Where To Invest in Digital Marketing if Your Budget Is Limited?

Are you generating traffic, leads and conversions? If not, you need to include a solid digital marketing plan in your budget, and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, you can run an effective digital marketing campaign with a limited budget. But to optimize marketing spend, you’ll need to focus on campaigns with potentially high returns.

So how much should your digital marketing budget be?

According to Entrepreneur:

• New businesses (less than five years old) can use 12 to 20 percent of their gross revenue on marketing.
• Established companies (with market share and brand equity) can set aside six to 12 percent for marketing.

And for digital marketing services, most companies spend half of their total marketing budget.

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Which Digital Marketing Strategies Are Best With a Limited Budget?

These are the five best online marketing tactics to optimize marketing spend.

• SEO content writing
• Local search engine optimization (SEO)
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Link building

All these digital marketing strategies share a common trait – each can start as a low cost marketing strategy.

1. SEO Content Writing

One of the most recommended digital marketing techniques is business blogging. You can increase your site’s visibility on search engines by creating more content.

According to DemandMetric, blogs are responsible for:

• 434 percent more indexed pages
• 97 percent more indexed links

But, what happens when you have more indexed pages and links?

For one thing, the number of people visiting your site increases. HubSpot noticed that companies that blog have 55 percent more visitors.

One company that had incredible success capitalizing on blogging is Ahrefs. In 2015, the company blog averaged 15,000 visitors a month. Three years later, it increased its traffic by 1,136 percent. And it did that by posting two articles per week in two of those years and one article per week in one of those years. As for revenue, it “only” increased earnings by 10 times.

Another example is Sierra Group, a commercial general contracting company. Thrive Agency worked on its site, and the results were incredible.

The numbers speak for themselves:

• 101.66 percent increase in visitors
• 630.27 percent increase in organic traffic from search engines
• 124.32 percent increase in online lead generation
• 11.24 percent increase in conversion rate

Aside from SEO, Thrive also provided high-quality content in the form of informative blog posts optimized for SEO. Once these pages appeared on search results, the site started receiving more visitors. Content writing as a digital marketing plan becomes a low cost marketing strategy that continually generates traffic over time.

As you can see, a content marketing strategy centered on content writing boosts leads and conversions for higher revenue.

2. Local SEO

Local and traditional SEO is similar because they help increase online visibility. But local SEO differs in that its goal is to boost your visibility in a local area.

Think of the times you searched for a brand, product or service. Have you noticed how Google often shows results near your location?

Local SEO happens to be one of the best digital marketing techniques used to capture these customers, and as a business owner, showing up in these results is in your best interest.

Some businesses that would benefit from using the services of a local SEO specialist are:

• Bars and restaurants
• Law firms and lawyers
• Medical services and professionals
• Pet services
• Plumbing services
• Real estate brokers and agents

Optimizing for local SEO is also not limited to search engines. For example, you should also optimize your Google Business Profile (previously called Google My Business), so your business can show up on Google Maps, making it easy for customers to find you.

A person living in Plano, Texas, searches for a “plumber.” By default, Google shows plumbing services nearby.

A few months after signing up with Thrive, the results were:

• 80.9 percent increase in site visitors
• 74.3 percent increase in new visitors, which means a potential for new customers

So, as long as you serve a local community, let a local SEO specialist help fix your Google My Business profile. Even with a tight marketing budget plan, the revenue generated can help you grow your company faster.

3. Email Marketing

If you were to ask which digital marketing services yield the highest ROI, look no further than email marketing.

Table. Top 10 Email Marketing Average Click Rate by Industry

Industry	Average Click Rate
Hobbies	5.01%
Media and Publishing	4.62%
Government	3.99%
Games	3.66%
Social Networks and Online Communities	3.32%
Gambling	3.30%
Photo and Video	3.23%
Religion	3.16%
Sports	3.09%
Home and Garden	3.03%

Across all industries, the average open rate is 21.33 percent, and average click rate is 2.62 percent. Now these are impressive stats but what might spark your interest even more is the revenue it can generate for you. According to Litmus, the average ROI of email marketing is 38-to-1. That is an incredible 3,800 percent return or $38 for every dollar spent.

Besides being a low cost marketing strategy, email marketing is a content marketing strategy that provides many benefits.

• Communicate with existing and future customers.
• Build brand awareness by sharing company news, products and services.
• Generate leads and sales.
• Capture customer data through feedback and surveys.
• Enhance brand loyalty by sending personalized content and offering promotions.

One thing worth mentioning is that you must have a list of emails to run an effective digital marketing campaign. Having a few thousand is a good start. But until then, it might be best to start with other digital marketing techniques. The idea is to optimize marketing spend by growing organic traffic first.

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is yet another of the many online marketing tactics businesses can use to create opportunities to connect with existing and potential customers. Users spend two hours and 24 minutes on average every day on eight social media and messaging platforms. Depending on your customer segments, it can be on one or more platforms.

Some of the most popular ones are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• TikTok

Considering the cost of social media marketing, the resulting ROI can be significant.

Take Petersen Gaming as an example. The company wanted Thrive to help it build awareness and following on social media. It also needed help turning around a negative reputation and enhancing its crowdfunding campaigns.

After four months, the results were remarkable.

• The client gained over 290 thousand followers on Facebook. Post engagements also reached 118 thousand and continue to grow by up to 100 percent each month.
• On Instagram, Thrive helped the company gain 1,000 organic followers from zero. From 30 engagements per post, the numbers grew to 100.
• The average organic impression increased from 6.9 thousand to 23.5 thousand on Twitter per month. From 15 mentions per month, it grew to 50.

For Petersen Gaming, its average cost of social media marketing is:

• $0.36 per link click
• $0.15 per video view

Those are remarkable numbers for the price that fits the marketing budget plan of small companies.

5. Link Building

In the context of a digital marketing plan, link building is the process of securing backlinks from other sites. Its purpose is to tell Google that your pages are worth ranking because other sites link to you.

Building links, though, can be a double-edged sword. For instance, it might cause a negative impact if the links come from dubious sites. But with reputable agencies providing whitehat link building services, the benefits are tremendous.

When done right, link building can improve your:

• Credibility: A reputable, authoritative site that links to you enhances your credibility. And having more quality links directed to your site may help increase your authority.
• Traffic: Authoritative sites usually receive many visitors. Some may click on a link that takes them to your site.
• Leads and sales: Site visitors can be potential customers. As such, you have a chance of converting those leads into revenue.
• Site and SEO metrics: Whitehat link building generated backlinks help improve critical metrics, such as

• Domain Rating
• Domain Authority
• Page Rank
• Alexa Rank

In short, Thrive’s whitehat link building techniques help you get more exposure and visibility in search engines.

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Is There a Recommended Digital Marketing Budget Plan for You?

No matter your digital marketing budget, there are affordable digital marketing strategies you can use. For example, if your website is not receiving many visitors, start your digital marketing campaign with local SEO or content writing. Depending on your business, social media may also be suitable. As you saw from one of Thrive’s clients, the cost of social media marketing is far outweighed by the returns.

At any rate, all these strategies presented can help increase your revenue. Thrive ensures results by having digital marketing experts work on your website. We also have an entire team working behind the scenes, researching and analyzing metrics.

Are you excited about boosting your site visitors, leads and sales? Then, fill out this form to receive expert advice on what is best for you.