How to Maximize Digital Marketing Impact on a Tight Budget

A few thoughts on emphasizing immediate impact, while keeping an eye on long-term success.

Times are tough and financial hardship is seen throughout the globe. Pandemic, war, inflation, and supply issues are hitting every industry, even companies that rely primarily on online revenue.

A recent Sapio Research survey of 500 decision-makers showed that 95% of businesses fear a recession. What’s the first thing a company cuts in an economic downturn? Usually marketing, right? Fortunately, the study shows that 32% are thinking of increasing marketing/sales activities, but for our purposes, we will address businesses that are feeling more bearish.

The question I want to address today is how you can optimize your marketing to be effective during the downturn, even as your budget may be shrinking or at least staying right where it is.

We established Webprofits back in 2006, so we were in our second year when the global financial crisis happened – and as it happens, it was a boom for us because everybody pushed all their marketing into digital because it was more cost-efficient, and it was trackable. So global financial problems are not going to hit everyone equally, depending on where you make your profits and how well you can pivot.

But if you’re struggling to maximize marketing potential while keeping a slim budget consider the following steps…

Look at the ROI of every part of marketing

The first step is to take inventory of where the spending is and what is producing an ROI for you. A lot of advertising works, but not many people know the exact advertising that’s working.

That’s where digital is helpful because it is trackable.

Keep in mind that not everything is trackable

There's a lot more competition through digital, and so it's more expensive these days. It's a lot more competitive, it's harder to stand out. And now there's a challenge around cross-channel attribution.

For example, if a person has seen an ad on Facebook or LinkedIn and then has searched for you on Google, tracking that is quite hard. So think about how your different ‘untrackable’ marketing activities are contributing to what you can actually track.

Test your assumptions

Once companies identify the channels they think are giving an optimal performance, they can begin testing by turning channels on and off. Many senior marketing leaders are not in the trenches, so they're going to be dependent on the advice that they get.

One way to test your assumptions is by pausing efforts that are giving questionable returns. It’s an easy way to start optimizing your marketing spend and if you have made a bad assumption, you can always turn that channel back on.

Defend your budget

You're probably not going to get the budget increased, but the budget should not go to zero.

You need to fight to have a budget that actually can have some kind of impact.

If you think of marketing as an upside-down triangle – with brand awareness at the top and conversion at the point – you’ll want to start testing cutting the budget at the top of the funnel first.

Focus on quick wins

Try to turn the advertising spend into revenue as quickly as possible. Start with efforts that convert to leads or sales.

That does require a lot of execution support across creative assets, but you’re more likely to get demonstrable returns from a good direct response ad than from educational videos.

Don’t let immediate pain take you away from your long-term focus

Often, the money you spend today impacts sales performance in three to six months, especially in the B2B space. So the challenge is not continuing the things that aren't working, the challenge is stopping the things that are because of this short-term, immediate pain.

This is exactly what happened in the pandemic – everyone just cut everything straight away. Should they have done that? Probably not.

Because when the cost of advertising came down, there was an opportunity to get in front of people with a different kind of message at a far lower cost than before.

A content-led campaign of continued education and awareness makes it easier to convert customers with whom you have built a strong relationship. That kind of approach leads to more stable growth.

The Content Marketing Institute report in Q4 2021 showed that 43% of marketers said their 2021 budgets were higher, and two-thirds of this group (66%) expect increases in the 2022 budget.

So, education and a brand building may not be your top priority for a while, but they should be on your mind as a long-term goal.

Summary

These are the times that separate the wheat from the chaff. When things are going well, everyone's a great marketer. During a bad economy, that’s when you know who the people are that can actually adapt their strategies and their approaches to what works now.

If you can’t adapt, you need a different line of work. But if you're the kind of person who has to win, who understands consumer psychology, and is familiar with all the levers that you have in place, then you can have an impact.

And that’s the kind of psychology you need to be able to put up the right kind of arguments to senior leadership or to the board to push for a budget because it's about creating certainty. Certainty in an uncertain time is hard to find.

And that's what is going to make or break the success of a company's marketing.