Not every business has a huge marketing budget. Scratch that. Very few businesses have a huge marketing budget. Spending that money wisely has a huge impact on your effectiveness and bottom line throughout the year.
If you only have the budget to run a small campaign with a content marketing agency, there are things that you can do to supplement their efforts. It's important to remember that no one tactic can stand on its own effectively. Check out my previous blog post on that very topic HERE. So if you are paying an agency for just one tactic, it's unrealistic to expect that one tactic to be wildly successful without help.
If you can't afford to run a full blown campaign right now, it's important to take an active role in your marketing and work with your content marketing agency to achieve your goals. Let's take a look at a few simple things that you can do to support your campaign and boost your results!
1. Invite your friends & family
One of the first things you should do when you start marketing your business online is to invite your friends and family to follow you on all of your social networks. These people are typically going to be invested in your success so they will support you with a like or follow.
Another great option is to share your pages with your professional network. Swap a like for a like or a follow for a follow. With all social networks, having a large legitimate audience is vitally important to your success. If you don't have the budget to pay for Facebook advertising, it's even more important to invite your friends, family, and network.
You can follow these instructions to invite your Facebook friends to like your page.
2. Collect emails offline
No matter what kind of business you're in, you have customers that are willing to give you their email addresses. When you fill out an estimate, make a sale, or demo a product, simply ask your customers for their email address. Most will willingly give you that information and you can support the marketing efforts of your agency by contributing to the growth of your database. The more people in your database, the more people you can market to. It's pretty simple.
PRO TIP: If you're getting some resistance from your visitors/customers when asking for their email, run a contest or giveaway a prize for doing so. If someone can win something for an email address, they're likely to do it.
3. Be responsive
One of the best things that you can do to help your agency do their job is to be responsive. Meeting deadlines on your end, answering questions, and providing files in a timely manner will only allow your agency to get to work faster and show you results sooner. Typically businesses hire agencies for two main reasons - their expertise and because the business owner doesn't have the time to do it. If you spend some time up front to make sure that the agency has what they need, you will be able to spend less and less time worried about your marketing. Delaying the process only delays your results.
4. Connect efforts
At HIVE, we're not naïve. We understand that though we are absolutely obsessed with all things digital marketing, not all businesses only focus their marketing efforts online. Many businesses are still extremely effective utilizing traditional methods like television commercials, radio ads, billboards, and direct mail. No matter what your marketing mix looks like, you can help your digital marketing by connecting the dots. Including social handles or logos in your tv ads, your website throughout and even hashtags in your direct mail can help your offline marketing boost your online marketing.
5. Set a schedule
Some business owners are very active in their marketing, even after they've hired a content marketing agency. That is great and can really boost the effectiveness of your campaigns, but if it isn't done right you can actually hurt your progress. If you are going to be sending out additional social media posts or emails, utilizing some of the many tools online, or editing website pages it's important to set your schedule with your agency and clearly communicate what you're going to be doing. You don't want to ever be doubling up efforts, posting over each other, or annoying your customers with too many emails. If you want to be active, have an in depth conversation with your agency about everyone's role and how/when each of you will fulfill your responsibilities.No matter the size of your campaign, there is probably a lot of strategy and thought going into it from your content marketing agency. If you can't run a full campaign with them it's important to understand that some of the marketing burden will still fall on your shoulders (or the shoulders of someone in your business). Helping in these five areas will not only make your marketing agency love you, but they will help yield better results and better ROI.
Before you even talk to an agency, you need to figure out your marketing budget. Determining not only your overall marketing budget , but also PR, branding and creative, digital, and even events specific budgets can be a major challenge. Check out our free templates that will help you make sense of it and set realistic budgets for each part of your marketing. Download them FREE now!
