Joint marketing initiatives can be extremely effective and also halve your marketing spend. The idea is to select a partner with a good sized customer base and mailing list that contains your target audience. Once you have selected a partner then decide on the tactics that will deliver the best results (email campaign, webinar or maybe even a seminar). Ensure you can put a cohesive message together that will work for both organisations.

Besides sharing the marketing costs, if you select the right partner you will increase your audience. A word of warning though, always consider how the activity may impact your other partnerships.

Many businesses overlook the customers they already have in an effort to draw in new buyers. While it’s important to always be drawing in new customers, your existing buyers are low hanging fruit! It’s cheaper to sell to these customers with repeat sales and up-selling. By maintaining consistent communication with them you tap into the full value of the relationship and stop them from switching to your competitor.

Failing to plan is planning to fail — this is just as true of marketing as anything else. In order to get the most value from your Marketing budget you need to have a budget and know how you’re going to spend it throughout the year. This way you can spend it strategically, on the right tactics in order to deliver a consistent stream of leads.

This point is similar to planning. The only way you can optimise your budget is to measure your success. You need to put processes in place to measure the success of each tactic. That way you can scrap the tactics that aren’t drawing in customers and boost the ones that do. To do this you have to track the lead source of all enquiries.

Tracking these metrics will also provide the key data you need if management scrutinise marketing spending. When you are able to demonstrate the number of enquiries generated for any given period it will be easy to demonstrate the importance of marketing within the business.

Sometimes we get stuck in our ways. For many businesses it’s easier to just stick with a supplier you know, rather than shop around. But this approach could mean you are paying a premium. In order to get the best prices it’s a good idea to get some outside quotes every now and then. Technology changes frequently and these changes can sometimes introduce cheaper ways of doing things. We recently sourced print quotes for a client and were surprised to find a $500 difference between the cheapest and most expensive prices.

If you are happy with a supplier and would like to continue working with them don’t be afraid to negotiate, you may be surprised what they are willing to offer if you are prepared to commit to volumes of work for the next 12 months.

Your organisation has a wealth of expertise that it’s taken time, training and money to accumulate. Once your organisation is considered a leader in your field then the media will contact your experts for comment and more readily publish your media releases.

If you have employees in your business that are experts in their field then it’s time to capitalise on this knowledge and use it to market to potential customers! Thought leadership marketing is about sharing knowledge in order to build a rapport with potential clients. You can utilise many cost-effective or free channels to broadcast your content, building your brand. You can submit articles to industry and local papers, online magazines and think about starting a blog, YouTube channel and sharing your insights through social media. Also consider putting your company’s experts forward as speakers at industry events.