing channels instead. Continually optimising according to data preserves efficiency.

Update Message Matching

As a company evolves, so too should its messaging and alignments for relevance with its current customer base. Stale, outdated propositions that made sense years ago may no longer resonate or differentiate today. Auditing positioning to map against market changes ensures messaging cuts through saturated spaces to reach the right people.

Automate Where Possible

Software like CRMs, email systems, social media management tools and more all allow for automated processes when used cleverly. This saves vast amounts of time on manual tasks typically charged by the hour from agencies. Though the initial setup requires resources, once workflows are established, productivity can be managed internally at no added cost.

Go Lean

Rather than rushing into building teams, office spaces and infrastructure, bootstrapping marketing as a lean startup preserves capital. Being nimble with budget management, sticking to core positions only and adopting versatile, adaptive strategies means overheads and wastage are kept in check during crucial founding years.

With inventive, nimble strategies and some prudent measurement, both small budgets and ambitions can still be realised.