A business that stops marketing, is like a starving man who refuses to eat. They both die. — SEO Momma (@seomommasays) November 29, 2013

Trying to save money by cutting your marketing budget?

Why? While many businesses fail for a variety of reason, bad management, poor reputation, hostile takeover etc. The most common reason though is simply lack of customers. If you have customers and, have ensured that you don’t lose money on each customer, then having more is good.

Once you have the number of customers you need to break even, you need more to make a profit. Sure there can be times when having too many can be a problem, you have the newest widget and suddenly everyone wants it.

How do you supply 50,000 orders when you only have 10,000 widgets? But let’s face it, that’s not what usually happens. Normally you have your 10,000 widgets and need to find enough customers.

It’s at this point that many businesses decide that they must save money somehow, they look at their overheads and see that while they’ve managed to break even, they’re not actually making any money. They crunch numbers and come to the conclusion that they must make cuts.

Marketing is usually the first to be cut. It’s strange isn’t it? The money they’re already spending on marketing to bring in more business is not bringing in enough customers, so they cut it and hope that will cure the problem.

If you’re not getting enough new customers or enough return customers, how does cutting your marketing budget help? Before you get to this point, make sure you’re spending your marketing dollars wisely.

Make sure your marketing is integrated and you have have a calendar where offline and online campaigns can be scheduled together. Social media is highly important for awareness, branding, interaction and feedback. It is not however a ‘quick fix’. Good on page SEO is important to your search engine visibility, make sure it’s tightly focused and unique for each page. Ensure your off page efforts are consistent, build good links, don’t forget citations. Plan ahead but be flexible enough to take advantage of serendipitous news items to create a buzz around your product or service. Send out press releases, regular press releases create good links, keep your name in front of people and allow you to showcase individual products and services.