Anyone can come up with an idea to make money online; not everyone knows how to market the idea and make it profitable. In the digital world, customers are there for the taking. While local shops that don’t deliver rely on word of mouth, local events and printed ads, their online cousins are spoiled for choice. Increase etsy rank on marketplace search engines, backlinks to Amazon, guest posts on popular sites, Google, Yahoo and Bing SEO, email campaigns, social media profiles, unique and engaging content – if you used them all, you wouldn’t have time for anything else. And even if you had the time, do you have the knowledge?
Marketing is a specialist subject. MSc in Marketing degrees from Columbia University and Imperial College cost upwards of €30,000. Postgraduates from these institutions easily find positions that pay back their investment within a very short time. The chances of finding them on Fiverr are slim.
Unfortunately, anyone can advertise themselves as a marketing expert, even though the expanding number of marketing channels makes this impossible. Most cheap marketing services specialise in one subtype and invest their time and money in tools that get the best results for the smallest outlay.
The Cheapest Marketing Service – You?
To get the most out of your marketing budget, it is a good idea to take over many of the basic tasks after a short period of study – once you know which channels are best. There is no point in learning about affiliate marketing if you are not prepared to market someone else’s brand.
Form filling for free marketing advice provided by agencies and individual professionals gives you an opportunity to compare results. One or more marketing methods will feature in all results because these have been calculated as most likely to produce cost-efficient results for your business. Your next step is not necessarily to hire one of these advising companies but to find one that specialises in the most commonly-advised strategies.
The marketing staples you should learn more about (and use your knowledge to fish out the less reputable ‘professional’ marketing services) are:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). As long as we use search engines, SEO strategies always work.
- Content marketing. Authoritative, regular and unique content is ultimately an SEO strategy but deserves a place of its own.
- B2P marketing. You will have heard of B2B and B2C marketing (business to business and business to consumer respectively), but B2P marketing (business to people) is becoming more important as personalisation technology takes over. Not only do you speak to the representative of a business using a personalised approach, you also communicate with private customers using a language they appreciate.
- Cloud marketing. Saves time and effort by advertising the same message on different platforms and via various channels. This method incorporates email, website and social media.
Even a basic knowledge of the above subgroups can cut your marketing investment. Simply quoting the lingo will tell a professional that you are aware of the topic. You can also make more informed decisions when given a list of options. Finally, you can take over costly aspects such as content writing. For example, let the professionals come up with the right keywords and you integrate these into your own (much cheaper) content.
Specialists and Experts – Worth Their Weight?
You get what you pay for. Or do you? This age-old expression hardly seems to count anymore. There are so many deals to be had, so many discounts, so many offers. Some seem great but are actually a mirage; most consumers are attracted by the idea of free shipping but often fail to realise that, in practically every case, retail prices have been increased to cover that ‘free’ delivery. The same ranges of great and not so great offers apply to hiring a marketing expert. Exactly what is the difference in price between a good marketer and a bad one?
Unless you can afford the advertising prowess of a marketing giant, the difference in price between professional marketers isn’t so great. When browsing a talent platform like Upwork or Fiverr, advertised prices may be very low but request a quote and that tempting, unbelievably low rate suddenly evaporates.
Looking simply at the price, however, is not the right way to find a professional service. By always investing a percentage of your revenue into professional marketing and observing the results of your selected agency, all are given an opportunity to prove their worth. A B2C company should be investing at least 8% of its revenue in marketing. Agencies worth their salt will, at minimum, have you break even.
If your 8% is €400, that is your lowest investment. Skimping on advertising – especially on the competitive Internet – is never advised. By all means see if you can get one or more additional services for your monthly fee, but never seek out the cheapest ‘all in one’ service. Firstly, you might not need every service. Secondly, no agency (except the biggest) is an expert in every marketing method. Thirdly, you are perfectly capable of taking over some of the tasks yourself. And remember, when it comes to hiring a pro, make sure you haggle.
Don’t be tempted into signing up with a new agency for an entire year, whatever the discount. While a month is too short a term to properly assess the results, an initial term of three months gives marketers enough time to prove their worth and will be less of a loss should you have picked a dud.
Money back guarantees do exist and are, on the whole, respected. Always read the small print; however, a company that has been operating for some time and is still willing to return all or even part of your investment should it fail to achieve what it has promised is worth pursuing.
Marketers willing to put their own profits at risk when they fail to deliver, or at least offer a free term of service to rectify any shortcomings, should be on your shortlist. Be aware that some marketers will not agree to take you on if your product or service is considered too tough to sell or if you are not prepared to make website design changes. Rather than put you off, this should show that the company has done more than generic research into your specific case.
Cheap Advertising and Web Traffic
Very little online marketing for small to medium businesses is Above The Line (ATL). ATL uses the most popular media to advertise a service to as many people as it can. Think of a prime-time TV advertisement; while there will be some targeting according to the type of TV show the ad accompanies, outreach is huge and relatively untargeted. The costs of producing and showing a prime-time TV ad is far from the budget of most small businesses, no matter what the gains. In the digital world, the only way to get this type of audience in such a short time for an affordable price is via paid web traffic.
When you buy website traffic, thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of humans are directed to your selected landing page. These can be targeted according to interests, age and location. While you probably won’t make a sale from more than 0.5% of them (if your page is engaging and offers something worthwhile) or get a signup from more than 2% (with the same engagement criteria), visitor volumes like these just can’t be found without serious investment in SEO, social media and any of the 100+ marketing channels available to smaller online businesses.
For example, you order 50,000 German pet-owners to land on your German-language landing page that sells cat toys. You pay the web traffic provider €250. One percent of these visitors sign up for your newsletter. Only one fifth of a percent place orders that average €10.
- Newsletter signups: 1000 potential customers on your email list.
- Sales: 100 x €10 – €1000 or 4x your investment.
Marketing experts often opt to buy website traffic from reputable providers to boost client campaigns. Another lesser known but effective solution from WebTrafficExperts works in the same way as Google Ads but is much cheaper. As these people have chosen to click on your ads, there is an even higher chance of their converting.
Marketing Investments Pay For Themselves
From increasing visitor numbers to increasing sales, professional marketing courses, advice and agencies all have an important place within the online business. On a global network packed with savvy competition – most of which use marketing services in at least one aspect of their business – investing part of your monthly revenue in advertising is essential.
While you can get more from your marketing investment in many ways, don’t make the mistake of reducing it. Most marketing investments pay for themselves in one way or another.