Precautions to Take when Saving costs in Digital Marketing

Saving costs involved in Digital Marketing is essential. Every Successful Digital Marketing Agency understands how important it is to save costs in Digital Marketing, Afterall, money saved is money earned.

But, there are consequences as we save the costs in our complete digital marketing strategy & give no heed to the quality of work that we produce.

“Save Costs, but not at the cost of Mediocrity”

Hack: Post to Instagram from your PC

Where can you save costs in your Digital Marketing Plan, anyway?

You venture into Digital Marketing under two instances

Either if you’re doing it for your product OR When you are running a Digital Marketing Agency

Let’s begin with understanding instance #1.

Doing Digital Marketing for your product gives you the freedom to broadly envision your brand. There are no strings attached. You are the one who will put money into the business & you won’t exploit yourself.

In that case, there’s no further comment.

BUT, if you have partial knowledge about digital marketing, then there is a decent chance that you will unintentionally compromise over quality because you would be lured into making Digital Marketing cost effective. To the point that you will let the brand image crumble down.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing – it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.

Samuel Johnson

The Digital Marketing Marketplace contains wicked people who sell fake likes, and Marketing/Sales leads to people having partial knowledge of Digital Marketing.

For example, we all understand the importance of visual graphics in digital marketing. It’s a tool we use in visual storytelling, Brand communication, advertising, and more.

Painstaking Mistakes made as one tries to create Digital Marketing Cost Effective

Compromising on the quality of visual content

Sure you may save costs using tools like Canva and amalgamate it with Free Stock Photos which is free to use. But before continuing you need to be sure that you are good at creating graphics, only then you will create the thumb-stopper kind of graphics.

Every Social Media Post is an opportunity to make or break your Brand.

Ever came across a Digital Marketing News Portal that discusses case studies or elaborates the examples of mediocre digital marketing campaigns that made use of amateur graphics?

Yeah, me neither!

If it comes to your observation that your social media graphics aren’t up to the mark and people aren’t relating with the context; It’s high time that you consider the services of a professional graphic designer. You don’t have to look far, head over to Upwork. The Freelancers there are incredibly talented. You can negotiate a WIN-WIN bargain & get the job done.

Don’t think about the incremental costs, think about generating a qualified lead for your business that has a high likelihood to convert into a customer who in the long run will reward with more and more business plus new customers.

The outcome far outweighs the costs required in content creation. 

So if your plan to save costs is to compromise on the quality of content, then please cross this cost-saving idea off the list.

Now let’s move over Instance #2

You are running a Digital Marketing Agency; you will calculate the costs over a client’s digital marketing requirements by taking into account how much the client is paying you. Because you aren’t ready to work in a breakeven, let alone work in a loss.

So how do you go about calculating the costs so that you still end up making a profit?

It is quite simple there is no sophisticated algorithm to crack the code.

To begin with, never make false promises to acquire the client, if he has unrealistic expectations; then instead of fueling his illusion awaken the client even if it comes at the cost of losing the client.

In hindsight, you will thank me. 😏

A client with unrealistic expectation who cannot be reasonable will probably end up as a bad debt for your agency. The same time can be committed to finding a reasonable client.

Tip: How to deal with Difficult Clients

Now let’s get into where you can save the costs.

Necessarily your client will need Social Media Advertising and Google PPC Campaigns.

If your agency is competent with PPC Campaigns and has spent ample time running split tests & A/B Tests, then you already know the winning audience, and that simplifies moving things forward. It’s no wonder why there are dedicated Conversion Rate Optimization agencies.

“Conversion rate optimization really isn’t about optimizing web pages – it’s about optimizing decisions – and the page itself is a means to an end but not an end itself.” – Michael Lykke Aagaard 

The best cost-saving ideas in Digital Marketing are cost-effective advertising by optimizing on placements, advanced location targeting, laser demographics targeting, running the advertisement on the right time and date.

Small Business advertising costs can be greatly reduced by leveraging Micro & Nano Influencers. The newest breed of Social Media Influencers having 500-6000 Instagram Influencers. The reason to have faith in Nano & Micro Influencers for saving small business advertising costs in because these brackets of influencers do not drain on your monthly marketing budget, unlike Macro Influencers. After having spent on Nano Influencers, you will still manage to navigate Marketing Budget Allocation for running the usual small budget social media ads on platforms like Facebook Ads & Instagram Ads. It is ridiculous how far you can reach by spending small chunks of Money. In India, for example, you can reach nearly +13000 People by donating just ₹100.00. At the moment, Facebook remains a grossly underpriced platform. Small businesses should make the most out of this opportunity.

Leverage this knowledge & save costs in advertising.

Now let’s get into where you should spend money like a drunken sailor.

You should spend money on Tools automating the menial tasks that generate leads while you sleep so that you achieve more in less time with fewer resources.

Tools that an agency must have at all costs. The list contains tools that are on Freemium as well as Premium.

1. Hootsuite: It’s an excellent tool for scheduling social media posts on over more than 5 Networks, you can generate social media marketing reports for your clients. [Freemium]
2. Unmetric: For Content ideas and finding out what works and what doesn’t. [Freemium]
3. Ahrefs: The Best Premium SEO Tool that there is, takes care of your complete Search Engine Optimization Requirements. No need to manually spend hours finding & refining data. This tool automates. As per sources, Ahrefs has recently challenged Google that it will roll out its search engine. [Premium]
4. Aweber: An email marketing service provider for agencies and businesses. The thing I love most about it is it’s automation and follow-up functionality. This tool will send follow-up emails to prospects and try converting them because you never know who might end up becoming a customer with just a little push. [Premium]
5. Upwork: Upwork is more of a marketplace than a tool, but let’s face it. It will be difficult and widely expensive to acquire international clients in the absence of Marketplaces like Upwork. Your agency can receive 20% of clients from Upwork that are responsible for driving 80% revenue in your agency. (Pareto Principle) It is hypothetically possible.
6. Facebook Audience Insights: This is yet again, an essential tool at the disposal for Facebook Marketers. Using this tool, you will find your perfect audience that will drive sales. It seems to be the only resort in the absence of Facebook Pixel. [Freemium]

Pro Tip: Use this exact strategy to turn Quora into a tool for Marketing 

Concluding:

There is no extent to which you can save costs in Digital Marketing; it is not possible to make the same kind of savings in Traditional Marketing. But there are fatal consequences in making Digital Marketing price effective. Saving costs should not come at the expense of a mediocre output.