Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been many businesses struggle and some have even had to close. For those that are recovering or actually saw growth, there were still new challenges, moments that required change or "pivoting" to continue forward. But with anything, it's best to stay proactive and visible. Never stop promoting your business. Your competitors aren't and if you do potential customers won't be able to find you. In this post, let's look at the most important things a small business needs to do, in order to make the most of its small marketing budget.

1. Have A Marketing Budget

If you’ve got a small marketing budget you have to be smart about priorities. Allocate a specific amount for a marketing budget. How much you should spend depends on your revenue, market and who you need to reach. To come up with a final amount, it’s best to research your industry. Consider your potential costs for your website, online advertising, traditional media, e-newsletters and videos. As you work through your marketing budget line by line, it will become clearer what you can afford, according to your priorities. Keep track of your costs and review web analytics regularly.

Assess your marketing budget quarterly and annually to see if your projections are aligned with your actual spending. By monitoring your marketing costs and refining your efforts, you will be able to generate more accurate budgets as time goes on.

2. Pick One Social Network and Do It Well

It really depends on your business but you need to pick the social media network that works for your business type and your customers.  Every business needs a social media presence. Social media supports your website, integrates with SEO and ads, expands your reach, and builds a community around your company. It’s a part of your brand story and impacts how you’re perceived. But in order for it to be effective, you need to choose the right social media platform for your business.  Choosing a social media platform for your company has a lot to do with personality. And just like every business needs social media, our companies need personalities, too.

3. Pay For Social Media Advertising

People want connections on social media, and the companies that create authentic connections with their customers will thrive, but it's becoming harder as time goes by. Social media interactions between brands and consumers used to primarily consist of short scripted replies to public comments, but times have changed. Paid social media advertising allows you to feature your brands on platforms with high web traffic and people sharing their interests.

4. Invest in Email Marketing Instead of Direct Mail

Unlike direct mail, you don't receive anything physically. Email is delivered to your digital inbox where you can go to view, forward, and respond to messages personal or promotional. Most businesses do – and should – use email marketing software to manage their subscriber list and send campaigns.

What are the benefits of choosing email marketing over direct mail?

The biggest benefit to email marketing is that the ROI is more than 5x higher than direct mail. ROI is an important consideration for small businesses that may not have the money to spend on large direct mail campaigns but have time to devote to creating email campaigns.

5. Get Creative with Your Visual

Finding ways to integrate promotional content creation into your day-to-day tasks (i.e. the stuff you’re doing anyway) saves you time and money. Get everyone in your business involved in generating visual promotional content. Each visual should be relevant to your content to convey an important point, be clearly understandable, and be visible by your entire audience. Visuals should be used to make concepts easier to understand and to reinforce your message. They should illustrate important points that are otherwise hard to understand.

Some examples are:

• Images

• Videos

• Infographics

• Memes

• Presentations

• Screenshots

Conclusion

There are many variables at play when it comes to setting and optimizing your marketing budget, and these variables can change quickly and without warning.  It's best to continually test and refine things as even the smallest tweaks in a campaign can yield wildly different results. However, using these strategies should help to ensure your budget stretches further and is being used on the platforms that get results.