Unlimited budget. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But most of us are not that fortunate. We need to allocate dollars within our budget to hopefully maximize our return. Particularly in marketing. Historically, this has area been seen as a cost center, not one contributing to profits but this could change in 2017. With properly allocated marketing dollars you can see plenty of return. Here are the things to focus on:

 

Where to Focus Your Marketing Dollars in 2017

Data Collection and Analysis

If you have customers, and if they are doing something like making selections, you need to track and analyze their actions. You need to know the length of your sales cycle and what actions loyal customers have in common. For prospects you need to understand the steps they take when buying so that you can tell the difference between a hot prospect and one who’s just not that into you sooner without spending a lot of sales time on them.

You also need data so that you can begin to customize your marketing offerings and stop wasting marketing dollars on things that aren’t effective for your target audience.

Video

I’m not suggesting you go out and hire a production company and drop several thousand on video but I am suggesting you obtain the bare minimum of tools it takes to record good video for  use in your marketing. With Facebook Live and other live broadcasting platforms, production quality standards are not as high as you might have thought. You need a phone, web cam, or video camera; a place to shoot; a decent mic; and some editing software like Camtasia. Here’s a good resource for how to do video on YouTube.

Another reason you should be doing video is because with Facebook Live, you extend your reach. Facebook incentivizes people to use it by giving them a larger audience than what they get if just posting to their page. Plus YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world outside of Google.

Social Media Advertising

Facebook and other platforms have become really adept at helping you target your ideal audience. Promoted posts are very inexpensive to do and you can increase your reach exponentially.

Promotional Marketing Products

You know we’d say this one, right? But there’s a very important reason we are besides the fact that we sell them. The interwebs are getting crowded. Content production has increased because Google says it’s important. This is making it very difficult to stand out. Offline marketing is being forgotten by a lot of groups but it still makes a big impression. A little added promotional gift in every one of your online orders can make a new customer a loyal one. A special gift for an employee who went the extra mile for a customer, makes them feel valued by your business.

We may be living in an electronic world but it’s still the people who make the difference.