content mastery and other ways to get the most out of marketing $
Many tools are giving extended free trials and upgrades to help businesses handle COVID-19. Entrepreneur put together a list of 111 which you should check out—most are for business uses like Slack, Bill.com, and Box, but there are some fun ones like Spotify, Headspace, and U-Haul that could come in handy as well.
Which leads us to the theme for this week’s issue: $aving dat money on marketing dollars (like Lil Dicky did for his music video). In times of crisis, the marketing engine must keep chugging along, but with a greater emphasis on tactics which you know have an undoubtedly high ROI. Here’s where we’re focusing.
⌛ Content will always be one of the most cost effective channels in your repertoire because unless you’re paying to promote it, your cost is just the team member writing it. Contently argued that now is the best time to double down on content because viewership is up as well—analytics platform Nudge reported that with people confined to their homes, content views are up 40% over the past month (compared same period one year ago). Quarantine aside, content marketing is one of the only forms of marketing that produces compounding returns. While your marketers are limited in other areas, they can buckle down and produce material that will bring in leads over time.
📏 Running paid ads probably seems counterintuitive when you’re trying to lessen marketing spend, but if you’re laser focused on a few channels and have a strong understanding of each channel’s LTV (see below), they can be worthwhile. These tips from Inflection Growth on how to think about LTV per channel are pretty helpful, just make sure you’re measuring conversions and ROI properly so you can accurately determine how effective your ads have been. It’s impossible to focus on improving your execution if you don’t have a baseline to work off of.
⛈️ General cost trimming is much easier for SaaS businesses given that the margins we’re playing with are so high. But if that first crack at cost reductions doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough weather the storm, you’ll have to take a much closer look at specific functions, like Rasa.io, who did a deep dive on cutting costs related to email marketing. A great way to save on email marketing is to take advantage of free plans across multiple ESPs. That may lead to more manual intervention, but the savings could be worth it. Another option is to consider freelancers for content or other tasks that might require less experience, freeing up time for your in-house marketers to focus on where they’re needed most.
✈️ We’ve pointed to some things you should do, now it’s time for what not to do – any form of variable marketing campaigns which grant customers a prize/reward that is a cost to you. Hoover’s disastrous marketing campaign in the 90s is a great example of what can go wrong. The appliance and vacuum company was losing market share, so they came up with the idea to offer free plane tickets if customers spent more than $100. The campaign unexpectedly drew lots of attention and led to record sales. Their big mistake was assuming barely any customers would redeem the “free” tickets. After trying some dirty tactics and receiving tons of bad press, Hoover eventually had to pay for 220,000 flights and sell off their European entity to stay afloat.
🚘 Right now we’re reading Driving Demand, where Carlos Hidalgo puts forth his ideas on perfecting modern demand gen. His focus is adopting a sustainable and repeatable growth model, so it should come as no surprise that he puts a lot of weight on content. As we alluded to earlier, Hidalgo also emphasizes the importance of accurate measurement and benchmarking data. It seems like common knowledge, but one of the biggest problems marketers face today is the repercussions of faulty implementation. He also believes that most modern B2B buyers have an idea of their purchase decision before speaking with sales, so if your marketers and sales team aren’t totally aligned and using the same language, it will make for a confused customer.