When you set your digital marketing budget at the beginning of the year, chances are you aren’t thinking you’ll have any leftover. But what if you do? Spending your marketing budget can be challenging and even frustrating to begin with, and trying to find valuable ways to spend any extra funds can be daunting. However, there are a few ways to spend your leftover digital marketing budget that companies can implement so the money doesn’t go to waste.
Boost your branding efforts
A strong brand is more than just a name and a logo. It’s the reason why people choose your products or services over those of your competitors.
Here are three ways to boost your branding efforts with your leftover marketing budget:
- Know who you are as a company-figure out what makes you unique and focus on that in your marketing efforts. If you’re an e-commerce store that sells restaurant equipment online, make sure all of your content is geared toward that audience. Your website should be easy to navigate and informative so people can quickly find what they’re looking for.
- Focus on adding value- one way to improve customer loyalty is by providing value to your customers through email marketing campaigns. For example, if you own an online retail store, you can send shoppers an email with a discount code to use during checkout. This discount could be inspired by the products they’ve previously purchased or ones similar to those items. This not only provides value, but it also showcases additional products they might be interested in purchasing.
- Establish yourself as an industry thought leader-one of the easiest ways to create brand awareness is by establishing yourself as an expert in your field. It’s important to share information through articles, social media posts and blog posts about what’s happening in your industry. Don’t be afraid to take a stance and share your opinion and thoughts as it will cause you to stand out in a crowded market.
Invest in your team.
Giving back to your employees through training or development opportunities boosts morale and helps them further their careers while contributing positively to the business’s success.
Alternatively, you can allow your employees to tell you what they are interested in learning more about, and you can provide the resources (money and time) for them to do it!
Examples of great employee training and professional development could include the following:
Purchase new marketing tools to automate your processes.
Work smarter, not harder! If you’re spending all of your time on manual tasks like emailing leads, posting to social media, and updating your CRM, then you’re probably not doing what you need to be doing — growing your business.
Luckily, we live in an age where technology can make some of these tasks easier. This can include anything from marketing automation tools to CRM integrations to help desk software. The key is finding the right tools for the job and learning how to use them efficiently (or having your team do it).
High-performing companies rely on marketing automation software to save time with their processes – and you can, too.
Revamp your company website.
A new design is a great way to give your company a fresh start. You may want to do it solely for aesthetic reasons, but there are also some good business reasons for revamping your site.
A redesign can also help you better position yourself as an industry leader. If you’ve made advancements in your field or changed the way you do business since your last site update, highlight these new developments so potential clients know that they’re working with a cutting-edge company.
Try ad retargeting to power up your performance.
You may not be aware of it, but you’re probably being retargeted every day. Have you ever clicked on an ad and then started seeing that product everywhere you go online? That’s retargeting, and it can make a huge difference to your marketing ROI.
What is ad retargeting?
Ad retargeting is a process that serves ads to people who have already visited (and, usually, engaged with) your website. It’s one of the most effective ways to target ads online because it only targets people who are already familiar with what you offer. These visitors know about your brand and have expressed some level of interest in what you’re selling. You’ve caught their attention once — now you need to get them back through the door. That’s where retargeting comes in.
Spend money on evergreen content for your company.
“Evergreen” content is any content that stays relevant and doesn’t become outdated — like a how-to guide, tips for using your products, or an in-depth review of the industry.
This content is worth investing in because you can use it over a long period of time. Once it’s created, it can be shared and repurposed in many different ways. You can share it on social media, cross-promote it with similar pieces of content, and even use it in ads if the content is engaging enough.
Invest in customer retention initiatives.
Customer retention is all about holding onto the customers you already have. The goal is to maximize your existing customer base and to increase their lifetime value.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost of attracting new customers through advertising, marketing, etc, whereas Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total gross profit that a company makes from any given customer.
A by Bain & Company showed that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
Get an SEO audit.
Get an SEO audit. If you haven’t had an SEO audit done this year, now is the time. If your website hasn’t been audited in 2 years, it needs one immediately. Get a fresh set of eyes on your site to find out how well it’s optimized for organic search.
A good SEO audit will tell you:
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How well your site is indexed and crawled by search engines
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How well your site is structured from an SEO perspective
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Which pages/content need optimization (title tags, meta descriptions etc.)
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How many technical issues need correcting to help improve search visibility (duplicate content, broken links, internal linking structure)
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How well optimized the site is for local search (Google My Business listing accuracy, reviews, proper schema markup for address and contact info)
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How well optimized the site is for mobile search (mobile responsive design or mobile friendly)
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How much traffic you are generating
Prepare for your next year.
If you’re in charge of the digital marketing budget, here are two suggestions that can help you prepare next year’s digital marketing budget so you can spend effectively.
- Make sure business goals align with digital marketing strategy.
You should know your business goals before you plan anything else, but if it’s been a while since you reviewed them, now’s a perfect time!
If you don’t have any written goals yet, then start working on them. You’ll need to get buy-in from other managers and stakeholders, so aim to get your draft done by mid-January and send it out for feedback.
Once you have your business goals set, or even if you review and tweak the ones you already have, make sure your digital marketing strategy is aligned with those goals.
- Develop a content marketing plan.
The end of the year is also a great time to review your content marketing efforts over the last 12 months or so. What worked? What didn’t? What was your most popular content? Where did it come from? If you haven’t yet developed a content plan for next year, now’s the time to do some research.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing manager for a large corporation, you may still have some leftover budget to spend on digital marketing. In this post, we’ve outlined 9 of the most effective ways to spend that money. By tailoring your strategy to your brand and business goals, you can ensure that any extra money is spent in an impactful way that will add value to your business. So let’s take action and make the most of your remaining marketing budget. There are many places you can spend your unused digital marketing budget – is one! 
The post 9 Savvy Ways To Spend Your Leftover Digital Marketing Budget appeared first on Atlanta Marketing Firm, Web Design | Creative Juice Creative Agency.
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