4 Ways to Make the Most of Your Marketing Budget

Marketing budgets are rarely bottomless, making it all the more imperative to use every client dollar as if it was our own.  In order to help maximize your marketing budget, we spoke to some of our team members to find out the ways they save clients money on a day-to-day basis. 

Let’s dive in! 

1. Stretch Your Marketing Budget through Bundling

Many businesses, businesses you may already be working with, can solve more than one problem. Before committing your marketing budget, take a look at your vendor or partner list and decide if multiple aspects of the same marketing campaign can be bundled together for a discount.

Before spending a single penny, my first task is to create a list of all aspects of the project that will require a financial commitment. Next, I analyze that list to understand if I can bundle some of those elements together with the help of a single vendor or partner. Not only does this create fewer touchpoints for us to manage later on in the process, but it also gives us some leverage in negotiating costs, timelines, and other variables during the project management phase. – Effie Gavrielidis, Account Director 

This method combines organization and a little haggling to stretch your marketing budget as far as it’ll go. 

2. Focus Your Marketing Campaign

The shotgun method of marketing may catch the most people, but it’s also expensive and inefficient. One of the best ways to save your marketing budget is to use surgical precision in finding and targeting your ideal customer.

It’s all about focus, impact and depth. Choose a priority target audience and even a priority region to maximize the impact your marketing dollars will have. The result is more measurable and can be used as a future blueprint that can be rolled out in a larger campaign. – Regina  Fiedel, Strategist

Social media ads are a great and easy way to do this. You can customize ads on Facebook and Instagram, for instance, that can be tuned to any age, gender, region, and hobby. Better still, these kinds of ads are easy to track and have built-in analytics to help you measure efficacy.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Pivot Based on Data

As the saying goes, “no good plan survives first contact with the enemy.” A great marketing campaign may need a revamp based on nothing but bad luck, bad timing, or an unexpected consumer mindset shift.

If the wind is blowing north, don’t be afraid to steer north.  

For Bush’s Beans, we used survey data that was captured on-site to help us adjust our plan of action. After we found out that our NASCAR tailgate activations were reaching more current customers than prospective ones, we shared this information with the client and recommended shifting some of our focus towards NFL and college football activations. While we didn’t walk away from the NASCAR sponsorship entirely, this pivot towards NFL and NCAA activations helped us reach a different audience and, ultimately, increase the client’s return-on-investment. – Kim Lawton, Chief Operations Officer 

When your data is talking, listen. You never know what opportunities you may be missing by not being willing to pivot to a new strategy.

4. A Smart, Wholistic Strategy is the Key

Of course, the best strategy is to use all of these tips in concert, combining negotiation, bundling, targeted marketing, and data to create the marketing campaign in the first place. Before a dollar is spent, you should know your audience. Their pain points, the way they shop, the social media they use, everything.

We always start with data to learn and understand first. Who we are targeting, what trends look like, and what behaviors our clients and brands are trying to influence. From there my team and I try and keep it simple by finding the least convoluted solutions to achieve that. – Joe McConville, Director (Client Engagement)

A comprehensive marketing strategy, made early in the process, will save you cash more than any other method. 

Get Help With Your Marketing Budget

Looking for more ways to make your marketing budget count? Contact Inspira Marketing for a consultation today, and to learn how cost-effective experiential marketing can be.

Experiential marketing earns praise by creating exciting, one-on-one connections with consumers through live experiences. As a result, brand marketers now consider experiential to be a key part of their marketing mix.

Updated June 2022