Need to save money in marketing? With these measures you do not save in all the wrong places!

The situation is serious. In many places, companies are being forced to adopt extensive cost-cutting measures due to the tense situation. Also affected: Marketing. But before you take out the scissors, pause for a moment: Do you really want to cut back on your customer communication? Besides sales, it is the only interface to the outside world. If you drastically or even completely stamp out marketing, you may be blocking the return to normal. 

Saving is unavoidable? Then act with consideration and moderation. We will show you why it is important to uncover your own savings potential and how to tighten your marketing budget with minimum loss, not only in times of uncertainty. In the spirit of Henry Ford, we show you the best ways to limit your marketing in the short and medium term. 

Half the money I spend on advertising is waste, and the problem is I do not know which half.

Henry Ford

Additional savings potential slumbers in every company. Because in daily operations, inefficiencies or activities that are actually outdated keep creeping in over time. Eliminating them can save up to 20% of the marketing budget in one fell swoop – without any painful losses. Identifying and eliminating these is therefore a real liberating blow for many!

 

Saving with measure and purpose

However, you should avoid a hedge trimmer course: please do not cut every budget by the same percentage! Otherwise you run the risk of not achieving any of the goals you originally set yourself. It makes more sense to fundamentally re-evaluate and re-weight all goals.

To decide on successful savings measures, you first define a concrete savings target. How large can the marketing budget still be this year? Since marketing is always an investment in customer relations, you should not cut it completely. Only when you have agreed on a concrete figure do you start the actual process:

Get together as a team in a brainstorming session and gather ideas on how to achieve the savings goal. Renounce thinking bans! In addition, you should analyse the current status quo – this will help you find further practicable options.

Only when you have dealt with all these points does the real challenge follow: Decide on concrete savings measures and cuts without harming your brand. Surely you will find the one or other decision difficult. In a team it is easier to weigh up where priorities lie.

Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.

Henry Ford

Retain measures that have proven to be effective. How do you recognize them? What currently works very well remains. Data Analytics pays off here in full. So take a good look at your dashboards and decide based on the data. Fortunately, today’s applications make this process easier with clarity and a lot of help.

 

Continue core activities in marketing

You can also evaluate future marketing activities according to your expenditure: Often costs can be significantly reduced by reusing or preparing existing content. If in doubt, you can also do without text or design variants for specific target groups. Or coordinate your campaigns – like a waterfall, you can add a new component to previous marketing activities.

You may just as well consider cancelling all measures for the time being that do not pay off for your core audience. Focus and reduce your marketing efforts. Nevertheless, it can be useful to consolidate various regular purchases. If you have already simplified texts, you will benefit double here.

Online beats offline

Avoid wastage wherever possible. This often means doing less print marketing and concentrating on the online area. Precise audience targeting allows you to reach exactly relevant users on the net. Retargeting is also an excellent option for further qualifying people who are already interested and convincing them of your products.

The more precise your audience definition is, the better results you will achieve. Advanced online marketers, for example, should continue to rely on account based marketing.

The following applies to all savings measures: Always keep cost efficiency in mind! No matter whether you focus on costs per new customer or demonstrably achieved turnover. If the budget is tight, a look at the figures helps to put measures into the right perspective. By the way, this does not only apply to marketing in confusing times, but actually always.

Get well through the next weeks and months!