Marketing on a budget: How do you prioritize marketing and sales efforts but keep cost low? 📣

[tranguyen]

Happy Wednesday🌟

When face with challenging market conditions, it'll be important to manage spend and keep your costs in check while still making sure it doesn't affect sales. For this reason, we are hoping to learn

How do you prioritize marketing and sales efforts but keep cost low?

Looking forward to reading and learning from your replies 🧠 

[DLRosenberg]

This is a great question. 

We rely heavily on social media to stay in touch with and attract new customers. We find Instagram Reels to be great at showcasing new products that come in.

Sometimes we will boost a post - but we do this ahead of big sales so we know that the ROI will be higher than a boost during regular non-sale times.

[Hotmarketmedia]

Nice strategy!

[phillipsrw]

Direct marketing to our customer has never been more important whether that be through loyalty, marketing emails or in store promotions and discount vouchers. Square offers all of these functions making things easier and cost effective to achieve. In we use in store discount vouchers for use with first online orders enabling  customers who have visited our shop to benefit and explore further our products with discount incentive. Loyalty and email newsletter sign up at online checkout POS is key to enable customers to further engage with our brand going forward. This is why is so SO important to have a clear loyalty and newsletter signup process both online and in store giving a nice joined up marketing process to enable us to market directly once they leave the store. Without this we are seeing additional sales opportunities lost once the customer walks out the store. 😓

[DLRosenberg]

I can't believe I didn't speak about email and text marketing through square! It is easy. It is cost efficient. The Reporting really helps you understand ROI easily. We use email and text marketing weekly. Our customers appreciate updates re: new products and events, and it takes minutes to reach our lists.

ProTip: there are some great canva templates available for purchase on etsy- it really up levels your look!

[Hotmarketmedia]

Great idea with canva! There are so many resources out there to help small businesses save effort to put toward the main focus of running the business. Have you found your customers receptive to text marketing more or less than email?

[CK9]

Hi Dina!

I am very interested in pursuing text marketing, but am unsure how to get started and worry about bombarding customers with it. However, I have collected so many numbers through Square, I feel like this is an avenue I must use. What would you recommend a person do to get started and what have you found to be a good rate for text marketing efforts--weekly, every other week, monthly, etc.?

[freshfancynails]

I have been utilizing our companies email feature to send notification of new launches, specials and a monthly newsletter. However it does not have the features of seeing bounce information, click rates or read.

[Hotmarketmedia]

That makes it hard to gauge the success/reach of your campaigns and filter what needs work (headline, cta, images,  etc). Is there room in the budget or structure to add in a different email manager (or even free option depending on audience size) to something with rich reporting? 

[tifholmes]

This is a really great topic for discussion. 

I rely almost solely on Square Marketing. And word-of-mouth (which is huge for me). I participate in art festivals and have Open Studio Hours once a month (I'm a nature photographer who sells fine art prints), and those in-person events play a crucial role as well. 

I would be really curious if there are others out there who've chosen to forego the social media platforms and how they do their marketing. 

[Hotmarketmedia]

If you are avoiding social media, are you focusing solely on your website, and priming it and your "findability" for new views online? I'm sure you have a great reason to not employ social's exposure to your art, but hope you are getting the most out of what you have. There may be many who may be outside your local area but would love your work. 

[JRaines_CCW]

This is a tough area for us. I am not very good with the whole social media part of things, something I defiantly need to get better at and push harder. Until we get to that point where our social media is flowing more smoothly, we go to different shows in our local area to get our products in front of customers. It is not a large base, but we will continue to grow.

[Hotmarketmedia]

Such a great way to build an anchor base of fans for your work! Once you have a routine of adding social media posts (educational,  behind the scenes,  sales focused) semi regularly,  and an email newsletter to keep fans informed of where you'll be next,  new product alerts/loyalty codes, and related news, you can do these 3 things at your shows: put out a sign up sheet for your newsletter, put up a sign with your social tags or qr code to follow you, and put all your social handles on the back of your business card.  There are other equally important and impactful things you can do,  but this is a start,  if you're not doing this already 🙂

[cupzcoffeeaz]

We leverage square marketing, specially the text mages auto campaigns, and when there is time we do one of campaigns. Also, I try to keep up with my Google maps and seo. But honestly the best way for us to market is thru great customer service. That generates a word of mouth momentum and referral to our shop that is hard to beat

[Michael_L]

Word-of-mouth is the oldest and still the best.  It can be more difficult to generate enthusiastic referrals but if you can follow-up with clients that is very helpful in reminding them how awesome you are.

[Hotmarketmedia]

Word of mouth is awesome.  If you can encourage online reviews at the same time,  its so very powerful!

[DLRosenberg]

If you are a retail shop, reciprocal links are incredibly important. Ask the lines that you carry to list you as stockists on their website and link it back to your e-commerce Website. This helps with google SEO. 

[Hotmarketmedia]

This is a great strategy and often overlooked!

[WinchesterWick]

Direct Marketing

Never ever under estimate the power of email and text marketing efforts. Those two alone account for more then 70% of our sales. When we have to strip costs for a moment, we take full advantage of these two resources.

We have learned that social media is a very long uphill battle and takes more effort than shooting off an email or text. I recommend doing both, but when you are in a pinch, hit up your email and text list first.

[MadeByMocha]

This is a struggle for me because I get really annoyed as a customer with email and text campaigns, but at the same time I know they work. How do you balance that?

[ReginaRMT]

This is something I am currently trying to incorporate more of. My biggest issue is what the best way to do this? All while staying professional and not to overwhelm the person on the other end.