How to Not Waste Your Marketing Budget

Often when businesses think about their marketing budget, they think only about their total spend and ROI. What they fail to realize is that marketing waste has a huge impact on both of these inputs. In a “pay to play” world, such as Google PPC or social media advertising, avoiding marketing cost waste is equally important as deciding your overall spend. 

Cutting down on your marketing waste seems self explanatory: Only invest in the platforms that work. But in reality, it’s a little more complex than just that. Here are the three primary areas where we’re seeing businesses and brands waste marketing dollars—and how to avoid making the same mistakes.

1. Limit Your Initial PPC Spend 

Runaway Google PPC costs are the #1 source of marketing waste I come across when talking to businesses. Specifically, this happens to service and trade based businesses who want to pay for immediate leads. 

I have seen far more brands spending $10k a month on ads to make $12k in revenue than I ever imagined recently. The more they spend, the more diminished the return on investment. This is almost always because when the campaigns were first started, the budget was an arbitrary amount.

To avoid this fate, here is how brands should approach their PPC campaigns:

• Start with a testing phase to identify more efficient and effective strategies
• Set a lesser amount for your spend during A/B testing/experimentation 
• Select keywords and ad groups based on a coherent Keyword strategy
• Monitor your spending and adjust 

2. Make Sure You Have a Website That Converts 

At the end of any successful online marketing campaign, the result should be more leads, calls or conversions through the website. When a user gets to your site, traditionally, the school of thought has been that you have 3 seconds to create engagement before the user “bounces.” 

The methodology for creating engagement has ebbed and flowed over the years as well. From free giveaways to responsive forms, the most effective has always been ensuring that your most captive audience can engage promptly. Focus on having a responsive, engaging website with valuable content where a user can always find a way to reach out to your business immediately.

3. Track Data to Enable Smart Decisions

There are various tools used by our team to make sure we’re adequately attributing leads to specific sources. Whether it’s Google Analytics, CallRail, or others, the right data is everything to limit your marketing waste. Oftentimes, different channels will have different conversion rates, and balancing your spend versus the conversion rate is a critical element of limiting waste. 

If your business is struggling with runaway costs, a platform that doesn’t convert, or incomplete data, reach out to us today to get your marketing budget back on track.