I have the good fortune of working with many clients who know and appreciate the benefits of well-spent marketing budgets. However, I still come across business owners who neglect doing simple marketing activities that could offer a much needed boost to their bottom lines. Their biggest fear? Usually it all comes down to cost, or rather perception of cost. For these people “marketing” is usually synonymous with big fat dollar $$$igns. But I can show you a few simple ways to save some money that can start to make marketing more approachable and affordable.

Cost Saver #1 - Online Printing - Have a great offer or promotion running and need to get the word out? Think that printing and mailing costs are beyond your reach? There are a number of low-cost online printers that are able to offer cheaper rates because they “gang” many different jobs onto one print run, which lowers the costs for everyone. My personal favorite is 48hourprint.com, and no, I don’t work for them. They make it easy to upload your digital files and receive and online proof of your job. Online printers are great for low-run, quick turnaround jobs where price is of the essence. However, I don’t recommend using online printers for jobs where consistent quality is stressed, especially for high-run jobs. I’m talking about pieces with either folds, die-cuts, Pantone-matched colors, binding, spot varnishes, etc. — stick with a reliable offset printer or talk to a print broker. They can give the best advice to achieving the highest quality piece. But if it’s flat and you need it fast & cheap, online printing is hard to touch.

Cost Saver #2 - Email Marketing - Want an even cheaper & quicker way to get in touch with your customer base? Email them your promotion and save on postage. If you have a website, you can start by getting customers to “opt-in” to your email newsletter program. This usually involves setting up an account with an email marketing service provider. Again, my personal favorite is constantcontact.com, but there are many available with many pricing plans that are likely dependent on the amount of people in your list. They will also likely provide you with a snippet of an HTML form that allows visitors to sign up for your newsletter and auto-add them to your subscriber list. From here, you can choose from many pre-designed forms or create your own custom template, then blast it out to them! It’s a great way to keep in touch, send out promotions, announce new products, etc., all for usually under $100. Just make sure that you’re getting all your subscribers’ OK first. You don’t want to be labeled a spammer.

Cost Saver #3 - Do it yourself web editing - If you have a straight HTML website (which means that your pages usually end in “.html” and not “.php” or “.aspx”) then you are in luck. Adobe makes a very simple and inexpensive product called Contribute ($150) that allows people with zero web-editing experience to dive in and make edits to their pages. It looks and functions just like a web-browser, only with a button labeled “edit” that transforms the page into editable text and images. All you need to do is provide your server’s FTP information, edit, and then click “save” to have your changes automatically uploaded to your site. It’s a great alternative to expensive monthly maintenance charges for simple updates.

That’s it for now… Be sure and check back soon for some more great tips that will help you turn out great marketing materials for less. And don’t forget that while these tips will save you money on the physical materials, you receive an even bigger return when you add in smart design and strategic thinking.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.