Your website is the most flexible and accountable marketing weapon today. Usually the first thing that your prospects see and experience about your business, it is your most public face to the world, a showroom open every hour of every day.

• The investment into your website is 100% measurable and hence accountable.
• Your website is an interactive medium and a distribution channel that allows 1 : 1 personalization
  

• Provide visitors with a taste of your product or service
• Tell visitors why they should buy from you and not your competitors
• Collect information about your customers
• Customize customer experience
• Improve customer service and provide a vehicle for feedback
• Generate sales leads

• 12 Half Page Print Ads are more effective than 6 Full Page Ads
  
• One Colour, called spot colour can be used instead of Full Colour to decrease the cost without effecting effectiveness if the design is used creatively to compensate for this.
  
• Use 30 Second Radio Ad v 60 Second Radio Ad
• Decrease the Direct Mail List Size and follow them up with Telemarketing or
  
• Share the cost of Direct Marketing - Printing, Mailing and Distribution with a complimentary Product / Service.
  
• You can share the cost of traditional advertising like print by coming up with a creative advertisement that promotes 2 complimentary products in one advertisement and generates synergy between the products to the benefits of both.
• The same concept can also be taken online by sharing Pay Per Click bid costs and the costs of the Landing Pages.

Start thinking and sharing.

• 12 Half Page Print Ads are more effective than 6 Full Page Ads
  
• One Colour, called spot colour can be used instead of Full Colour to decrease the cost without effecting effectiveness if the design is used creatively to compensate for this.
  
• Use 30 Second Radio Ad v 60 Second Radio Ad
• Decrease the Direct Mail List Size and follow them up with Telemarketing or
  
• Share the cost of Direct Marketing - Printing, Mailing and Distribution with a complimentary Product / Service.
  
• You can share the cost of traditional advertising like print by coming up with a creative advertisement that promotes 2 complimentary products in one advertisement and generates synergy between the products to the benefits of both.
• The same concept can also be taken online by sharing Pay Per Click bid costs and the costs of the Landing Pages.

Start thinking and sharing.

PR automatically generates greater credibility through “unbiased editorial” rather than a “paid” message.

The ultimate cost effective guerrilla marketing tool, PR can give a ‘David’ advantages over the larger and better-funded Goliath!

Successful and correctly implemented Public Relations campaign can deliver:

• Greater visibility and exposure than traditional / paid advertising
• Greater frequency levels than traditional / paid advertising

at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

If you are a small business, selling to other businesses (B2B) or a professional services firm and even when selling directly to your customers and clients (B2C), then here are our top 11 ways of getting your message to them most cost effectively.

In my past life, when working as a media planner buyer for one of the largest advertising agencies in the country, I quickly realized that when it comes to a media budget - there is never enough money! And I am talking about big national and international brands, with tens of millions of dollars who had to quickly make choices about media channels, geographical markets, length and intensity of their campaigns.

Yet the sad truth is that most small businesses do not plan their promotional budgets with anywhere the same level of professionalism. Even more importantly, the smaller your budget the more creative you have to be with your communication as you don’t have the luxury of being able to drum in your message through the sheer weight of your media budget. And you have to be more vigilant with capturing and analyzing data to understand what works and what doesn’t. 

You will notice that Social Media, the most talked about development in the marketing arena and consumer lifestyle is ‘missing in action’ as a separate point in this list. The reason is simple. Social Media Marketing is so important and so pervasive in attracting customers, that aspects of what is now deemed social media marketing should be present in each of the 11 points below!

• Physical – Dedicated Networking Groups, Industry Associations, Expos, etc
• Virtual (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc)

•  Paid Search / Pay Per Click
• Search Engine Optimization  

1. Align each target audience with the Appropriate Offer and hence Communication Objective
2. Plan each of the target market communications throughout the calendar year.
3. Prepare a realistic marketing activity schedule based on the your budget.
4. Specify the parties responsible for execution of each initiative.
5. Record all of the necessary chronological steps to implement the communication strategies.

The Marketing Activity Schedule usually consists of an excel spreadsheet that outlines each activity, when it occurs and how much it costs to implement. Here is a hypothetical example of what one may look like with costs being omitted.

On the Marketing Activity Schedule you can also mark any important events on your marketing calendar, like trade shows, or product launches, etc.

The one page overview will provide all staff in the company with a great overview of all marketing activities, costs and timings. Together with the Marketing Action Plan, everyone will be on the same page in terms of objectives and responsibilities.

Where are you communicating with your customers and prospects? Where can you reach them most cost effectively? What are they reading, listening to and watching?

You need to invest wisely and and measure your results by capturing responses to as many of your communication initiatives as possible.

Here are a few rules of thumb:

1. Budget (Marketing as a rule of thumb is 10% of Sales)
2. Media or cost of reaching the customer is about 75% of the Total Marketing Budget
   
3. Reach (most small businesses try to talk with too many prospects / customers)
4. Frequency (most small businesses do not repeat their message frequently enough) 100 customer x 10 times is better than 1,000 customers x 1 
5. Continuity is important (most small businesses do not pursue the dialog for long enough! Rather than appear in 3 editions of the magazine or newspaper with a Full Page advertisement choose to appear in 6 editions with a half page advertisement. The same applies to digital media) 
6. Media should drive the message E.g.. Do not make the mistake of producing 5,000 Brochures, first and then ask how will you get them into the hands of your customers and prospects!
7. Just because you can get a great deal from the media (of any type) it doesn’t mean it is right for your business. Here are just a few examples of a lack of media planning:

• Why is 2 Office Medical Centre on TV? Especially when there was no point of difference or area of specialty mentioned during the ads.
  
• Why is a “general brand ad” for a Shopping Center on Radio? Again, as the advertisement on the radio would have reached the entire metropolitan area, this shopping center gave no reason why someone other than those in the immediate geographic catchment would bother getting in their cars and traveling substantial distances.
• Why is a large B2B industrial company on Radio? Have they exhausted all other possibilities? I doubt it. Online Marketing, Social Media, Direct Mail, and the list goes on.
  

“Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.”
- David Ogilvy, regarded as the Father of Modern Advertising

“It took millions of years for man’s instinct’s to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about the changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love and to take care of his own”
- Advertising great, Bill Bernbach