How to reduce costs and increase effectiveness of your marketing

You may be going into a new marketing situation with the goal of turning it around.You may be trying to turn around your current marketing situation before you get sent packing and the company hires someone to turn the marketing department around.Either way, you need some advice on reducing your marketing costs while increasing your marketing effectiveness.Here are a couple of tips to help you do just that.

Focus on niche marketing.Marketing niches or segment are small groups who you focus your marketing on.By focusing on smaller groups, you can sometimes reduce costs while increasing effectiveness.Mass marketing has a place but it is expensive to advertise on the mass market.If you have a small group that you are focused on, things like television commercials might be a bit of a waste since a majority of the people you are reaching are not members of your target audience.By narrowing your scope you can save the money that you would be throwing at non-target (and not interested) people.The other thing that a smaller scope does is allow you to focus the content of your ads.If you are only advertising to a small group, you can use the jargon and knowledge base of that small group.

Use viral marketing.Viral marketing is a technique where you use human nature to replicate and repeat your advertising.This is accomplished when people repeat their experience with your product or service.Of course, if you are going to get tongues wagging you need to do, or provide, something pretty special.Another way to utilize viral marketing is to create something that will be passed around online.If your company has a website or has blogs, you can post something that will be passed from computer to computer.If your webmaster can add some interactive effects, the web link might be passed on.Similarly, if somebody in your company specializes in flash animation see if she can make a simple game that might be downloaded.Do what you can to get other people to do your advertising for you by word-of-mouth.

Practice practical pricing.There are mathematical formulas and a whole lot of theory that goes into setting the best price for your product.For some products, the price is elastic, meaning if the price goes down, the number of sales goes up.Other products are inelastic, meaning that the number of sales will be about the same no matter what the price does.Recent gas prices have shown that gas is a relatively inelastic commodity.Experts keep wondering at what point people will stop driving because gas is so expensive.What they are finding out is that there really is no point where people will stop driving.Since there is no other way to fuel our cars, we just keep buying the gas.An excellent way to reduce your costs while increasing your effectiveness is by setting your prices efficiently.Different demographic areas will be willing to pay different prices.Get your experts to figure out exactly what prices you should be asking in the different areas.

Try promotions.Promotions are often a good marketing investment.Things like coupons and rebates are pretty inexpensive but can have great results in getting people to buy your product.Other types of promotions such as contest, sales, and free samples also get your products into the public and get the public talking about your product.You might pull some money out of mass-market advertising and use it to focus a promotional campaign at some sales segment.