For better or worse, marketing budget cuts have become a reality at most companies. Here are a few ways to squeeze more out of your existing interactive dollars.
This year, no doubt, is a year for frugality. Whether we like it or not or agree with it or not, budgets are being slashed across the board. Even when activities and tactics seem to be working successfully, nothing is spared. So, for those who are facing this inevitability, here are a few places I suggest you focus to get the most out of what you have left.
1. Your shopping cart
For those of you who have one (and for others, think about any of the various conversion events you have on your sites), this is where I suggest you spend the majority of your optimization time. Chances are, you have a lot you can improve on. Take Amazon's Endless as an example of how a complex cart should function; if you're not there yet, keep working on the incremental improvements you can make.
Granted, there are always excuses as to why certain things can't be done and why certain enhancements are limited by the technology platform. Those are just excuses; find the hang-ups and get creative about how to make things better. Every little bit helps -- even if it is as simple as improving descriptions and images, holding users' hands through the process, or identifying inconsistencies. An improved conversion rate means more sales. (See my seventh point for more information on why this distinction is important.)
2. CRM: Get more out of the customers you have
It seems like most people are resigned to feeling like they're not going to win any new customers this year (which, of course, doesn't have to be the case). But regardless, one of the best places to make an impact is on the customers you already have. How do you sell more to them? It has been a long-standing belief that it is easier to sell new things to old customers than new things to new customers. So, take this occasion to mine your customer list and history for opportunities. Find similarities in customer types and consistencies in products, locations, and other assets. There are many new, inexpensive CRM analytics tools out there that can help you pinpoint who within your lists should be hearing from you.
3. Affiliate programs versus partner programs
Chances are, if you have an affiliate program, it is taking quite a bit of time to manage. And why shouldn't it? You have so many affiliates. But how many of those affiliates are really driving significant sales? I bet the Pareto principle (aka, the 80-20 rule) applies here as well. Find out how you can get more from the 20 percent of your affiliates that are driving 80 percent of your sales. Get creative and treat them more like partners, rather than lumping them in with the other affiliates. You can learn a lot from them, and they are doing a lot of things right that you should be doing anyway.
4. Review your search marketing execution
This is not a recommendation for SEO or increasing your PPC budgets. This is simply an attack point. If you're doing things right, this should be the source of your lowest cost of customer acquisition and your most significant source of site traffic. Too many people over the last few years have had both organic search and PPC on autopilot. They found an SEO firm that they liked, and their PPC budgets had been set -- so they dumped everything into Google. Some evidence of the latter is that you're seeing floods of advertisers either cutting their PPC budgets completely or paring them back to rethink things. (Check some random historical bid prices if you haven't lately.)
Demand deeper analysis and proof of results. After all, search is only effective if you're converting traffic to customers. If you haven't matched up key phrases with conversion rates, you're missing a big part of the picture. Then, lastly, if you are finding success, get beyond Google and try some of the other engines on the most successful terms before you simply dump more money into trying new terms.
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