When businesses need to save money, marketing is often one of the first things on the chopping block – if not the first thing. But it’s crucial to understand that a robust marketing budget is a sign of a healthy business. In fact, it’s A-OK for marketing to be among your biggest expenses.

For a business to truly flourish, it needs three things:

• Customers
• The ability to service them
• The ability to retain them

A company with no customers withers, as so many local and service-based businesses see when they struggle against seasonal “feast or famine” cycles. Meanwhile, one that has too many customers to service can’t maintain goodwill. This often happens when a small business goes viral online.

It ends up turning customers away, and their reputation suffers.

There’s something to be said for giving customers an experience so great, that they will come back to you again and again. But even if you get every last penny of lifetime value out of a relationship, it doesn’t hold a candle to new customers with fresh needs yearning to be met.

In this simple equation, marketing is what ensures you always have enough customers to meet your capacity. Done right, marketing also plays a big role in customer retention. It makes it easier for your team to satisfy your customers and remain in touch so you’ll stay top of mind.

Think Differently About Your Marketing Investments

To gain confidence that your marketing budget is the right size for your enterprise, you need to look at a longer time horizon. The impact of marketing goes much further than advertising, where you lose out on visibility and online traffic as soon as you stop paying. Digital marketing is more like planting a seed.

Every digital marketing asset you create has the potential to influence customers, not just today …

… but forever.

Think about it. Each and every business blog post your brand publishes has the potential to make you more visible online. If the content you create is helpful and informative, it will influence people for as long as it is available. It could touch thousands of people in a single year.

A single blog post may not be the only piece of content customers consult before they reach out to you. In fact, it almost certainly won’t be. But by investing in marketing, you ensure that (among other things) your content is there to position you as a trusted advisor as early as possible.

With marketing, you get to not only plant the seed but sit under the shade of the tree.

Reduce your marketing budget and you cut off the web of cause and effect relationships that can result in a virtuous cycle for your business. Consistent digital marketing helps transform your website into the brand asset that captures attention, moves people through the funnel, and gets them to reach out.

Then, it helps you monitor and meet their needs so they keep coming back.

The Best Way to Save Money on Marketing Is to Use an Experienced Marketing Agency

You don’t want to write a blank check for marketing, but you need all the benefits of a strong brand: A steady flow of new encounters that turn into real business value. The most cost-effective way to have it all isn’t to cut your marketing budget, but to invest it even more wisely than ever before.

That means using a trustworthy marketing agency.

We crunched the numbers. Businesses like yours can benefit from an entire team of marketing experts for less than half of the cost to hire a single marketing director. Working with an agency means not having to worry about overhead – and solely focusing on results.

With a reputable marketing agency in Central Florida, you get:

• A complete team that can synthesize great marketing tactics into a total marketing strategy
• The benefits of all the latest marketing technology without having to pay for software licensing
• Cutting-edge skills and knowledge without the burden of paying for travel or certifications
• A marketing team that needs to prove its value to you month after month with hard facts

It often takes less than a year for a well-designed marketing strategy to take root. From there, you can see incremental improvements every month. Your marketing agency uses data-based insights to get better results all the time. With new customers every month, imagine where you could be in a year.

That doesn’t come from cutting back, but from stepping forward boldly.

Contact us at New York Ave today. We’re looking forward to meeting you soon.