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Marketing on a Budget

As the economy and our business owners face more challenging times with profitability and attracting new customers to purchase their products and services, we thought it might be helpful to offer a few quick tips that you can do yourself to get more out of your marketing without spending a fortune.

 

Online Marketing

Following is a list of activities that we would typically include in an online marketing programme, including some quick tips on how you can do these things yourself…

Marketing on a Budget_Lit Marketing Tauranga.jpg

Website & SEO for Google Ranking

  • eCommerce Websites – Update your product information as often as possible, even just switching out photos or rewriting the descriptions (use ChatGPT!) will help with your visibility and ranking on Google. Remember your Home Page is your front window so use it well and update it regularly!
  • All Websites – A blog or news or case studies content section is where you upload a fresh page (at least every month!) which has some nice photos, 300-600 words telling the story plus the SEO fields filled in the backend ie. Meta Title (page name + website name) and Meta Description (a description about the page with some of your keywords included where relevant + no typos!!!)

 

Social Media

  • Videos, Videos and more Videos! – Challenge yourself to do 1 per day or 1 per week, even 1 per month is better than nothing! Skip the intro and just go straight to the topic, the first 3 secs are what count, add your sales message or logo at the end if you want. Shot from your phone, with good lighting and a clean background is perfect.
  • Facebook – This is still the leading platform in NZ today! It has by far the most users (approx. 3m), especially in the 18-44yrs (60%) and 35% in the 45yrs+ age bracket. We get most our website visitors from Facebook or Meta Advertising. It is the best platform for brand visibility and converting traffic into sales. Make sure you tag (@) your customers/clients/suppliers where possible to grow your visibility and following.

- Facebook Groups: The big reason why most people still use Facebook is for groups and events. Share your content to relevant groups as/when you can.

- Facebook Marketplace: This is quickly overtaking TradeMe for quality used products and private sales, and is a great place to advertise or sell to get your products seen.

  • Instagram – This platform is Meta’s way of stopping users migrating to TikTok, it has over 2m users mostly aged 18-44yrs. It is still very much a platform for fast moving consumer goods, “pink” markets (women’s products) and media. If you’re not in those categories then it will be more about branding than converting traffic into sales. The easiest way to grow your following on IG is by posting your videos as Reels. Also Following others and tagging clients/customers/suppliers in your posts will help to grow your Following.
  • TikTok – Super easy if you’re already making videos for FB & IG, and it’s the fastest growing platform in NZ but still very much for the under 25yrs and then a smaller group 25-35yrs. We would focus on this platform if you want to target a youth market.
  • LinkedIn – This is all about the white collar professionals, business executives who are motivated to grow their careers or businesses ie. mainly 25yrs-55yrs, no tradies. A great place if this market is your target, otherwise don’t bother. You need to personally have a good network then share posts from your business page to be seen by your network and their networks.
  • Google My Business – This way is the best way to get found on Google and if you post regularly (using good keyword rich content) plus get reviews then you will appear in the magic Top 3 results list for people searching for your products/services.

 

Meta Advertising

Here’s a few quick tips when working out how to advertise on social media…

1. Strategy – Traffic campaigns always work best for getting people to your website and make sure there is an immediate action they can take when they arrive at your landing page eg. Book, buy, order, request a quote, etc. Likes campaigns are better for getting brand awareness and for growing your Following. Boost Posts or Engagement campaigns are only ever used for getting a specific post out to wider audience or be seen by more of your Followers eg. A special deal, a competition, etc.

2. Budget – Always go for a fixed lifetime budget to not risk making mistakes with your spend, and don’t run a campaign longer than 3wks because “Creative Fatigue” sets in after that and you’ll just be wasting your money if you push it out any longer. Start with $50/wk and add more if you want more people to see your advert.

3. Audience – A defined audience is necessary for a small budget of $50/wk so set your age and select as many demographics as you can that relate to your audience eg. If you type in “Furniture” then you will see all the options that include that description appear in the drop-down menu. As you select more then your size will increase to be Specific (not good) to Defined (perfect) to Broad (only good if you have lots of $$).

4. Location – Again, set a specific location eg. Tauranga City +30km for a small budget or increase your budget or create multiple campaigns for the same budget but in multiple locations.

5. Media – Use video wherever possible as FB will show this before adverts with multiple photos and before adverts with just one photo.

 

Content Strategy

Set up a calendar either in Outlook or Word or Excel to plan out what content you want to post, when and where. Most platforms will recommend you post in the late afternoon or evening which is where using the Meta Business Suite Planner is best.

 

Here’s a few content tips to help get you started:

  • Ask ChatGPT or Google to see what sort of information might be popular with your audience. For Google you can type in a few keywords that are important to you and see what questions trend in the results.
  • Create a list of topic ideas that you can refer to each month for planning out your content theme for the month eg. Product Highlight, Life Hack, Recipe/News/Blog Post, Customer Review, Seasonal/Holiday/Celebration, etc.
  • Create that content as a video or 4.
  • Write a blog post about it.
  • Find posts from other people on the platform about the same topic that you can share as well.
  • The content buzzword today is “Edu-tainment” – make your educational content fun and interesting, share your info but have fun with it too, don’t take it too seriously, people follow people they like and who are relatable.
  • Engage with your audience – reply to questions, thank people, be involved.

 

Get Offline Too

This is also a great way to pick up more great content and build your visibility online by getting out in your community and getting involved! Join those seminars, workshops and networking events. Sponsor that event and actually turn up and meet the people in the organisation or group you are supporting!

 

There really is so much you can do with very little money and maybe a little extra time and effort that can really get you a long way. And if you’re really stuck for ideas then give us a call. We’re here to help. #GetLit

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