Keeping Your Customers When Dropping Your Marketing Costs

When you are cutting back on your budget, it is likely that you will reevaluate your marketing budget and consider if you are paying too much for certain things. Your marketing costs can easily spiral out of control if you are not careful. It is important that you look at the marketing programs that you are using and to find out which ones are actually working. The ones that are not offering value are the ones that can be reduced or even cut from your marketing budget. However any time you are looking to cut back on your marketing exposure you need to be concerned as it could mean that you might lose customers. Let's look at a few different ways in which you can reduce your marketing costs and to start saving money without losing customers.

Find the waste
Are you still paying for direct mail campaigns and getting a ton of returned mail? Clean up your mailing list and make sure you are using a direct mail campaign that will be successful by sending it out to people that want it. Cut down on how many direct mail pieces you send out and try doing a smaller sample as this could provide you with higher results as long as you are using a program that is considered valuable to the customers. Do this same evaluation when you are looking at pay per click programs and other things. Finding the waste can really help to evolve your company and will be able to make it easier on you to generate the sales you need without spending a fortune to do so.

Learn before you play
When it comes to any type of marketing you need to be able to understand the program you are using. It is helpful to understand how pay per click works along with other things such as article marketing, SEO, and online marketing programs. When you are able to educate yourself on how the programs work, you are less likely to have issues with the program and you will not make nearly as many marketing mistakes. Hire a company to help you out with online marketing if you are still learning. Freelancers can often provide you with great service for a lower cost than an employee or from many of the companies that are offering SEO services.

Invest in success
If you have marketing programs that are actually working well, invest more money into them. Perhaps you can cut back on some of the programs like pay per click and lead generation if you find that Facebook and blogging are generating quality leads and really boosting your web traffic. If this is the case, you want to put your money where it's working.

Focus on relationships
As you cut back, you do not want to lose the relationships that you have already built with your customers. Continue fostering the relationships with your existing customers as they will spread along the message of your company to others. They can be one of your greatest marketing tools as they will be able to let others know about new products and services and they really aid in keeping your company name out there. Plus they can generate some great customer referrals for you as well. Existing customers are vital to small businesses as they actually make up about 80% of your profits. Use reward marketing programs to give to your existing customers. This is a great way to show them that you do appreciate them and you are offering them some type of reward when they provide you with new customers to continue growing and strengthening your company.