Your marketing budget was cut, now what…
The coming year is likely to be challenging for most marketers as we are asked once again to do more with less. While a smaller budget typically means fewer marketing programs, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have do scale back expectations. Crafty marketers are always looking for innovative ways to get the same results out of a smaller budget.
This means relentlessly evaluating legacy programs and testing new cost-effective approaches. Here are seven low cost/no cost marketing ideas to try in 2009:
- Review your organic search strategy and make adjustment to your keywords.
- Create a link building plan.
- Dust off that blogging plan your wrote three years ago. Contrary to the pundits, blogging is alive and well.
- Start a customer referral program. If you already have one, talk with a few of your top customers to understand what you can do to make it more attractive.
- Open a Twitter account for your company. I know this is trendy but it is where the action is today.
- Brainstorm a word of mouth campaign to generate new leads.
- Review and refresh all offers on your website for free content, webinars or trials. Now is the time to make them irresistible.
I know there are probably many more things you can do. The point is that it doesn’t always have to be the standard paradigm of run a program, generate a lead and close the lead. Inbound marketing is all where all the action is today and this requires more innnovation and testing.
So what new things are you testing in 2009?
