4 Tips to Save Time and Money on your Marketing
Time management rules my life, sometimes not in a good way. Too much planning can take away from much needed time to live in and enjoy the moment.
That being said, when it comes to time efficiency at work- I'm all about it! We all know- time is money.
Now that I'm in a position where I have to juggle the overall strategic development of our marketing and the day-to-day implementation of tasks, time efficiency is ESSENTIAL.
There are lots of little ways to save time and money on your marketing by streamlining tasks and/or working on the go.
However, today I want to share with you four of the most important ways in which you can save time and money on your marketing.
#1 Manage your daily tasks and meetings.
Marketing encompasses so much these days. At larger companies there are several people that do just one part of marketing, i.e. social media, graphic design, blogging, email marketing, etc, etc.
At smaller companies, that is typically not the case. While I'm not a fan of the phrase, employees at smaller companies tend to "wear many hats," it's true, every employee typically has tasks outside of the standard job description. Honestly, sometimes I think it makes us better marketers for it. When all the parts of marketing are interconnected it can make for more consistent messaging.
That being said, there are going to be tasks that can be delegated. There are plenty of third party sources, apps, etc. that can help you do your job more efficiently.
Meetings can be delegated as well. For example, when working on a new website, there are TONS of parts to that project. Marketing is a massive part of that project, yes, however, as a marketer and probably not the head designer of the site, you don't necessarily need to be in on every meeting of that project.
Learn what you can and can't do, what you should and shouldn't be a part of and plan your day accordingly.
#2 Know your brand.
I can't stress this enough. You need to know your brand inside and out- what your tone is, what colors you use, why your company is named what it is. Everything you put out that represents your brand should be well thought through and have a purpose that is directly inline with your brand identity.
A company that nailed it on the head? Dollar Shave Club, a new type of razor subscription company that will send razor blades to your door for $1 a month.
They created a viral video that embodies what their brand was going to be to help launch their company.
Dollar shave club certainly shaved time (see what I did there ;) ) by knowing who they were going to be and how they were going to talk to their target market.
After their video went viral their marketing efforts similarly followed suit and embodied this same comedic tone and honest attitude.
#3 Know your target audience.
Just as important as knowing who you are as a company, it's equally, if not more so important to know who it is your product is for. Creating buyer personas, or fictions stories of who your ideal customer is, is an incredibly helpful way to save time and money on your marketing.
Everything you create in marketing should be for these people, ideally to entertain, inspire or help them.
One of the best tips I ever got was that when it comes to marketing remember, people do not want to be communicated with in the way you want to communicate with them. They want to communicate the way they like to communicate.
#4. Always be looking at the bigger picture.
I want amazing graphics, tweets that get retweeted and favorited every time, incredibly high click-trhough-rates for my email opens and Facebook ads. I want thousands of blog views a day, hundreds of pre-orders, viral videos. I want all of that. Every day.
That's not the reality of marketing. It's a lot of choosing which parts to do and constant analysis of how each channel and campaign is performing in reference to how your target audience is interacting with it.
It reminds me a lot of back when I was a bartender. When someone sits down at the bar, you don't know what they like to eat or drink or what they want to talk about, if they want to talk at all! It's a matter of feeling the person out. Knowing what they like and giving them exactly that. That's a feeling, it's a connection. That connection is what the bigger focus of your marketing should be. It's not one little thing that gets you that magic connection, it's a hundred little things and it's going to be a while before you get all of them right, and you know what? It's still not going to be right every time because no two people are the same.
Trust me, I know that these four things are hard to do every day and hard to remember when you're in the thick of any given project. But I guarantee that as you practice them, not only will you start to save time and money on your marketing, but you'll also find you are communicating your product or service more effectively and ultimately making deeper connections with your target audience.
