You can manage one social account per platform — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ — for free forever. If you want to manage more accounts, the Awesome Plan is just $10/month. With Awesome, you can manage your brand’s accounts plus keep your personal queues full, too.
Even with just a $500 monthly budget, you can test and optimize, finding ads that convert. From there, as your revenue increases from your AdWords effort, increase your budget to scale your budget. Google Ads and SMBs: How to drive results on a low budget A low ad budget doesn't have to mean minimal results. SMBs with spend under $5,000 can use these tips to improve their conversions. Support these efforts with your $500 ad budget. And realize that even if their “launch” doesn’t go spectacularly you’ll still have an audience so keep on posting and emailing. Also, if you do affiliate marketing you need to create good support materials for your affiliates.
“Money does matter a lot.”
Advertising Budget is the amount of money which can be or has to be spent on advertising of the product to promote it, reach the target consumers and make the sales chart go on the upper side and give reasonable profits to the company.
Before finalizing the advertising budget of an organization or a company, one has to take a look on the favorable and unfavorable market conditions which will have an impact on the advertising budget. The market conditions to watch out for are as follows:
- Frequency of the advertisement
- Competition and Clutter
- Market Share of the Product
- Product Life Cycle Stage
Frequency of the Advertisement
This means the number of times advertise has been shown with the description of the product or service, in the granted time slots. So here, if any company needs more advertising frequency for its product, then the company will have to increase its advertising budget.
Competition and Clutter
The companies may have many competitors for its product. And also there are plenty of advertisements shown which is called clutter. The company has to then increase their advertising budget.
Market Share
To get a good market share in comparison to their competitors, the company should have a better product in terms of quality, uniqueness, demand and catchy advertisements with resultant response of the customers. All this is possible if the advertisement budget is high.
Product Life Cycle Stage
If the company is a newcomer or if the product is on its introduction stage, then the company has to keep the budget high to make place in the market with the existing players and to have frequent advertisements. As the time goes on and product becomes older, the advertising budget can come down as then the product doesn’t need frequent advertising.
When the market conditions are studied thoroughly, then the company has to set up its advertising budget accordingly. For setting advertising budget, there are four methods:
They are as follows.
- Percentage Of Sales: In this method, the budget is decided on the basis of the sales of the product from previous year records or from the predicted future sales. This is a pure prediction based method and best applicable to the companies which have fixed annual sales. But if in case there is a requirement for more promotional activities then this method has a disadvantage because there will be decrease in advertisements as the budget is fixed.
- Affordability: this method is generally used by the small companies. Only the companies which have funds and can afford advertising opt for this method. The companies can go for advertising at any time in whole year whenever they have money to spend. The amount spent also varies from time to time as per the advertisements takes place.
- Best guess: This method is basically for newcomers who have just entered the market and they have no knowledge or say they are not aware of how the market is and how much to spend on advertising. Thus, this method is applied by the higher level executives of the company as they are the only experienced people.
Thus, doing the homework and then moving forward, i.e. searching for best market conditions and setting the best advertising budget will have a great impact on improvement and development of the company.
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What You Can Do With A $500 Online Advertising Budgets
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Just because you’re working with a small marketing budget doesn’t mean you can’t get a lot of bang for your buck. A budget of $500 may seem light, but there are plenty of affordable marketing strategies that can help you acquire the leads and customers you need to start building a respectable revenue stream.
Here is a list of various marketing strategies you can implement with only $500.
Postcard Marketing
Because many businesses have shifted their budget to digital marketing, the number of junk mail a household receives has decreased over the years. This means that there will be significantly less competition with a direct mail campaign. Direct Mail postcards produce a 5.1% average response rate.
One of the most cost-effective ways to go about your direct mail campaign is to use custom postcards. Postcards are useful for several reasons.
- Receivers don’t need to open them (half the battle) to see your offer.
- Postage and printing costs are both low and affordable.
- Well-designed postcards stand out in comparison to regular mail.
Partner Up with Other Businesses
What You Can Do With A $500 Online Advertising Budgeting
One of the best ways to acquire new customers is to form a partnership with a business that’s related to yours but not in direct competition with you. This can be anything from cross promotions, referral systems to marketing each other’s products/services.
To make partnerships work, you have to make the deal a win-win relationship. That’s why you want to approach businesses that are at the same level as you. You also need to ensure that both parties deliver a similar amount of value to each other, or the partnership won’t last long. Take the necessary measures to ensure you deliver on your end and also have a way to make your partners accountable for their part.
Win the Inbox
Email marketing is one of the most affordable marketing strategies you can utilize. Subscribe to an email marketing platform like Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, or SendGrid. They cost around $10 to $20 a month for the standard plans and pricing only scales up as your email list size grows.
Success with email marketing comes down to creating strong campaigns and using your analytics for optimization. According to the DMA, every $1 spent on email marketing can return an average of $38 when the campaign appropriately executed.
Loyalty Programs
While most businesses offer up-sells, cross-sells, and use follow up marketing campaigns to sell more products, very few have a loyalty program in place. A loyalty program is one of the best ways to keep customers coming back again and again.
The incentive will help persuade clients to continue choosing your products and services over those of your competitors. The trick to a winning loyalty program is to make sure you engage your customers and provide valuable rewards. Make sure the rewards are irresistible, and your customers can efficiently manage their rewards points.
Referral Program
An effective way to generate new customers with a small marketing budget is to create a referral program. The program is designed to reward your current customers for bringing their friends and family to your business. You can reward clients by providing them with exclusive discounts, offering them free products/services, or just paying them a flat commission for the referral.
While you can set up something like an affiliate program, it’s often better if you can keep things simple. For example, companies like T-Mobile pay their customers a $50 prepaid credit card when they refer somebody, and that person opens a new account with the company.
Sam’s club is another example. They encourage members to refer their friends. For each referral that joins, a $10 gift card is mailed to the existing club member, and a $20 gift card is sent to the referral. Be sure to offer rewards to both the referred client and your current client.
Content Marketing
Content marketing has become one of the most effective digital marketing strategies over the last few years. The reason why is because it synergizes well with other approaches like blogging, SEO, brand marketing, and social media marketing. It is an inbound marketing strategy that helps you generate leads while establishing authority and credibility through your content.
The Importance of E-A-T
Does your content meet the E-A-T requirements? E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthy. Content is essential and Google is continuously crawling websites to make sure users are getting an excellent online experience and if the content meets their standards. Put your users and readers first!
This strategy is very cost-effective because you can create your original content, repurpose existing content, or curate content from existing publishers. It’s estimated that content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing.
The challenge comes down to figuring out what kind of content you should create for your target audience and how to make sure that it gets into their hands.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is often a go-to for businesses working with small budgets. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn all have tools that can help you acquire leads and customers.
For example, Facebook has a local review system, check-in feature, and various call to action functions that allow your visitors to do everything from schedule appointments, buy products, contact you, or subscribe to your email list.
You can make social media work for your business with a grassroots approach. It’s all about being creative with your social media content and learning how to build a following. Managing multiple social media accounts and being consistent with your posts is a must, but can be challenging.
Fortunately, tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer can help you manage, schedule, and automate your social media posts across multiple platforms.
Use Printed Marketing Material
You may think that using printed marketing material is outdated, but it can still generate great results for your business. There are numerous instances of a customer walking into a restaurant after being handed a flyer or other print material that contains their menu, photos of their food, and special deals.
You want to start by getting straight to the point and providing a unique sales proposition. Why should customers stop what they’re doing and visit your business or website? Follow up by explaining the features and benefits of you’re offering. Provide clear instructions along with a strong call to action.
It’s helpful to include redeemable discount coupons on the bottom or back of your flyer. Even if the person doesn’t take action right away, they might save the flyer for future redemption.
Don’t assume a small budget will limit your ability to market and grow your business. It’s all about using the right marketing channels, strategies, and being creative about your approach.
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