Even businesses that aren’t strapped for cash know the importance of doing the most with what they have, and two things are at the top of that list when it comes to optimization are time and budget. With that in mind, here are 5 things smart marketing teams do to make the most of what they have—and make it count.
Pitch in with Design
Graphic designers in any size company can attest to their never-ending to-do list. Designers are always in high-demand creating tradeshow collateral, designing display ads, sizing logos, and the million other things asked of them on a day-to-day basis, many of them high-level. But there are design needs that, while smaller, are still important, especially for a department that understands the value of consistently creating content. That being said, we’re talking about budget here. Hiring another designer isn’t always possible. So the rest of the team has to pitch in.
We can’t all be Photoshop experts. But there are tools out there—Piktochart, PicMonkey, and Venngage, for example—that enable anyone on your team to create beautiful, eye-catching visual marketing content that helps buoy your brand. Infographics, diagrams, social media assets—these are just a few things that every solid content marketing strategy calls for, and your team can create them without calling on your stretched-thin designer.
Use a Social Monitoring Tool
The range of cost for social media monitoring tools is vast, but this just means you have a lot of options. There are free tools that, when combined, enable you to measure brand mentions, sentiment, reach, influence, and more, as well as paid options like Sprout Social that let you dig deep on analytics in one streamlined resource. Depending on your budget, you have a lot of tools at your disposal, and no matter what you choose, you’ll save time and money by automating many tasks.
Use Call Tracking
If marketers claim to be concerned about their budget, but they’re not using call tracking…well, they can only blame themselves. Call tracking enables marketers to track phone leads back to specific ads, keyword searches, web pages, social media, digital ads, mobile, and offline campaigns. Too many marketing departments don’t track online leads that convert as a phone call, and as a result there’s a massive hole in their ability to measure ROI. Even billion-dollar companies know the importance of budget optimization and using call tracking saves a big chunk of that budget.
Watch the Data
Depending on what size company you are, you may be fortunate enough to have a data analyst on staff. But if not, someone needs to have watching the data on their to-do list. We’re marking in an environment that doesn’t shy away from the words Big Data, and smart marketers know why. Data can tell us incredible things about how to improve our marketing and customer experience, but if you’re collecting data and not analyzing it, it’s a wasted effort. For example, in line with the above example, call tracking captures complete session-based data on every phone call, including the caller’s activity on the website, for insights into what content converts visitors to phone leads. That kind of data is gold for optimization
A/B Test
According to Econsultancy, A/B testing is the most-used method for improving conversion rates, yet MarketingSherpa reports that only 52% of companies and agencies using landing pages also test them to find ways to improve conversions. This is a shame, because it’s really not difficult to A/B test successfully. With tools like Optimizely, it’s easy to test different variations of the landing pages you use to drive organic traffic and leads, as well as test out different calls to action, different color schemes, layouts, etc. It’s a quick and easy way to boost conversion rates while, and saves you time and money.
No matter what size company you are, time and budget are things you don’t want to waste. Marketers: what other ways do you pitch in to help the machine keep cranking? Leave your experiences in the comment section below.