How to Budget for Digital Marketing in Singapore

Picture this: You work as a marketing coordinator. Your task is to attract customers to your brand, and the only way to sustain your job is to make your bosses happy.

Your bosses trust you to help them roll in the big bucks. They’ll allocate a small digital marketing budget and expect you to make magic with it.

You Don’t Need an Explosive Digital Marketing Budget

A common misconception making rounds on these hallowed walls, that’s the internet, is that you need an explosive digital marketing budget to make things work for you online– pure myth if you ask.

With proper strategic planning (right from the outset) aimed at targeted and more realistic outcomes, you can still achieve tremendous success even with a limited budget.

Here’s our perspective:

• Digital marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive.
  
• The point is to learn how to make the most out of your marketing budget — however small it is.
  
• Learn to plan the channels and resources you’ll use. It doesn’t matter if it’s PPC advertising, SEO, or social media marketing; all it takes to dominate any of these channels is careful planning, strategy, and continuous refinement. 

How Much Should You Spend on Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing has been growing over the years, taking over traditional marketing.

A majority of business owners are already embracing the shift – and if there’s one thing they would all like to know is “how much money should they allocate to digital marketing?”

The United States Small Business Administration suggests that you allocate between 7% to 8% of the generated gross revenue to marketing.

You’re to then split the amount into two, dedicating one-half to digital marketing specifically.

This is an idea you might want to take into consideration. But how exactly does it work in the real business world?

According to a different study, marketing budgets account for about 10 to 14% of the total budget companies have. This might vary from company to company, depending on the industry and the age of the company. But it’s pretty reasonable. 

If your company generated $1000 000 in gross revenue, you’re to dedicate $70 000 to $80 000 to marketing.

That means you’ll have between $35 000 to $40 000 (half your marketing allot) to spend on digital marketing. 

That’s one of the formulas you may use to determine your digital marketing spending. That formula just gives a quick and cursory look at digital marketing budgets. 

But what will it look like when fleshed out? How exactly should you plan your digital marketing budget? 

Read on to find out. 

Some Quick Tips on Modern Marketing

• You should reserve 50% of your marketing budget for digital marketing only. 
• Video marketing takes the lead, with its usage expected to double from what it was in 2016 come 2021. 
• A quarter of your digital marketing budget should go to social media marketing ads. 
• Though less rapidly, social media marketing has been steadily growing over the years and is now about to hit 25% of digital marketing spending
• 48% of companies allot between 4% to 5% of the revenue they generate to marketing. 
• 50% of companies suggest search-related strategies have the highest returns on investment (ROI) – SEO, Paid search, and content marketing (Hook Agency 2020). 

You can use this formula to determine your digital marketing spending. However, to flesh it out, you have to look into the various digital marketing tools, decide which ones to use, and what to allocate to each one of them.

The Latest Development and Changes in Digital Marketing Budgets in 2020

• The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the economic outlook of many customers 
• Social unrest has reduced foot traffic for businesses in many of the cities in Singapore
• Long content calendars now appear silly following the mid-year changes in 2020
• The digital marketing allots of marketing budgets have increased from 42% (in 2019) to 45% (2020) 

Changes to How People Are Spending on Digital Marketing

The Covid-19 upheaval has brought with it so many changes. Things have shifted, setting marketing on a digital trajectory. 
So, what are companies doing differently with their digital marketing budget:

Activating their Customers or Clients

Businesses stopped obsessing over new customers and instead shifted their focus to current customers. 
See, no customer is in a position to tell your business story better than an over-the-moon one. 
A raving fan will be all over the place, telling your company story through videos, testimonials, and events, or with every chance they get. 
Activating new customers is a new trend that’s fast picking up steam. And it goes beyond testimonials and videos. 
A simple approach is where you create a “network effect” by forming a customer group. Here, customers get to know each other and exchange ideas. It’s more like a mastermind group, great with B2B. 
You can scale your business stories by activating your customers and acting as your customers’ connector. 

Retargeting, a Bottom of the Funnel Initiative

You don’t just ignore a customer who couldn’t bring him/herself to make up their mind. How about you get them to reconsider their initial stand through retargeting – a strategy that many marketers are now fully embracing. 
It’s simple: your job is to identify sales qualified leads and push them to take action by doing the following:

• Create videos for the leads in your sales process
• Educate and challenge the leads in the sales process
• Create case studies and testimonials to direct them on what to do next
• Push your company stories through remarketing on YouTube, Google Ads, and Facebook
• Create an inspirational identity to tighten up your brand message. Create something like this:

“People like us, act like this,” – something people will want to be identified with. 

Sales Enabled Efforts

We understand that this article is about marketing. But let’s not forget that the two border each other. 
We’re one of the biggest proponents of sales-enabled marketing at Media One –in fact, we encourage you to contact us and get a chance to go through our sales process to get a feel of how it works and maybe pick a nugget or two that you can incorporate into your own sales process. 

Here are some of the tools that you can incorporate into your sales-oriented marketing strategies: 

• Autoresponders (gravity forms
• Questionnaires (multistep forms in Gravity forms)
• Automatic follow-ups (mail chimp)
• Video intro calls (zoom and Google meet)
• A dashboard with relevant information (sales reach)
• Video integration in your sales-enabled dashboard (sales reach)
• Mobile-friendly multistep proposals (Better Proposals)

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Set a Digital Marketing Budget for Your Company

Step 1: Calculate Your Gross Revenue

Gross revenue is the revenue you receive before you make any deductions, like the cost of goods, rent, taxes, etc. 
Estimated revenue, on the other hand, refers to your projected earnings for a given period.
Either of them should work. But if the difference between your gross revenue and the estimated revenue is too big, we suggest you go with the smallest number. 
Either way, you need to figure out this number, and where you can, ask your sales team or accountant to help you figure it out.

Step 2: Determine an Ideal Digital Marketing Budget

If your business is relatively new, then perhaps you should consider allocating 12 to 20 percent of your gross or estimated revenue to marketing.  Established companies can work with a lower budget than this. But if you’re new, then your priority should be on stretching your reach as far as you possibly can.
You’re working towards creating a name for your brand and products/services. Marketing should be one of your key focuses. 
Once your brand becomes established, you can scale down this amount to between 6 and 12% of your gross revenue.

Here’s a Real-World Example of How This Works

Example 1: Company Alphas started ten years ago, and for the past three years, the company generated average gross revenue of $1000 000 per quarter ($4000000 per year). 
The company isn’t exactly new. So, they’re likely to allocate 6 to 12% of their gross revenue to marketing.
That translates to between $60 000 to $120 000 per quarter ($240, 000 to $480, 000 per year). 

Example 2: Company Omega started two years ago. It’s a relatively new company that’s still struggling to create a name for itself. Since they started, they have been making about $25000 each quarter ($100 000 per year) in gross revenue.
That means their ideal marketing budget amounts to about $3000 to $5000 each quarter ($12000 to $20000 per year). 
This is how you calculate your marketing spending. Now let’s look into how you should be spending these dollars. 

Step 3: Identify Your Digital Marketing Objectives

What goals do you have?
Before you plan your budget, you have to take an in-depth look into your business and highlight all the goals you have (for the year and each quarter). 
That way, you will know what tactic to prioritise, and where to direct much of your marketing effort.  
For example, if you plan to grow your website and generate more business, you should focus more on producing high-quality content and optimising your site for better conversion. 

Step 4: Audit Your Past Digital Marketing Results

After listing your goals and objectives, the next thing you want to do is evaluate your past marketing results. What you gather should help you inform your new marketing strategy and budget. 
For example, if you plan to generate more business, you want to start by identifying all the tactics you might use to achieve it. You’re to audit your past results. Pick what worked for you, what needs to be improved, and what to discard. 

• Which channel generated the most targeted traffic?
• Which ads generated the highest number of leads?
• And so on.

Here are a few of the things you should take into consideration:
Which channels drove the best results? Based on your digital marketing objectives, which channel drove the best results? These are the channels to go heavy on. 
Which channels didn’t perform well? There are three ways to go about this. 

• The first one is by dropping these channels 
• The second one is where you decide to look at what you can improve for better performance 
• Lastly, you might want to trim down their allot and direct the extra funding on channels that generated the best results. 
• Which Tactics Have You Been Using? You want to analyse each of these tactics and find out which ones generated the best ROI. 

When performing an audit, you should focus on the goals you have. You have to evaluate your results and find out if they can help you achieve your objectives.

Step 5: Evaluate Your Options
As already mentioned, digital marketing is as convoluted as it comes – with a multitude of strategies and tactics to apply (some of which are must-do’s).  
Here’s an interesting list of companies’ top digital marketing priorities:

Digital Marketing Strategies	Priority Level
Growing SEO/Organic Traffic	61%
Blogging and content creation	55%
Marketing Automation	50%
Content Distribution and amplification	47%
Interactive content creation	36%
Longform visuals (eBooks and whitepapers)	35%
Visual content creation	30%
Online tools	28%
Product how-to videos	26%
Webinars	24%
Freemium Trials	9%
Don’t know	3%
Others	2%

How to Allocate Your Digital Marketing Budget

You have a marketing budget. But how do you allocate it across channels? And even after you’ve allocated the money, how do you spread it across the channels? 
This is not something you rush into. Or use a one-size-fits-all formula to work out the calculations. 
No two businesses have the same marketing needs. You need to take an in-depth look into everything right at the beginning and figure out how to invest your marketing money best.

• How would you measure your marketing efforts? 
• How would you track where your leads are coming from? 
• And how would you be mapping the conversion steps or paths that these leads go through before they become customers or clients?

How Much of Your Marketing Budget Should be Allocated to Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is only part of marketing.
Its budget is only a portion of your marketing allocation. 
Brands whose marketing strategies are centred on the internet will, of course, require a bigger digital marketing budget. 
According to Forrester Research, digital marketing accounts for about 45% of the total marketing spending in 2020.
The figure can vary depending on the industry, local market, and growth plans. 
A healthy blend of different marketing tools is expected for traditional businesses that rely on both offline and online marketing activities to fill their sales funnel.
And as traditional channels continue to lose ground, more digital marketing budgets continue to swell. 

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There are so many digital marketing tools and platforms available for growing your business. The program platforms are offering equal chances to both big and small company brands to market their goods and services. Singapore is one of the top countries that has dramatically welcomed online business marketing developments. These features are of great significance in Singapore where there is increased competition in digital marketing over the past few years. Budget is the most critical factor in developing your business’s online advertising strategy. You need to know the average advertising cost before starting your online business marketing regardless of whether you have some money to spare or a bootstrap budget. This article goes through how much you need to conduct digital marketing in Singapore.

1. Average Advertising Cost for Google Ads

Google is the most famous search engine in the world. Google ads are hence the most prominent online advertising platform in the world. People will be able to search the world’s information including videos, web pages, images, and more. They will be able to find exactly what you need on the internet through the various special features on google. Running your business advertisement campaign on Google gives you a chance to display your brand on a search engine and Google maps. The customers searching for businesses related to yours get to see your business brand among them.

Google Ads

Google ads are useful for small businesses in driving more website traffic, more foot visits to physical locations of the stores, and getting more phone calls. The best thing about Google ads is that any budget can be used to develop an effective google ads campaign. Businesses use google ads for maximization of their online advertisement budget and to feature on the search engine results page (SERP). SERP takes the role of page listing in response to the keyword query.

Google Ads Pricing Model

Google ads have two options of campaign models you can launch. This includes display and search networks. Search network campaign ads are triggered by proactive search questions inputted by the users who are looking for products and services-related ads. Search network ads use a pay-per-click model (PPC) in which you will pay for each time an online user clicks on your ad to visit your landing pages. The users will be served with the relevant ads which appear just above the results. Display network uses relevant page content which is specifically targeted by advertisers. The users are not explicitly looking for ads. They have an interest in visiting pages that are related to the inputted keywords. Display ads are found on display networks all over the internet appearing as banners. This audience may be fit for your business brand.

There are three main google ads pricing options;

• CPC Pricing. This option is perfect for campaign advertisements that are targeted to drive traffic. You will pay when users click on your advertisement ad.
• CPM Pricing. Also known as cost-per-thousand impressions, CPM is based on paying after one thousand views. This is perfect for ad campaigns aimed at brand awareness.
• CPA Pricing. Cost-per-acquisition is based on paying after the results of your ad to lead conversion. This is the best pricing policy for driving your business sales.

Google PPC Ads

Pay per click operates on the principle of charging a small fee every time an online user clicks on your ads. Pay-per-click ensures you get instant exposure that leads to traffic and higher sales. This program provides all the platforms anytime and anywhere. Pay-per-click marketing is the perfect business choice and ensures your business has the maximum reach out without overspending. In Singapore, most of the forefront visited sites have advertising platforms that they take advantage of. These platforms get them on the front line ahead of their potential competitors everywhere they go online. The pay-per-click platform packages are all-inclusive and give you maximum exposure. In simple terms, pay per click makes sure you are found on the forefront before others through search engines’ organic results hence increasing your lead generation.

PPC Ads Pricing Model

The Google PPC ads are displayed on search engines, and you pay on a pay per click. The google ads auction process determines which ads are shown when an online user performs a keyword search. This auction will the CPC rate and order of ads on the Google search engine. Your quality score on a scale of 1 to 10 and maximum bid both determine the position of your PPC. The higher your ad rank on the SERP, the higher your quality score and the lower your cost per click. The average cost for google ads is approximately $1.00 and $2.00 per click. Your average cost per month will be about $10000 per month.

You will be able to start the advertisement on any budget depending on how much experience on the platform you are. A higher than average cost per click will be experienced in a more competitive industry in your business location.

Average Advertisement Cost for Google Display Network

Google display network (GDN) ads tend to have lower click-through rates as compared to Google search engine ads. Despite that, the Google display network has many remarketing and appealing targeting opportunities you can use to grow your business. The more click-through rates you get, the higher the investment return for the spent amount in ads. The average cost on the display network per click is about $0.58. The cost may vary depending on the competitiveness of your industry. The business industries with a higher cost per click include employment services industries with $1.66 per click and the real estate industry with about $ 0.88 CPC rate.

2. Average Facebook Ads Advertising Cost

Facebook has the most substantial online media time consumption. This is one of the most famous social utilities globally. More than 1.2 billion people are Facebook users now. Facebook enables people to upload pictures, connect with friends, and share videos and links. The chat features include public and private chats that are featured through messages. The majority of Singaporeans spend their online time on Facebook platforms. It is hence vital for you to invest in Facebook marketing as your target audience is more likely to be available on them. Facebook advertisement is effective and affordable to help reach your brand’s targeted goals. The platform provides a variety of ads depending on your online advertising goals. You will be able to reach your targeted audiences based on their behaviors, interests, and demographic information. Many Singapore businesses depend on Facebook ads in driving website traffic, reaching new audiences, and improving lead conversions.

Facebook Ad Pricing Model

Facebook ad pricing model involves setting aside weekly and monthly ad campaign budgets. The ads are automatically paused when the budget is exhausted. Facebook ads provide control over budget allocation and the amount spent on getting the user to take particular actions including downloading your business app all signing up for your email listings. The best advantage of using Facebook ads is that you can get the most from your ad spend. And you have more control over your budget ads. Facebook advertising in Singapore could be of great help in helping you with your Facebook ads as the platform is a bit confusing as compared to Google search ads and PPC models.

Average Advertising Cost for Facebook Ads

Currently, the average cost for Facebook ads per click is about $1.72, and the average cost per impression (CPM) is about $7.19. However, the cost will depend on location, niche, and industry factors. Most of the business spend an average of $1.00 per fan which varies depending on apps download, brand recognition, and website visits. Despite the low average advertising costs across many industries, it has some expensive industries such as insurance, finance, home improvements, and customer services. If you want to reach your audience while still generating investment returns, Facebook ads are the way to go. You will be able to launch your campaigns at a general low-cost ad budget.

3. Average Advertising Costs for Instagram Ads Cost

Instagram is one of the powerful and emerging digital tools. It is providing a funny and simple creative way to capture, share messages, photos, and videos with family and friends. You have to download the applications, create an account and log in to Instagram. Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012 as a strategic plan to dominate social media. This way, Facebook expanded its online advertising revenue through Instagram ads. Instagram is a suitable platform for advertising visual brands to get to their target audiences through compelling video and image ad content.

Average Advertising Costs

Instagram gives you an alternative format according to your advertisement goals. The Instagram ads are placed in the Instagram users’ feed making it non-disruptive as compared to other forms of online ads. The ads will hence give the user a seamless ad experience. Your ad content will visually look like normal Instagram organic content. This gives you a chance to use similar engaging videos and images like those of users’ favorite Instagram accounts. Instagram ads are an excellent addition to Instagram’s marketing strategy.

Instagram Ads Pricing Model

Being a part of Facebook, Instagram’s advertising pricing model is similar to Facebook ads. If you know how to develop Facebook ads on the platform, it is straightforward to create Instagram ads. Business companies that want to use both Facebook and Instagram ads find it convenient for them to launch the campaigns. You only need to access the dashboard of one of the more familiar platforms and use it to manage both social media ad campaigns. You should set your Instagram advertisement ad budget per day or throughout the campaign period. Make sure also to include the maximum amount you are willing to spend on the ad objective. The cost per click is measured by the ad quality and relevance of its content, the advertiser’s bid, and the likelihood for users to take action on the optimized ad.

Average Advertising Costs for Instagram

A while ago, the Instagram advertising costs were below Facebook ads. Te Instagram ads CPM was approximately half the price of Facebook ads CPM. At the start of the campaign launching on Instagram, the average CPM for advertisers was about $5. The massive growth of Instagram’s popularity has led to a rise in the average cost for its ads. The price has become similar to Facebook going for around $10 CPM. The increase is directly proportional to the increase in popularity of the visual social media platform. Instagram provides a perfect platform to get your target audience. The ability to capture the target audience through Instagram ads gives your brand a better investment return on your ad spend.

The Instagram platform gives a higher level of user engagement. This is proportional to Instagram ad costs which give it a high significance. The platform is perfect for business brands that want to get the attention of online users and also engage them meaningfully. You will change the way you see online audience engagement. It is suitable for small business brands with a compressed online ad budget. More so, if your business campaign objectives are entirely based on engagement, worry no more as the Instagram ad is the solution. It is easy for you to control your Instagram ad spending. You can manage the launch campaigns the same way you handle your Facebook ads through the Facebook ads manager. You can test the different strategies in Instagram campaigns to see which results in the best ROI. You can use various options to have the maximum Instagram ad spend.

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What Are the Popular Digital Marketing Methods Used in Singapore?

Digital marketing has become popular among businesses in Singapore. The main reason for the rising use of digital marketing in Singapore is that it lets companies explore various techniques on a limited budget. It also allows marketers to track the performance and return on investment of their internet marketing strategies. They can do that using analytics dashboards and other valuable tools.
Another factor for digital marketing’s surging popularity is that many consumers now use the internet to study products before purchasing them.
|So, what are the popular strategies used in Singapore?

User-Friendly and Responsive Website
The critical component of any internet marketing campaign is your website. It is the first impression your potential consumers will have of your business and what it offers. This platform also helps to convert leads to buying customers.
Therefore, when designing your website, ensure it is user-friendly.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you want to thrive in digital marketing in Singapore, you must invest in SEO. According to research, 53% of customers begin their shopping journey by using search engines like Google.
Having a website is not enough. It would be best if you also adopted strategies to improve its exposure in search results. As a result, you will reach out to potential clients.

Content Marketing

In Singapore, content marketing is also an essential digital marketing technique. It entails developing and distributing various forms of content to engage and attract your target audience. Increasing brand awareness, improving site traffic, generating leads, increasing conversions, and keeping existing clients are all common content marketing initiatives.

Email marketing

 99 % of people check emails daily. Therefore, email marketing is one of the most successful digital marketing tactics in Singapore. Businesses send branded emails to existing and potential customers to raise brand awareness, establish authority, promote forthcoming events, and keep them informed about special offers.

Social Media Marketing

This digital marketing strategy uses social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to reach potential clients. 
After google, social media has the second-highest number of active daily users. In Singapore, 4.1 million people who use the internet also visit Facebook.
Owing to a large number of active social media users, you can see why social media marketing is so popular among Singapore’s digital marketers.

Pay-per-click Advertising

Also known as search engine marketing. It is an internet marketing strategy where you pay the advertisers any time users click your ad. One advantage of this strategy is that it works faster than SEO. It is also easy to measure return on investment because you pay per click.
If you invest in the right keywords, this method will work for your business. It will also give you quality leads.

How to Budget for Marketing on Different Platforms

Since we have looked into different types of ads, average advertising costs on various platforms, pricing models, and tips to help you thoroughly exploit digital marketing budgets. It’s time to explore multiple guides to better manage marketing budgets on Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and PPC.

Google Ads

Google Ads budgeting strategy guide can be divided into three categories;

1. Establish your initial Google Ads budget.
2. Allocate spending across various campaign types.
3. Introduce new Google Ads campaigns. 

Establishing Your Initial Google Ads Budget

To effectively determine how much money, to budget for marketing and for what duration, ask yourself the following critical questions;

1. How does your current marketing strategy align with Google Ads?
2. Where and what are my competitors spending?
3. How much are the costs per click (CPCs) for the keywords I’m bidding on?
4. Which of the key performance indicators are essential?

Use the existing marketing efforts data to inform your budget and Google Ads account structure. A business with a well-established online presence attracts more leads that are likely to buy from your company. On the flip side, you will need to set up strategies to attract organic traffic, improve your SEO, and create content that will resonate with your audience to increase your conversion rate. 

Leverage tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to get ideas on your competitors’ spending their Google Ads budgets. With this, you will develop strategies and find keywords that will rank your pages on SERP. 

To establish the cost of keywords you are bidding for, enter your landing pages on Google Ads Planner and adjust your parameters appropriately (i.e., industry, location, terms to avoid, e.tc). Then try this with site pages that correspond to each of your products and services; this will help you uncover undervalued, high traffic, low-competition search terms to bid for.

Determine your budget by establishing the most important KPIs to your business and working backward from the figures that represent profitability. Here are a few critical resources on performance indicators that can get you started. 

• Google Ads Metrics.
• Hacking Google Ads.
• Easy Google Ads Bidding Strategies.

Allocate Spend Across Search Campaigns 

Each of your Google Ads campaigns falls under five categories; research/top of the funnel, high-intent, top performers, competitor, and branded. Consider the following key pointers when allocating spending on campaigns;

• Top-of-funnel keywords are highly-priced, explore better and affordable ways to reach a broad audience.
• Your budget should focus more on high-intent keywords (including branded terms).
• Adjust budget allocation weekly to ensure maximum Return of Investment (ROI).

Introducing new Google Ads campaigns

Besides remarketing, the Google Display Network (GDN) has three essential functions;

• To enhance brand awareness.
• To showcase products.
• To speed up the lengthy sales process.

Remarketing is a crucial component of Google Ads that can help you maximize conversion rates by saving more qualified prospects. To determine your initial remarketing budget, calculate the percentage of conversions coming from retuning sites visitors and allocate the same portion of your spend to remarketing.

Here are six steps to set your Google Ads budget:

1. Already have an account? Log in to your Google Ads account
2. Click “Campaigns” from the sidebar menu
3. Select your Campaign
4. Choose “Settings” from the sidebar menu
5. Click on “Budget”
6. Enter your new daily budget.

Facebook

Here is a six-step guide curated to enable you to manage your Facebook business page better, build an audience over time and run ads while spending less.

Identify Your Audience 

The first step is to determine your ad campaign target audience. The best practice for achieving this is to identify and define your buyer personas.

 Align your buyer personas with your Facebook ads audience; this has several benefits. It creates brand awareness, promotes valuable content, and showcases your brand’s solutions to the challenges, hence moving them to the next considerable stage of your buyer’s journey. 

Create An Effective Facebook Ad

A Facebook user clicks on the Ad if it attracts their attention, and ad creativity and title are the first noticeable elements of the ad. 

Some best practices to consider;

• Create three or more versions of the ad in a document. Vary the titles and find different relevant images.
• Include three different titles; one that poses a question, one that is clear on the ad’s purpose, and one attached to the image.
• Use clear and engaging images for your Facebook ad.

Boost a Facebook post

You can boost published posts that have high engagements on Facebook to tap into a wider audience. Eligible Facebook posts have a “Boost” blue button.

 First, review posts for any errors, check links and creative elements. Click “Boost” to either a new audience somewhat limited audience or use a saved audience. 

Set your budget and how long you want the campaign to run. Track and monitor your ad for reach, impressions, clicks, and other metrics to evaluate its performance.

 Spend Up To $5 Per Ad Campaign

Since Facebook advertising requires $1.00/ day, selecting a Lifetime budget for each promotion helps cut down costs. 

Lifetime Budgets allows you to set a custom maximum ad expenditure. Start with a budget of $1.00 – $ 3.50 per day and adjust according to ads performance over time. Plan to boost four posts in a week with a lifetime budget of $5 each. Again, track and monitor performance using metrics such as reach, impression, and other types of engagements. clicks etc.

Establish What Works

Different industries have varying costs and return of investments over time because of varying reasons such as competition in various locations, demographics breakdown, locals vs. international focuses. Understanding your ad performance against similar businesses can help you scale costs and budgets. 

Prioritize What Works

Using the data gathered from ads performance throughout the campaign period, identify and determine ads that received the best engagements from the audience. 

Remember, you are on an advertising budget. Ensure your ad is visually compelling, informative, and valuable to your audience. Align each ad campaign with your business goals and scale your budgets accordingly to increase sales and conversion rates.

How to advertise on Facebook:

1. Log in to Facebook Ads Manager, select the Campaigns tab, click Create to start a new Facebook ad campaign. 
2. Name your Facebook ad campaign and declare whether it fits any particular categories. 
3. Set your ad budget and schedule.
4. Choose your target audience. 
5. Set brand safety and cost controls. 
6. Select your ad format, enter text and media for your ad, review, and hit the Publish button to launch your ad. 

Instagram

There are two methods for setting an Instagram’s budget when marketing.

1. Promoting posts in-app

Identify a post that is performing well in terms of engagement and promote it to reach an audience that isn’t following you yet. To achieve this, you need to have a business or creator account on Instagram, then click Promote on any post you wish to turn into an Ad.

2. Creating Instagram ads using Facebook Ads manager.

Here is a 5-step guide through the process.

Step 1: Identify and choose your campaign objective on Ad’s manager. 

Here is a breakdown of the objectives;   

• Brand awareness: Increase awareness of your brand or products. 
• Reach: Display your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience.
• Engagement: Boost comments, shares, likes, event responses on your ad.
• Traffic: Attract and drive clicks to your website and app.
• Lead generation: Obtain personal info from interested users.
• App installs: Users to download your app.
• Conversions: Obtain sales or sign-up conversions on your app or site.
• Store traffic: Direct users to traffic location.
• Video views: Gain video views from users.
• Messages: users to send a message to your brand account.
• Catalog sales: Promote your online sales.

After selecting your objective, give your campaign a name based on the aim to help you track its performance. 

Step 2: Select your budget and schedule.

In this stage, choose how much you want to spend and how long the campaign should run. 

There are two budget options:

• Daily budget: useful for always-on ads and sets a maximum daily spend.
• Lifetime budget: useful for advertisements with a precise end date and maximum spending for a whole campaign.

Schedule ads based on your target audience’s online availability and adjust ads options based on the audience’s definition and estimated daily results modules.

Step 3: Identify your audience.

At this stage, define your target audience. Either Create a New Audience or use the Saved Audience. The saved audience is helpful when you have custom audience data from previous campaigns. You can create a new audience based on demographics, interests, and behavioral targeting. 

Step 4: Select your ad placements.

The placements section allows you to select where your ads should appear. 

There are two options available:

Automatic Placements: Ads are shown to your audience where they are likely to perform best. 

Manual placements: This allows you to choose precisely where your ad will appear.  

Step 5: Create your ads

Select a Facebook page and a corresponding Instagram account. Then fill out details in the Ad creative;

• Select photos or videos.
• Fill in your ad copy.
• Choose a payment option.
• Review the ad, and click confirm to launch the ad.

Some Instagram ads best practices include;

Here are some tips for designing creative, attention-grabbing Instagram ads.:

1. Design Mobile-optimize ads. Film in vertical, minimize the amount of text, add animations and graphics, and keep the video short (15seconds or less).
2. Keep branding and messaging content upfront. The first 3 seconds should contain your key message.
3. Design your ads for sound-off consumption. Use visuals more to tell your story and deliver your message.
4. Utilize a combination of creative types like pitch, play, and plunge strategy to grab audience attention and reward interest. 

• Pitch: Short assets that immediately get the campaign idea across and grab attention.
• Play: Assets that allow interactivity and light exploration for interested audiences.
• Plunge: Immersive assets allow the audience to go in-depth into your campaign idea.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

How much should your business budget for PPC? Below is a guide to help you determine how much budget you might need to allocate to run a profitable paid search campaign. 

Choose Keywords for Your Ad Copy 

Determine and choose search terms that your potential customers are more likely to use when looking for your products or services. Focus on keywords that show immediate intent to purchase.

When building a keyword list, start with high-intent keywords and experiment with higher-funnel, low-intent keywords as you scale your operations. 

Research Search Volumes

The number of times browsers show your ads are based on selected keywords search volume and the number of people looking for your products online at any given time. Sufficient search volume enables Google to show your Ads.

Smaller search volume is advantageous for small businesses as it equates to lower costs and more negligible or non-existent competition. However, if search volumes are high, the prices and competition are high, requiring larger budgets. 

Research CPC (Cost Per Click) Estimates

When researching keywords search volumes using tools search as Google Keyword Planner, you will also obtain cost-per-click estimates. The estimates show how much you will pay every time your ad gets a click. 

Target Geographical Area Important to Your Business

Start by targeting an audience within your geographical location, then scale your campaign based on your ad’s performance. 

Run Campaign Ads at A Specific Time to Your Industry

Once your campaigns run successfully and with a clear return of investment, a great way to boost your campaign revenue is limiting ads timeframe and showing it only during profitable hours of the day.  

Target devises Specific to Your Customers

Conduct some in-depth research on what kind of devices prospects are using to research and make purchases online. Often, lower-ticket items are researched and purchased on mobile, while higher-ticket items are purchased via desktop. With this type of information, you can bid more effectively based on your sales funnel.

Monitor Your Position, Ad Spend, And Conversion Metrics

Lastly, track and monitor your ads performance based on the set KPIs, gauge its success and establish ways to improve it. Determine why specific keywords are not converting to sales or leads or why particular keywords are performing better at a lower position than higher positions on the search engine results page (SERP).

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Digital Marketing Costs That Eat into Your Budget

Here are the digital marketing costs to take into consideration while preparing your budget.

Your Marketing Strategy

You have two options: i.) writing your own digital marketing strategy and ii) outsourcing it to a digital marketing agency. 

Usually, it takes between two to three weeks (120 hours) to develop a detailed digital marketing strategy. This time may vary depending on the scale of your digital marketing activities and your experience as the author. 

Remember: this is an annual marketing strategy that should be reviewed and updated after every quarter or trimester. The revision should take you about a week (or 40 hours). Altogether, you’d have used 240 hours to develop and refine your digital marketing strategy.

Now, take that and multiply it by a marketer’s hourly rates, and you’d have a rough estimate of how much it will cost you to develop a digital marketing strategy. 

Another viable option would be to consider hiring a full-time digital marketing specialist. One should cost you about $87 000 per year, and their job includes full digital marketing planning, strategizing, implementing, and team supervision.  

Website or Landing Page Creation

This doesn’t just apply to new businesses. It doesn’t matter if you’re launching a new website or maintaining a website or landing page you already have; you need a budget to create or improve your landing pages or website. 

There are tools to help you out with this. So, unless you’re developing one from scratch, you don’t need to hire a web developer or a UX/UI designer. 

For a bespoke app or website, you might need to outsource it to an experienced web developer. If the services are too costly in your region, then a cheaper option would be to outsource them to an overseas team. For instance, you may hire a developer from India, the Philippines, and other eastern countries.  

They’re much cheaper compared to the developers you find in Singapore. 

Content Creation

Content creation is a critical part of your digital marketing strategy. You need someone to help you generate text, images, and videos for your website or blog. 

Essentially, you’ll be doing a lot of inbound marketing – which fundamentally translates to a lot of blogging, social media posting, email campaigning, and so forth.

Setting an In-house Team

You don’t need to be reminded that you need a budget for this. If you plan to set up an in-house team for this, you should at least employ one graphic designer and one content writer. 

On average, hiring a full-time writer should cost you about $54 000 per year. A graphic designer will also cost you thereabout. 

Using a Freelancing Platform 

An alternative would be to hire freelance content developers from a job board or freelancing websites such as Upwork or Freelancer. With this option, you should at least be prepared to shell out $50 for a 1000-word article. 

But the total amount you spend will vary depending on the number of articles you produce in a week and their respective word count. 

Producing one 1000-word article per week means you’ll be spending about $26000 per year (for the 52 posts produced in a year). 

For projects that you don’t regularly need (such as animation videos), you’re better off outsourcing than setting an in-house team. 

Social Media Marketing

As a small business owner, you’re probably unsure of hiring a social media marketer. 

The reason could be that you’re convinced you can handle it yourself, or if you can just get the marketing manager to handle it in their spare time – a grave mistake if you ask.

With proper research, planning, and strategizing, social media could turn out to be your most incredible marketing tool. 

The problem is that most business owners don’t understand this. They always underestimate its potential to give it their whole. 

What to Note about Social Media Marketing?

Social media requires you to stay updated. You’re to follow the activities of your competitors and followers. At the same, keep up with the latest trend. You’re to also keep testing and refining your strategies for better results. 

In Singapore, hiring a full-time social media marketer should cost you between $45 000 and $60 000 per year. The social media marketer you hire doesn’t have to come to the office so long as they understand what they’re doing and are fully committed to it. 

Budgeting for Digital Marketing Tools and Software

Tracking and Reporting

The first tool you’ll need to track your website performance and its traffic flow is Google Analytics. Fortunately for you, it’s free.  

The advertising platform will give you a full analysis of everything you need to know about your paid search campaign, including ad price. 

However, if you’re planning to track the user journey as a whole, then perhaps you should consider investing in HubSpot’s professional marketing (which goes for about $9600 per year). This is (by far) the best inbound marketing software you’ll ever come across anywhere and is recommended by industry professionals. 

Social Media Management Tools

You have to also invest in a series of social media management tools. This is especially the case if you’re planning to use multiple social media channels. You need a tool for scheduling your posts, monitoring your online activities, cross-posting on different platforms, and getting detailed data. 

Essentially, you need a social media management tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite. Luckily most of these tools have free versions that can still get the job done. Meaning, you won’t be spending much here, if any. 

Mailing Tools

Marketing is no longer a one-way conversation. You have to engage your prospects and customers and stay in touch with them until they make up their minds and decide to enter into business with you. 

That’s where email marketing comes in. 

Email marketing is the channel you use to send newsletters, important updates, and promotions to your customers, via email, of course. It’s safe and less spammy.  

MailChimp is the most popular email marketing tool around. Besides helping you set up a fully functional email marketing campaign, the tool is designed to provide you with a detailed report of the user activities relating to your email campaign. 

They also have one of the most flexible pricing. For example, if your email campaign only has 10 000 subscribers, then you’ll only be parting away with $75 per month ($900 annually). 

If you find this to be too costly, then consider working with a MailChimp alternative. You have so many options that provide the same experience without going heavy on your pockets. 

Web Creation or Improvement

You need a website or landing page to run a successful digital marketing campaign.

You need to build one.

It’s easier than you imagine unless you lack the time and patience to set up one.

First, you’ll be required to purchase a domain name (which costs about $9 per year – or even more or less, depending on the ending you choose). 

You also want to decide which CMS you’re going to run the website on. We suggest you use WordPress or a paid CMS such as WIX or Squarespace. But for some reason, we still believe WordPress beats any other CMS out there. 

Next, purchase some hosting and some plugins, perhaps. The list of expenses can be endless, depending on the functionalities you wish to add to your website. But good hosting should cost you between $30 and $1000 per year depending on the package you choose and the hosting company. 

There’s no harm in choosing the smallest package since you’re just beginning. 

10Web is one of the highly recommended web hosting companies around. Their hosting plans start at $120 per year.

But there are even cheaper options than that. We are talking of the likes of Namecheap, GoDaddy, and Bluehost. 

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Surefire 10 Tips for Fully Exploiting Your Digital Marketing Budget

As a digital marketer, you need to have clear goals and objectives for each campaign. Even more important is creating an accurate digital marketing budget to help you achieve the goals. Earlier in this article, we discussed the different types of advertising and the associated costs of each.

Now, let us proceed and look at ten tested and proven tips to help you fully exploit your digital marketing budget.

Make Sure the Marketing Goals Match the Business Goals

Shooting in the dark won’t cut it if you want to get ahead of the competition. It would be best if you created marketing goals to act as a blueprint along the way. The goals should be set before you start developing ads. 

If you don’t have goals, it won’t be possible to benchmark the success of your efforts. We recommend starting with one goal that is connected to the main objective of the business. The goal can be as simple as increasing local community awareness to generate sales via search engine marketing.

With the goal set, you can determine which metrics to keep an eye on to know which areas of the campaign should be improved. The metrics will also help you come up with a budget for the current and future campaign.

Choose Digital Marketing Platforms Wisely

There are different digital marketing platforms and each unique ways of connecting with the target customers. However, not all of them are suitable for your business. Trying to use them all will soon prove futile and will plunge your business into financial turmoil. 

Today’s most popular digital marketing platforms include social media, video marketing, cable TV, display ads, and search engine optimization. Each option has its pros and cons that need to be considered before the final decision is made.

The only way to make the right decision is to conduct market research to know which platforms the target audience uses. At first, stick to one or two platforms you are familiar with, such as Twitter or Instagram, before proceeding to the more complex platforms. The information you collect in the initial stages will pave the way for successful digital marketing campaigns for the future.

Target Audience Should Be Specific but Broad

Unlike in the past, when ads would be broadcast to everyone on a particular platform, there are ad settings that you can change to specify which group of customers should be targeted with your ads.

However, be careful not to be too specific. Cutting yourself too thin will reduce the campaign’s effectiveness in generating sales or achieving any other goal, and being too granular with who sees the ads could be why you are not successful so far.

Check the look-alike audiences offered by most of the platforms and use them to widen your reach. These audiences are selected using sophisticated computer technology such as artificial intelligence. They have similar interests as the existing audience, so reaching out to them can lead to sales or exposure.

Keep in mind that having a broad audience will spread your marketing budget too thin. Therefore, you have to strike a balance between being specific but also broad in your strategies. There is no formula for that – experiment and carry out multiple A/B tests to know what works and what doesn’t. 

Localize your Marketing Campaigns

Just because Facebook has billions of active users does not mean that you should try to reach out to all of them. Besides, such a move would cost you thousands of dollars. To get the most out of your marketing budget, we recommend localizing your campaigns.

Create marketing campaigns for only the regions that you operate it to avoid wasting money on ads displayed to people who aren’t interested in your brand. For example, create dedicated service pages for each region that you service.

Understand Your Audience Before Creating Ads

You have probably heard about the importance of carrying out market research. Well, it is true – you cannot achieve much if you don’t take the time to study your audience. Strive to know as much information about them before you start your digital marketing strategy. 

An effective ad campaign should be customized for the audience and the platform you intend to distribute it. More importantly, it should resonate with the goals set at the start of the campaign. Such ads are impactful as they relate to the customers. 

Here are four tips on how to create effective ads to generate leads without breaking the bank. 

1. Provide a strong incentive and CTA
2. Use text sparingly in-image ads
3. Display ads should be utterly simple – no complicated animations and graphics
4. Steer clear of length videos. Short videos are more impactful and should have a hook to grab the target audience’s attention.

Concisely, no matter how refined the ads look, you must test them to know if they are working. Recycling ads in previous campaigns is also not a good idea as customers’ priorities may have changed. New ads that are carefully designed to match the target audience intent deliver the highest ROI.

Ensure the Goals Much your Budget

Often, we see small businesses set goals that don’t match their budget. They end up not scaling up because the funds available are used to achieve goals that require more resources.

This is why we insist on creating a list of measurable goals and milestones. That way, you will be able to project the expected results from the investment. The rule of thumb, the more actions you want a potential customer to take after coming across your ad, the more money you can expect to spend to achieve results. 

For instance, a social media marketing campaign to increase sales by 20% will require more funds than a campaign designed to increase brand awareness by the same amount. Here are some questions to point you in the right direction regarding setting goals that much your budget.

1. What is the size of the target audience?
2. How long will the campaign run?
3. Are you fully conversant with the platform you intend to use?

It would be detrimental to pour thousands of dollars into a platform such as Google Ads if you are unfamiliar with how it works. Consult widely and don’t make decisions hastily. 

Quality Over Quantity

Nothing exhausts a digital marketing budget faster than running a bunch of underperforming campaigns at the same time. Firstly, getting a digital campaign off the ground takes time and effort. Think about the amount of time needed to create and distribute the ads across all the platforms.

Monitoring them all becomes more demanding because of the vast amount of data you will always be working with. With huge chunks of data comes the risk of making decisions based on assumptions instead of logic. 

Keep in mind that the cost increases with every new campaign that you launch. Based on these facts, we recommend creating a few campaigns that are great and laser-focused on the target audience.

Some platforms, such as Google, are keen on helping users get value for money by generating a quality score for each ad. Several factors are considered, such as ad relevance and click-through rate. Ads awarded a high-quality score get better ad positions, and the price is lower than lowly scored ads.

The point is, focus on quality, not quantity, to win over more customers and speed past customers. If you don’t do that, you will end up spending thousands of dollars and getting little or no leads. 

Monitor All Active Campaigns Consistently

It doesn’t matter how well and custom you think a particular campaign was developed; you have to monitor it to be sure that it is bringing in the desired results. For example, if you are running a social media campaign to increase awareness, check the engagement levels achieved after posting photos, videos, and other forms of content.

Benchmarking all the active campaigns will enable you to keep all the moving parts working smoothly and towards the set goals. Otherwise, if you don’t, you will end up allowing an ineffective campaign to drain your budget and possibly even ruin your credibility in the market if the message conveyed is wrong.

More importantly, the campaign should be optimized when it’s still active. Please don’t make the mistake of allowing it to run on autopilot. Some of the daily tasks that you should do include;

• Checking the conversion rate
• Responding to questions and comments on social ads
• Redirecting funds to high performing ads
• Refining the underperforming ads to match their counterparts
• Reaching out to disgruntled customers to resolve issues highlighted in reviews and comments

The tasks depend on the kind of digital marketing campaign that you are running. The report you get will help you take full advantage of every opportunity and dollar you spend.

Analyze Trends and Gather Data

Before we discussed the importance of analyzing trends and gathering data, it is essential to note that just because company X got Y results from a social media campaign, you should try and replicate the same.

That is far from the truth; your business is unique, and so are your customers. Every campaign should be based on market data and not assumptions. You can also not rely on data that was collected in the past. The digital market and online consumer preferences are dynamic; something that worked like clockwork last year may be void this year.

Now that we have that point out of the way, it is essential to evaluate the data you collect to identify trends in the market. Harness the trends to elevate your business to the highest possible level of success. 

For instance, if you notice the target customers are more into visual content, commit yourself to create stellar visuals and distributing them across social media pages. Remember that it takes time and patience to get tangible results. Don’t let the success of the past and the low results you get after running a campaign for several days discourage you from moving forward.

Well, some experts recommend checking the numbers daily, but we beg to differ. Minor daily fluctuations are not an accurate reflection of the campaign’s performance. A monthly review will give you a clear and better perspective of the campaign. 

But, don’t allow any of the campaigns to run for more than one month without testing. You might realize you have been spending money on a poor-performing campaign when the damage to your financial capacity is too much to handle.

Ideally, the longer the campaign runs, the more data you will collect. Use it to your advantage, and don’t be afraid to spice it up by adding elements that you feel will turn the tide more in your favor. Use the identified trends to optimise your campaign for the current market dynamics and the future.

Consult Digital Marketing Experts

They say no man is an island, and it’s true. When it comes to digital marketing, you have to be open-minded and ready to consult industry leaders. Attend conferences and other events related to your niche to network with other like-minded people working as hard and smart as you to grow their brands. 

By exchanging ideas and learning about the new trends in the market, your business will thrive and remain profitable for many years. 

MediaOne Marketing has one of the best digital marketing packages for businesses at all levels. We focus on providing custom services that resonate with all client goals and objectives. Each member of our team has years of experience and is truly passionate about digital marketing and everything that comes with it.

Let us help you realise the full potential of your brand today. Get in touch with us today for the best digital marketing services.

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Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is where you get a little more aggressive with your marketing campaigns. Instead of taking a more passive approach, where you make your customers come to you, you make it your mission to reach them with your marketing messages. 

Of course, you can’t just rely on one type of marketing. You need to combine them both for better results. 

With that out of the way, let’s now break down your media budget.

Social Media 

Social media has one of the most flexible pricing mechanisms. They charge you per click, impressions, or the number of purchases made. 

And even with knowing your target and setting your campaign goals, the pricing will vary depending on several factors. 

Here’s a real-world example of how this works:

Assuming you’re a photographer who works by himself. Your target is to find 300 clients before the end of the year, each bringing in a $200 check.

The first thing you need to do is experiment with your social media marketing campaign to determine its performance. 

Be prepared to do some maths and make the necessary adjustments.

Now, let’s say your average spending per click is $1, and that only 1% of those who click through your ads proceed to contact you. 

Of those who contact you, 10% end up purchasing your product. 

That means you’ll be spending about $10 per purchase $1/0/1 = $10. 

Now multiply that by the total number of clients you’re targeting, and it becomes $3000. 

That’s the social media budget you’ll need – and which can only be arrived at after experimenting with your campaign and doing some quick math. 

We suggest you just allocate 5% of your revenue to social media marketing for a quicker and much-simplified solution. 

And while managing your social media, don’t forget about influencers. Spending $500 on a single post can bring back better returns than running a $1500 campaign.

Display Ads (Adroll, GDN, Etc)

Do you prefer running banner ads on Google Display Network (GDN), Adroll, or any other ad network?

You can experiment with the different options to find out which one works best for you. 

Google offers some valuable tips on how to plan for your display ads. 

If you’re operating a local business, Google’s display offers you a chance to list your ads on local news sites. An alternative would be to contact the sites directly for a price list.

Usually, these publications charge per impression. We recommend you compare it with what Google has to offer to decide what’s best for you. 

You’re reminded that Google Display ads tend to be a little bit more expensive than SM ads. 

Let’s say you’re spending about $5000 on Social media ads; you’ll have to pay Google ads about $6000 to $8000 to achieve the same results. 

Search Ads

The best way to get your site to the first page of search engine results is through SEO. The problem with SEO is that it’s a slow burner. You have to wait for weeks (sometimes months) before results start to show.

So, what do you do?

You opt for their paid alternative, paid searches. 

Paid searches are almost instant, only that you have to outbid the rest of the sites to appear at the top. 

Remember: this works with almost all search engines – not just Google. For example, you have the option of paying for Bing Ads to appear at the top of the Bing search results. 

This is not something you rush into implementing. You have to do a little bit of homework to determine which search engine performs best in your target region and what keywords to rank for. 

Google is the leading search engine and most popular of the bunch. But that might not be the case when you’re in Russia or China. 

You have to identify the search engine to work with. After that, you want to research the keywords you intend to use and experiment with everything, making necessary adjustments and refinements along the way.

How to Cut Down Digital Marketing Costs and Maximize Results

The most important aspect of business management is marketing. Nowadays, over 80% of companies use digital marketing as a way of creating brand awareness. If you don’t advertise your business online, getting clients will be a tall order. 

Even though marketing is an effect on growing a business, sometimes it can be expensive. If your marketing budget is constantly high, consider making minor adjustments to save on expenditure.

 Before we talk about reducing digital marketing costs, we need to understand what digital marketing is, the popular methods of digital marketing in Singapore, and their costs.

How Can You Cut Down Digital Marketing Costs?

Digital marking is essential for any business, especially if you are new in the industry. Even though digital marketing costs may be outrageous, you should not give up because there are ways you can use to reduce them.

Use Marketing Automation Tools

Marketing activities may eat your profits if you decide to delegate them to people instead of using automated marketing systems. These activities may also consume a lot of your time. Automating these daily marketing activities will help you save on time and improve your marketing strategies.

Here are some of the marketing tasks that you can automate.

Social media Chatbots

Chatbots are being widely used all over the world. They are used primarily on Facebook messenger and other social media platforms.

Chatbots may be used for various activities, including gathering corporate information, providing customized assistance, reacting to social media posts, and marketing your content.

One main advantage of these chatbots is that they will continue running after they have been set up. You will not need to put in any effort.

Email Autoresponder

An email autoresponder can assist you in developing a stronger relationship with your clients without requiring additional effort. An autoresponder that is well crafted can be used as part of a pre-sales process. 

Link general Business Tasks

Your marketing should function like a machine. Every component should work together to help you achieve your goals. Consider incorporating automation tools into your workflow if your marketing tools and techniques seem to be scattered. 

IFTTT is one of the most widely utilized tools. You may use it to connect your social media, email marketing, lead management, and content marketing activities. All of these will help you save a significant amount of time. You have the option of choosing from already existing automation or create your own depending on your current workflows.

Recycle and Reuse Content

Marketing professionals are always emphasizing the most incredible way to acquire an audience and keep them interested is to provide new and fresh content. This statement is true, but you don’t have to produce entirely new content all of the time.

Repurposing and recycling existing material are brilliant ways to keep your accounts afloat. This way, you can focus on producing new content for future usage.

It is unlikely that all your brand’s Twitter or Facebook followers have seen every single post you’ve made. Therefore, you can reuse material. You can also consider making slight modifications so that your account doesn’t appear automated.

The following two ways are how you can approach it.

• Update and Promote New Content as If It Were Fresh

Older material can assist in attracting new consumers and traffic. Just because you’ve published a post does not mean you are through with it.

You may discover new facts that can assist you in improving your current post. You may even rewrite portions and enhance the user experience.

• Repurpose Content for New mediums

Content marketing is more than just creating and posting blog after blog. Your viewers may prefer consuming material differently. Consider converting your existing blog content into new mediums. You could, for example, make an e-book out of a series of blog articles. You may also make an infographic out of data-driven posts.

Converting your content into new formats may help you reach new clients. It is also possible to gain new backlinks for your site.

Find Free Marketing Tools 

The digital marketing world has many marketing tools, but you have to pay to use them. Some of these tools are expensive and may increase your expenditure. To cut down on digital marketing costs, you may consider exploring free marketing tools available.

Sometimes you may find that you are paying more than you should for marketing.  First of all, list all the marketing tools you have. Study them to see if any free tools offer the same thing. You may also assign a small group to test and provide a comparative report. 

However, most premium marketing tools have advanced features compared to the free ones. Therefore, conduct proper research to see which one serves you best. If your business does not need the premium tool, go for the free one.

There are many free keyword research and SEO tools and image production, email marketing, social media, and analytics tools.

It may take some time to learn the new tool, but if you can attain the same results while saving a significant amount of your money, it will be time well spent.

Cut marketing Channels that Are No Longer Effective

You are most likely using many marketing channels ranging from social media, email marketing, blogs, and pay-per-click to influencers in your business. Dismiss those that are underperforming or failing to fulfill your short and long-term objectives. 

If you are not sure of what to do, borrow some tips from your competitors. Implement the methods that they use most. Those are most likely the most profitable methods.

Alternatively, based on your long and short-term objectives, start eliminating these channels slowly. Since SEO and content marketing are long-term efforts, you may want to put them on hold or scale them back while you devote more money to paid advertising. Begin to reintroduce them into the bigger plan as leads and revenues increase.

Optimize Your Target Audience

Photo credits: blogs.hubspot.com

When you are looking to get new customers and retain the existing ones, you have to spend a significant amount of resources. If you focus on the wrong target audience, then your resources will be wasted. Even if some customers outside your target audience may buy from you, the resources spent to attract them may not offset the marketing cost. 

Take a closer look at your target audience and study their demography, lifestyle, and shopping habits. You can also check the profiles of your existing market. Therefore, when you are marketing, you will know where to put effort.

Focusing on the right audience will boost your sales hence more profit. 

Outsource your Social Media Marketing

Social media is an excellent method to increase brand awareness, attract new consumers, and keep existing ones. It also helps to inform people about new products and services.

However, for small businesses, gaining followers and finding the right content to post may be challenging and distracting. To save time that would have been spent looking for new posts, reading tweets, and stressing about the content, you will publish next, outsource the task to a company specializing in it.

By doing this, you can dedicate the time you would have spent on social media to do other activities to grow your business.

Focus on Referral Marketing

One of the most effective marketing strategies nowadays is referral marketing. Some companies may not be aware of it yet, but it works. That means that your customers are your greatest ambassadors. Therefore, you should focus on building a good relationship with your customers.

If you treat your customers well, they will spread the word about your business. As a result, you will get more customers. You can also consider giving your customers incentives. You can do so by offering discounts for every customer they bring.

Final Thoughts

Digital marketing is one of the most effective strategies in business marketing nowadays. However, digital marketing costs sometimes may be outrageous. However, this should not discourage you because you can use ways to reduce these costs and advertise your business.

Contact us today for stellar digital marketing services. We will create custom marketing campaigns that suit your budget and brand.