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Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas
Advertising spending in the United States is expected to top $189 million by the end of 2015. Even if your company has a big piece of that advertising pie, you want to make sure you spend those dollars wisely. Here are some tips for getting smart about your advertising budget.
Go Mobile
Between now and 2018, mobile advertising is predicted to increase by 17 percent each year. The reason is tied into the fact that more and more people are purchasing smartphones and using mobile devices to access the Internet. It only makes sense that a good portion of your online advertising budget should center on mobile advertising options. This can include ads that appear on your mobile website or purchasing ads via popular apps.
Know Your Audience
Before you spend money on advertising, make sure you know who your target audience is. If you are trying to market to stay-at-home moms, then spending money on Instagram marketing, where the majority of users are young 20-somethings, isn’t the smartest place to spend your advertising dollars.
Develop User Personas
When creating a sales funnel on your website, make sure you consider user personas. This is simply creating a mock person who might shop on your website and then customizing the experience to match that type of person. Everything, from the moment the person arrives on your site until he leaves, should be aimed at his personality and driving him through the sales funnel so he converts from a visitor to a lead to a customer.
Study Analytics
Your website analytics are one of the most important tools you have as a business. Analytics can tell you where your traffic is arriving from, at what point people are leaving your site and can pinpoint on what page you might be failing to turn users into customers. Once you have a clear picture of these elements, you can easily create some different pages and do split testing (A/B testing) to discover how you can improve your sales funnel.
Use Tools to Better Leverage Leads
Another thing you can do that is just smart business sense is to have the tools in place to take advantage of sales leads when they arrive. For example, do you have the plugins on your blog to turn your visitors into conversions? How do you reach out to a lead after that initial contact? What do you have in place for lead scoring?
Negotiate Rates
Whether you are advertising in print, on the radio or online, you should always see if you can negotiate a better rate and make your advertising dollars stretch further than they otherwise might have. For example, if you plan to try a new advertising medium for a number of months, ask if you can get a discount for advertising for that number of months. Any amount you can save can be helpful, especially if you are on a small advertising budget.
Limit Your Focus
It is easy to try to be in all places at once and reach the most people you can. However, from a sales perspective, it is better to reach a lead who is truly interested in what you have to offer than 10 leads who may be lukewarm about your service or products. If you figure out who your target audience is, then you’ll have a much better idea of where to spend your advertising dollars.
If you want to get ahead of the competition and make your advertising dollars count, then you simply must get smart about how you spend your money. Take a cold hard look at where you’re spending your money and put it to the best use you can.
