Low budget? Here’s how to save $$$$!

Recently, we’ve had the opportunity to work with several wonderful companies across the nation. All of them faced a similar issue. “We need help but agencies want to charge us an arm and a leg to do it for us.” My response to that is, “well, how much are you able to do on your side?” Inevitably, the client will come up with a list of marketing activities they could use current staff to do. At that point, they start to see that human resources are usable to get things done. Need a business to business database? How about setting your admin loose on the Internet and having them pick up the phone to get names, numbers and addresses? LinkedIn is a fabulous resource that can get you in front of the right people. Need to revitalize your social media? How about educating that excited young intern on how to execute your social campaigns? Two private hours invested in development can lead to hundreds of hours of execution, a project you didn’t have to pay an agency for.

Every marketing tactic has a hard cost and a sweat equity cost. When executing your campaigns, weigh the cost of each. Could you develop your team through education to get it done at a lower cost?

These days, there’s an agency for everything: advertising, marketing, social media, direct marketing, pay-per-click, copywriting, graphic design, web design – and yes, we have these experts at our disposal too. However, if you have a low budget, nothing delivers results per dollar like education.

Today’s Exercise: Take some notes! What do you need done? Write the project name at the top of a piece of paper. Then, make two columns. Column One: Resources I Have, Column Two: Resources I Need.  Now, next to those two columns, add two more columns with a $. This represents what those resources will cost you to complete the project.  (Feel free to budget if you don’t know the actual cost of what you need.)  Now, look at what you need. Is there any way you can leverage what you have to fill any of those needs? Change the columns until the budget fits your target amount.

This simple exercise will help you resource plan your project. Need to talk it out? Do so in the comments below. Need help resource planning your next project? Can’t make it fit within your budget?  Contact us.