Uncertain conditions may have led you to tighten the purse strings on your marketing budget. However, you still have a mission to accomplish, which means you need to get more creative with your marketing efforts.
An effective three-pronged approach can help you make the most of a limited marketing budget:
- Update your marketing goals
- Continue funding mission-critical lead-generation programs that drive revenue
- Seek out "free" opportunities that can support your brand and give marketing efforts a boost
1. Update Your Marketing Goals
You can’t control external factors or market conditions. Instead, put your energy into what you can control: your marketing goals and programs.
Depending on the situation, some of your goals may no longer be achievable or even relevant. An example would be the cancellation of a trade show that is part of your marketing portfolio. You may need to use other programs such as email, webinars, or display ads to serve your purpose.
The sooner you update your marketing goals and recognize what you can and can’t achieve, the quicker you can take effective action.
Your media partners can be good allies in helping you gain a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the market, what’s working best, and what marketing goals are still realistic to achieve.
2. Support Mission-Critical Programs
If you need to make adjustments to your marketing, don’t sacrifice your most important markets or most effective programs.
As long as you’re using measurable marketing programs and tracking the appropriate metrics, you should be able to see what’s working best for branding and lead generation.
When looking at metrics, especially during times of uncertainty, it’s important to take the long view—a minimum of six months—rather than just focus on the last month or two of results.
Using data as your guide, reallocate budget to your most important initiatives from underperforming programs or secondary markets. If driving revenue is your main goal, and you have a need to secure sales-ready leads, then your best performers might be Biocompare’s Product Directory and Featured Product offerings. Both of these offerings are product-specific and can generate highly coveted “Request a Quote” requests. If it’s higher funnel leads you’re after then webinars, eBooks, and eBlasts are right for you.
3. Take Advantage of Free and Low-cost Marketing Opportunities
Okay, there’s no such thing as “free.” Everything you do involves some degree of resources in terms of time and effort. But there are ways to polish your brand, raise visibility, and support lead generation without dipping deep into your program budget.
Here are some ideas:
Re-use and re-purpose marketing content
Maybe you have a signature white paper, compelling presentation, or informative data sheets. White papers can be segmented into a series of blog posts. Presentations can become a webinar for a target audience that isn’t traveling anywhere to hear you. Datasheets can make easy-to-digest infographics.
Alternatively, you could compile a number of pieces of content into an eBook on a particular topic. Post it on your website or email it to your customers and prospects.
Email your house list
Almost every life sciences marketer takes advantage of email marketing and everyone has a house list. Send an extra email or two this month. You can point your recipients to existing content on your website that you know is valuable but perhaps has been overlooked by your audience.
You can also use one of the many free survey or polling tools available and email your customers and prospects a quick survey or poll question. It’s a smart way to engage your audience so that they keep you top of mind and you can get valuable data that might help you shape future marketing programs or product initiatives.
Improve your website
It’s a good time to review your web content to make sure pages are focused on specific keywords that can improve search results. Be sure all the meta tags for your important pages are filled out.
In addition, purge content that is outdated or no longer relevant. Check that internal and external links are updated, navigation works as intended, and that your conversion forms are functioning properly.
Post to social media
It costs nothing to post to your social media accounts. For example, start a discussion on LinkedIn (or participate in another discussion). Post to Facebook with links to educational content on your site.
Make sure your social media profiles are accurate and up to date, including descriptions, links, and images. If you no longer use a certain social media channel, close the account.
Pitch stories to the media
Editors of industry websites and publications are always looking for interesting and relevant content for their readers. Popular ideas include compelling customer stories, advances in technology, or unique ways to solve specific problems.
Be sure your pitch to industry editors is not sales-focused. Providing them with access to your customers and how your products solve a particular problem or are novel will have the greatest chances of catching their attention and increase their willingness to work with you.
Then, compile a list of industry publications and website editors who are relevant to your business and pitch them your best story ideas through email (or phone calls.) LinkedIn is a great place to find out who they are.
Most importantly, don’t go dark during these challenging times. Now, more than ever, your customers want to be assured that the companies they have relied on to conduct their research are as strong and committed as ever.