Summary
If you want to make the most of marketing with little money, aim to spend about 10% of your company’s revenue on marketing. This balance helps to grow while keeping spending safe.
Don’t let a small budget stop you. Get creative! Sometimes less money brings out better ideas. Look at Airbnb; they spent less but got better results than competitors.
Marketing isn't just about Google. There are 45 billion searches a day on many platforms! Spread your content across different places to reach more people.
Use keyword tools like Google Analytics, Uber Suggest, and Answer the Public to make sure your content is the kind people are searching for.
It matters to look at what your competitors do and adjust your plan. Learn what works well for them and see if you could use it too.
Make sure your website works well on mobile and is fast. Speed matters for keeping people on your site.
For those wanting good SEO but have a small budget, I’ve got a program called Level Up SEO. It’s a straightforward plan with keywords, optimization help, and monthly advice.
Don’t forget about paid ads! Even on a tiny budget, advertising on platforms where your customers spend time can bring good results.
Ads need to look good and load quickly, whether on a webpage or a mobile screen.
Think about targeting local areas. Doing this can make your ads cheaper and bring more sales.
If budgets are low, work hard to keep the customers you have. It's usually cheaper than finding new ones.
Embrace long-form videos but make short videos from them too. Long videos can sell, and short ones grab attention.
- Keep content updated. It's far cheaper than creating new stuff and can help with SEO a lot.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing a smart budgeting plan for marketing, aiming to spend about 10% of your business revenue. This helps in growing your business wisely without overspending. Don’t worry about having a small budget; it’s a chance to get creative, just like Airbnb did. Remember, having less money doesn’t mean you can’t compete or grow.
It's also a good idea to spread your marketing efforts across different platforms, not just focus on Google. With 45 billion searches daily on various platforms, try to reach people everywhere by using keyword tools like Google Analytics, Uber Suggest, or Answer the Public to craft content that people search for.
Checking out what competitors are doing is another great step. Look at their strategies and see if there's something you can adapt. This could be a big help in adjusting your plans and learning from what works for others.
Lastly, always make sure your website is mobile-friendly and quick to load. This speeds up how people see your offers and makes it easier for them to stay and explore.
By following these simple and affordable steps, you can improve your marketing strategy and make the most of what you have. Keep working hard and look after your current customers, as they're cheaper to keep than getting new ones.
Quotes by Author
"My name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more revenue through digital marketing"
"People believe marketing is expensive and difficult, fortunately that's not true"
"The path to purchase is no longer linear"
"Organic social media wasn't where the majority of the revenue was"
"You want to publish your content everywhere and attract people in different groups"
Full Transcript
e e [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my name is Neil Patel and I helped companies generate more Revenue through digital marketing Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number one marketer in the world and they also said I created one of the 100 most brilliant companies I started my first website at the age of 16 I took all the money that I earned from working at amusement park and I paid a marketing firm the marketing firm provided no results and I quickly learned that I wasn't a alone out of my fation and from being broke I had no choice but to learn marketing my my first client was a power supply manufacturer I helped him generate another $25 million in sales and from that point I realized the power of marketing I helped everyone that I could and I built my reputation by being honest and overd delivering I've helped companies like Google NBC Viacom General Motors eBay but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed I founded four multi-million dollar companies and I've learned all all the mistakes that you should avoid I've written about them on Forbes entrepreneur Inc Fast Company and even on my own blogs it's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom over the years I've received awards from the president of United States the House of Representatives and the United Nations people believe marketing is expensive and difficult fortunately that's not true there is a formula even if you don't have a technical bone in your body you can get results and my mission is to share this formula with [Music] [Music] you hello everyone thank you very much for joining today um really appreciate your guys' time today we're going to be breaking down how to get your marketing done especially when you don't have a massive budget right um the economy ups and downs people say we're in recession some people say we're not in recession I'm not an economist but this all affects marketing today we want to break down on how to get more done with less money so let's Dive Right In so as I mentioned marketing on a budget my name is Neil Patel I'm the co-founder of NP digital we're a global Ad Agency and with me we have Brittney and Sherry Britney do you want to give an introduction of yourself first and then Sherry you can do so after yeah hi I am Britney swallow I'm the SEO sales engineer here at NPA I have been in digital marketing for 10 years four of those years here at NPA almost four years um I've done everything from Amazon SEO to local SEO um large Pharma companies and everything in between now I kind of focus on uh the small business side um auditing websites and I've probably created thousands of campaigns at this point thanks for having me here anytime thanks for joining me I hear you on the campaign count Britney I'm Sherry hi everyone um I am the associate director of paid media strategy at NP digital the Enterprise division of the company um so I work specifically with education clients but I have extensive experience in be to be in e-commerce as well and my nine years of digital marketing experience uh in paid media strategy I really focus on Crafting full funnel media plans and uh help our clients maximize results at every stage of the customer Journey cool so you know with our agency NP digital we're Global thousand plus people we have quite a bit of awards the reason I say this is because the strategies and the tactics work so keep in mind today when we break down some of the things that um you should do when you have a lower budget to get results just keep in mind it's a place from experience and funny enough when you look at these Awards we just won three drum Awards uh from London uh one of them was for our work for Sofi one of them was our work for Adobe one of our work is for our Global agency so congrats team when it comes to marketing we recommend that roughly 10% of your companies turn should be invested in marketing at least in 2025 you can do more you can do less uh typically when companies do too little it is not going to give them enough growth um if you're just trying to maintain sure you can probably do quite a bit with less if you're trying to grow though 10% is a nice healthy budget we also don't recommend companies start going to 203% or anything like that it's just too high of a percentage and it's not healthy for a business either but we found the sweet spot to be somewhere around 10% so just keep that in mind and the reality is budget constraints are the top of the list for challenges it has been for 2024 we started doing interviews or surveys more so in 2025 to figure out what issues people have with their marketing next year and we're going to release a blog post um soon about that and budgets were one of the biggest issues right and I think it's constantly going to be issue until things like the interest rates go down globally and we start seeing more GDP growth a tight budget though doesn't mean you have to settle for the status quo a lot of people me believe like hey my budgets are tight I can't do much so where can we cut back and what kind of you know revenue and traffic can we get this year what can we settle with and that's the wrong kind of attitude yes it sucks to have a tight budget but that doesn't mean you can't get creative and think outside of the box and still do well you know a great example of this is the recent political campaigns and forget what side anyone may be on but Trump spent significantly less and got more votes for dollars spent substantially than Harris and if you go back around 4ish years ago there was a person who ran named Michael Bloomberg Michael Bloomberg is on the Forbes lifs one of the richest people he makes Trump look poor right Bloomberg spent over a billion dollars of his money barely got any votes it just means that having more money doesn't mean that you can grow faster you can't discount creativity and thinking outside the box and I'm not trying to get political but the same goes with business right really getting Scrappy and thinking outside the box can do wonders for you you look at Airbnb they took a lot of traffic away from Expedia and some of those hotel booking sites with a fraction of the budget right um and some of these guys had their vacation rental websites similar to arbnb but Airbnb crushed it with a fraction of the money it doesn't necessarily mean that if you have less money you can't beat your competition so don't don't look at that as a hurdle just look at that as an opportunity to get more creative the path to purchase is no longer linear when I started off in marketing roughly 23 years ago that's a long time from now but 23 years ago people would see a ad and then they buy or they find you through SEO and then they buy but now we have so many channels it's no longer that they just see you one channel through ad they click on and they buy a portion of your visitors may but that's not always the case with all of them and it's not going to be the case with majority because the real reality looks something like this instead in which it's a maze people may see you on social media get distracted see a remarketing ad go back and click on your offer go to your website not buy you know sign up for your email newsletter go do their thing month later they get a email that convinces them and they don't buy still but then the next week they were Googling like oh yeah I got that email from that company let me go back and buy uh I don't know why I'm searching for this that company seemed amazing and that's the reality that's just one example of a p purchasing decision Matrix and it can continually get more and more complex over time and people also search everywhere and I want to emphasize this because I know a lot of you guys follow us for SEO we're more than SEO agency we do a lot in paid ads we do a lot in conversion email social let's goes on and on even Amazon but there's roughly 45 billion searches a day Google makes up 8.5 billion of them Google makes up a little bit more than 18% of the daily search volume as you can see 6.5 billion on Instagram all the way to Apple App Store still generating a half a billion daily searches so the key is you want to publish your content everywhere and attract people in different groups because you can end up generating revenue from a wide variety of platforms and this is super important to keep in mind because everyone looks at Google as SEO but when someone types in purse on Instagram or you know SEO hacks or SEO tools on Instagram why wouldn't you want to show up and the same goes with bu and snap and Amazon and YouTube and you know so forth so on if you're not optimizing for all these platforms you're really missing out on a lot of Revenue and especially if you're on a budget you can repurpose your content for a lot of these platforms even Google they have a tab for short form videos not just videos short form videos they have another tab for long form videos that shows you all the content types that people like and when a video is ranked above the fold on Google which a lot of times they're pulling from YouTube or Tik Tok or other places it's the most clicked Element no joke most clicked element than anything else more than a text based organic listing more than a image more than a paid ad but it just shows you the power of creating content for all platforms and if you're not sure where to start off with it's okay with trial and error it'll help you find the best channels it'll help you figure out what works for each Channel even when you're repurposing content you may find out way this content does really well on LinkedIn but why does it do well on Instagram or it does well on Instagram but why does it do well on Tik Tok and you'll quickly learn from trial and error on what works for different platforms and different audiences and then you can adapt your marketing from there double down on the ones that are working the ones that aren't working as well adjust and my favorite slide in this whole deck and I recommend that you guys all take a screenshot of this is keep your eye out on the ROI we look at where companies are spending their time which you can see on the left side and on the right side you can see what percentage of their revenue comes from each Channel there's a massive difference from where they spend time to where they're generating Revenue people spend majority of time on organic social media found that majority of the revenues coming from SEO and paid ads so just keep that in mind that's really important because you want to make sure your investment on time aligns with what's driving your Revenue okay um so let's talk about SEO on a budget there are hidden costs um even though you don't pay to have Google list your website and search results SEO is not free researching Trends keywords competitors all take time and although there are some really great tools that are free those also take time and effort to understand how to use them to your benefit SEO Now search everywhere optimization Neil already kind of touched on this a little bit but what does that mean people use chat GP YouTube for tutorials Tik toks Tik Tok to find restaurants uh Marketplace for Furniture Home Decor the point is the search has evolved and is now everywhere but whenever you're working on a budget the key is to like be cautious of where your audience is and be there too the key to boosting organic search performance with limited resources is to focus on high impact areas so let's dig in prioritize keyword research and content gaps identify low competition High relevance keywords that align with your audience's search intent create targeted Niche content on topics your competitors are ignoring um also see what you're already ranking for and utilize those keywords throughout your site find long form keywords for Content look at competitor keywords and see what they're ranking for that your site is not and figure out what your high intent keywords are um a high inent keyword for example would be a white v-neck t-shirt versus white shirt which is more of a broad term using a search listing uh listening tool for um like answer the public or Bud Buzz Sumo can help you discover untapped content ideas develop an efficient content calendar schedule regular post around strategic keywords and topics that address your audience's needs and also helps you stay consistent with uh out ere exerting your budget tap into those un uh tapped content ideas that you already discover um know your format as well for that topic should it be a list IAL a how to what or why post a comparison be sure to change it up because you don't always want it to be the same and my favorite um every once in a while throw in a fun post uh but keep it obviously like relevant to your industry so for example if you're in the food industry you can create something like Grandma's sugar cookie recipe and sprinkle in some personal touches or how to create um an ugly Christmas sweater for the fashion industry leverage existing content so instead of constantly creating new content take a closer look at old pages and how they might affect your overall ranking Google says that Obsolete and low performance content can weigh down your website we use the 6r method reformat repurpose refresh retire remain and redirect use Google search console to find blogs that use um that used to perform really well and refresh that content update blogs with outdated data check if there are blogs that are like no longer relevant and retire those and then you can also like if you have several that are on like the same topic take some of those points um from the low performing blogs and add it to the better performing blog and redirect oh I already switched the slide okay um focus on onpage SEO fund uh fundamentals organize or optimizing these can improve search rankings and use your experience without needing extensive resources so your page titles your metad descriptions your headers and internal linking use your keyword research what is the primary keyword on that page that you're optimizing use it in the page title The Meta description also use it in the web copy and then add in some supporting keywords as well elevate your link profile focus on creating sharable valuable content that attracts natural back links create content with the intent of Link building so helpful easy to use targeted uncover link gaps niching down expands link building potential and find unlink brand mentions um things like blogs or a video testimonial type stuff that might be um talking about your product that would be a good area to start if your logo is on a city page because you sponsored the Fall Festival reach out to those people ask for a link back it will help increase your presence and awareness optimize for mobile page speed optimizing your site for mobile friendliness and Page speed can obviously improve your websites user experience search engine ranking and conversion rates uh browser track found that as a 1 second delay can cause a 7% reduction in conversions and business Dasher also found that responsive designs have 11% higher conversion rates than nonresponsive sites uh Google page feed insights is a good free tool that you can use to help um gather information about your page speed it also rates your site on a scale of one to 100 provides a pass and fail for cor web vitals and it lists the issues by priority always helpful and then optimize for local surge so small businesses often perform uh outperform large brands in local search um brands that invest in local SEO are 2.3 times more likely to be seen by consumers searching for nearby businesses online and brands with a high local visibility index had a 2. or two to three times higher than average year-over-year revenue growth um the best way so local SEO is definitely like my my Niche that's where I love to be um so the best advice I can give to you is obviously to update your Google business profile update it with images ensure that your name address phone number and website is correct your hours of operations are up to date your services and categories are listed reply to reviews even if they're bad reply to those it creates a trust in many people um but also don't forget that once you do that go to your website's location page ensure that the name address phone number matches there that Google um Maps is embedded and not an image include unique personalized content tailored to your business and Mark it up with Nat schema encourage user generated content by encouraging customers to leave feedback or share their experiences you can build trust and drive SEO value without significant expenses reviews testimonials and user contributions are great ways um and then everyone's social found that 25% of search results for the biggest brands are links to user generated content um reviews and testimonials on Google business profile and review sites are always good but having a video testimony about your services or your products can build even more trust um it's like it's like if you sent a question and a text message and you and you get the reply okay what does okay mean but if we're face to face and you ask me a question and I say okay you have more trust in my okay and nine monitor competitor strategies keep an eye on competitors especially those with similar budget constraints to spot effective SEO tactics they're using do all the things that you're doing for your site already right so analyze their backlink profile identify the keywords they're ranking for review their onpage SEO analyze their site speed mobile friendliness are they using structured data learn from their user experience and track mentions across the web so not just on Google check out Pinterest Tik Tok YouTube are they visible there what are they doing is there an is is that an area that you can also tap into easily um also keep an eye out for possible new competitors search the keywords in Google that you're already ranking for or desire to rank for and see what or who pops up those are also your competitors and utilize free SEO tools so Google search console is great for web performance you can compare month over month year over year um to see any changes in performance and keywords Google analytics provides user behavior from their flow so like where they're coming into the site where they're dropping off it also has all the other great data like their Geo their age Mobile versus desktop all of those things and then Uber suggest is also a great source for keyword research provides suggested keywords questions comparisons all of those things all right now you find yourself on a budget in no time then listen up so level up SEO is a streamlined results driven program designed specifically for businesses with a small small marketing budget who are eager to establish a strong SEO presence it's the perfect grab and grow solution for those seeking immediate actions without the ex uh complications of a full customized compare uh campaign so this program includes all of the things that we've touched on it has the keyword research it has the content calendar the on-site optimizations and web copy with a little bit of technical support in there and also monthly consultation with an SEO um specialist so that is a huge offering that we have um and that's it Sherry you're up awesome thank you Britney for all those great SEO tips I want to shift gears to paid media uh like Neil said even if you have a small budget paid media can be so crital critical for your business and to help Drive growth so in this next section I'm going to walk through some of our top methods of putting together a cost effective media strategy tracking those results and maximizing your budget so some of those key considerations to maximize Ras or return on ad spend that I'll talk about include the entire ad experience from start to finish you want to start by using the right data and understand your ideal customers demographics from that research and targeting you can align with your customers and where they spend time online this will help you select the right ad platforms to advertise on such as Google or Microsoft for paid search or paid social platforms depending on your audience Persona so that typical user on Facebook might look different different from the typical user on Pinterest as an example one of the most important aspects of media is the creative itself so we'll go into cost- effective content ideas that will entice users to stop their scrolling cut through the noise really bring your value to them we should also be considerating the landing page you're driving ads to much like Britney was saying from the organic perspective making sure these pages clearly guide your visitors to your desired action and then finally when it comes to maximizing rowes it comes down to testing and refining you can reduce costs by trimming irrelevant targets or keywords and evaluate and track these key metrics and make these data driven decisions so yeah let's get started before we spend even a single dollar we have to start by asking ourselves what our goals are and then tailoring our media plan from there so for an example if your goal is brand awareness you want to increase brand visibility reach a wider audience this can look like leveraging reach and frequency buys on paid social or YouTube or evaluating programmatic partners by CPM and cost per reach and find the most cost-effective way to reach your audience another goal could be consideration you want to drive interest engagement qualified traffic to your site this is something you could evaluate on a CTR basis and review your backend data first to find what platforms are already driving valuable traffic to your site then prioritize accordingly in your media buy and finally at the end of the day we do want to drive those results in the form of conversions whether that means generating direct sales leads or app downloads uh you can do this through website conversion campaigns or lead gen campaigns using native forms built within the platform paid search is definitely going to be your bre and budier here because the intent is already there for the user to be searching keywords relevant to your business so after considering what you want to set out to accomplish and considering your goals this is going to help you spend wisely and intentionally in the channels that work for you so we talked a lot about making data driven decisions and it's important to note that not all data is created equal in media planning and the key is really knowing which data to prioritize so I'll walk through a few examples looking at the section on the left here first party data is critical it is collected directly from your audience it gives you unique insights into their behaviors and preferences and you know knowing all the news articles and privacy regulation updates with tightening each ad platform's targeting signals and things being deprecated and removed relying on first-party data means that it's more important than ever historical campaign data is also valuable it helps you understand what's worked for you in the past helps you identify inefficiencies and find opportunities for optimization thirdparty data from consumer insights platforms or other research that you can conduct can help you expand your perspective it reveals new audience segments and emerging Trends looking at this middle section here and much like I was talking about with setting your goals it's also important to align your kpis with each media Channel's role in The Funnel or the customer Journey um you measure awareness campaigns with metrics like reach and video completion rates you're not really looking for the direct conversion there you're measuring consideration campaigns with website traffic signals and then conversion campaigns with form starts completes transactions other Downstream results that can really help you find that quality of conversion and then finally looking ahead predictive data powered by AI is also becoming a game changer and it will allow you to forecast outcomes and optimize campaigns even before you launch so overall combining first-party historical third party predictive data that LE leveraging that right data matters to help give you that full picture on enabling decisions in your media plan another tip we have is to focus on High intent audiences uh we want to maximize your ad spend and boost conversions so you want to focus on targeting audiences with a higher likelihood of converting so like we touched on customer lists website visitors these are so valuable because people have already shown interest in your brand they've been to your website they've engaged with your ad there's a connection that's made already that you can help capitalize on um and you can also create these specific customer segments based on their purchase history demographics behavioral uh behavioral interests all these areas of opportunity whether you're leveraging something like the Google examples that you see here or The Meta custom audiences it just shows what's available in each ad platform for audience sources and how we can connect our first-party data with the ad Platforms in a privacy safe manner of course to leverage this valuable audience data for our paid campaigns uh Brittney I love your uh note about all the local SEO tips and Geo targeting is so important for paid media as well um because it can really help you focus your budget on people in your specific area and eliminate that wasted spend on irrelevant audiences each ad platform is going to be really different in what you're able to geot Target at either at the dma level all the way down to the ZIP code level of course there's country city state targeting as well it really just depends and you have to explore and see what tools are available for you so it's a really granular exercise but if you're able to dive into your customer customer data and research your customer profile you could find that zip codes within a certain radius outperform the overall dma for a location-based business and so that's just one example of using Geo targeting to drive more effective results because you would be applying it at both the targeting and an exclusion perspective to really narrow in on where your audience is and one thing to note if you're doing that though is you do have to be cognizant of your audience size you have to make sure your targeting Isn't So constrained that reducing the GE targeting radius makes your campaign more costly so it's all about finding that balance of where that valuable audience is but then also making sure the system has enough data to optimize against um testing one of our favorite topics here at MPD even if you have a time of limited budget you have to ensure that your media strategy and media plan remains efficient and effective and so this testing this continuous optimization this could include monthly budget adjustments based on your real-time data and your test results it can help you shift and scale your Investments where they are making the most sense and so you should really try to maintain a constant testing regimen and it extends Beyond just the creative development you can uh analyze landing page performance ad copy creative of course um figure out performance across channels and then optimize your budget like we talked about based on their intended kpis and so by taking a proactive testing approach this will really enable us to effectively respond to Performance shifts and trends that you might be seeing uh one of the ways that you can leverage uh automated bidding for cost control through platforms like Google ads and meta is these AI powerful powered ad systems can help optimize your budget so there's automated bid strategies such as tcpa Target cost per acquisition or traz Target return on ad spend these strategies you know you let the algorithms decide use that real real time data to automatically adjust your bids and ensure that your budget is being spent on where there's the most promise and one note here is in order to automate bid strategies you first need to have enough enough historic data for the ad systems to analyze so what we like to do at MPD if we're launching a brand new campaign for a new market or product we'll start with a manual bid strategy such as maximizing conversions and then when the campaigns have built sufficient data we'll switch the bid strategy to an automated bid strategy and then we'll see those results improve in the long term so all in all they really help save time improve efficiency and maximize Roi to focus your budget on high performing campaigns and keywords um another example that Google provides and and this is more of a case where we do actually find ourselves with more incremental budget or if we're still trying to concentrate our budget on where we're missing out on the most results um they have these models within the Google platform to help analyze data from your ad auctions and if you've missed budget conversions due to budget constraints you can look at what Google is predicting the budget level is needed to recover that lost traffic um definitely take it with a grain of salt we've had experiences where we've just immediately gone to the top Google recommendation of spend and we've seen that the demand just isn't there so you know with everything uh when when an ad platform is recommending something definitely use your own logic and common sense and and and start from a place of incrementality like a 10% or a 20% increase instead of going straight to the top definitely in the time of working with limited budgets but if you do follow this recommendation and increase your budget to the recommended amount it's possible to capture more interactions that you were previously missing out on and drive additional conversions and and make sure that you you help simplify this process of identifying your growth potential uh when I talked about Geo targeting earlier I mentioned that the exclusions are just as important as the inclusions and so that's another critical component of paid search advertising the negative keywords um so in order to make sure that your budget is focused on high conversion keywords you should regularly review The Search terms report and this is something in Google and in Microsoft that provides a full list of the Search terms that triggered your ads to identify irrelevant keywords um this is something that you should do on a weekly basis for maintenance uh you can also find negative keyword ideas from tools like Google Keyword Planner and like Britney mentioned before even monitoring your competitor ads and copies to find other ideas you should also just have a basic negative keyword list for brand safety purposes as well so lots of different sources and areas to continue pruning and refining what you're doing from a search perspective and save that budget all right my favorite topic of paid media content and creative and I know Neil's touched on this with how engaging video is short form video and so much of paid media media is driven visually by the creative itself and I know we all have our mobile phones and devices we have our different social platforms or things that we prefer to browse and it really takes a lot to cut through the amount of content that we're consuming on a regular basis and and find something that speaks out to us and conveys that value so video is a content-rich format you can see Neil here himself in this video we're showcasing our services in a very visually appealing and interactive way you can convey so much complex information and showcase your product demonstrations tell your brand story in this digestible format um another example of a content-rich lowcost ad format would be carousels it allows you to highlight multiple products or features in a singular ad unit and then it encourages the user to swipe through and learn more so if all this sounds excited but exciting but you're strapped for Creative resources don't worry because there are creative tools within the ad platforms themselves that can help you iterate on ad creative that you already have um they can help you create different variants to test against each other so really don't be intimidated by The Upfront creative production because there's lower barriers to entry than you think and users are craving that authenticity of you know just putting your phone up and talking directly into the camera just having that one toone conversation with a potential customer instead of having a very highly stylized brand shoot especially if you're on a budget yeah and for us we've tested ads for NP digital where we have highly produced campaigns like people coming to our office people dressing like me both uh male and female and we putting on a bald cap so they look bald even though they're not really walking the office yeah we spent an arm in a leg I'm not talking about like 10 grand or 50 Grand or 100,000 like we literally spent an arm in a leg producing that campaign and running ads I remember on CNBC alone I think we're spending more than a 100 Grand a month just on ads um and what we found is when the team just takes Random clips from social media like just the low-fi content of me just holding out my phone and just recording it produces way better results than some of our highly produced campaigns so just keep that in mind sometimes stuff that costs a lot of money doesn't actually perform better yeah totally agree there like less is more sometimes that authenticity of being able to like you said Neil speak directly to your audience is just so valuable and makes it feel like a more personalized custom experience than some big flashy production and obviously there's a time and a place for that as well for large Enterprise companies uh building brand awareness and um doing what they need to do there but if we're talking marketing on a budget then definitely you have to start somewhere and you and especially if you're a small business you have a founder-led sort of situation Neil himself putting him himself out there um there's opportunities for you to speak directly to your audience in in a way that feels very organic and authentic yep awesome um so speaking of some of that research that we were doing for uh top performing content here are some additional charts here that really tell what those preferences are for the consumer um so some of the examples of top performing content from social media on the left side of the screen shows that users are really engaging with how to enlist iCal content and on the right side of the screen you see that they're mainly doing so through short form video and this shows that users want to be informed or taught something what's in it for me if I'm watching your video your audience is looking to learn new skills get quick tips get this information delivered to them in an entertaining way so it really just backs up everything we were just talking about in regards to making sure it's digestible entertaining um in short form so Britney mentioned user generated content or ugc for SEO earlier and that same strategy can be applied to paid media without breaking the bank so when when customers are creating content featuring your brand this can help naturally increase your brand awareness and engagement it acts as social proof to boost your credibility it shows real customers engaging with you using your products and services maybe showing humor or positivity or some other experience and so with their permission you can Leverage The creativity of your customers into content ideas for both organic and paid and this pays off in performance as well so with some stats you see here there's higher ctrs and conversions using ugc we mentioned always be testing earlier you definitely want to test this for yourself test the lowii social videos test ugc figure out what is working for you against your existing ad ideas and find these results for yourself don't just trust the stats definitely they have credibility but you are your own Benchmark in terms of performance and testing for what works for you um another idea that we have for budget friendly collaboration is influencer marketing and we're not talking celebrities or macro influencers that you're seeing here we're talking microscale smaller scale influencers these people tend to have a loyal following they really trust their recommendations due to that intimacy of the community that they built um that makes their endorsements feel really genuine and trustworthy and I know I personally find myself gravitating towards Phoenix micro influencers in in my city for their restaurant recommendations and I know that they're sharing their lives with us in a in a micro fashion um not necessarily this large scale influencer I feel like saying influencer marketing can be intimidating but there are smaller creators that can match your brand voice and brand tone that you can find and work with um so there's a resource resource on Tik Tok it's called Creator Marketplace you can really research relevant creators to work with with um find creators that have audiences that look like your ideal customer profile and then work something out even with a smaller budget one specific area of focus that a lot of AD platforms are definitely making major Investments is is growing their AI tools and they're not new for ad platforms by any means you know the automated bid strategies that we've already talked about the creative optimizations they're existing but they're getting more sophisticated ated you know meta is investing in their Advantage Plus shopping campaign strategy um and and Google has their own roadmap for AI tools as well with Gemini um Microsoft with co-pilot there's so many different AI tools that are platform specific that we as advertisers can then leverage this machine learning helps us analyze so much data it helps us make intelligent recommendations across ad creative optimization um as I mentioned before creative production is also a big area of focus for meta and Tik Tok and Google you can use these tools to spin up different copy and creative using AI tools AI can help you segment your audience based on their interests behaviors and demographics this will allow you to Target your ads to the most relevant people and then finally AI can help predict future Trends and consumer behavior and helps you proactively adjust your campaigns much like that Google Optimizer tool that we were showing earlier as well so lots to explore New Frontiers um feels like things are changing and updating as we go along so definitely continue to follow N I said NPD we'll share those latest news and updates on how they can apply to your campaigns all right I talked earlier about the full ad experience and so now we're looking Beyond The Click to the landing page and Britney talked about this from an organic perspective but it's so important for paid as well when someone clicks on your ad they should land on a page that directly addresses their needs and aligns with the ads message so that seamless transition from ad to landing page creates a positive experience I know Britney said earlier the drop off of even if it takes one second longer what that conversion rate drop off could be um so you have to keep optimization for mobile first in mind relevant landing pages can help reduce those bounce rates and encourage your desired action whether that's filling out a form or requesting more information and by driving your qualified to the right Pages you can optimize your ads SP some examples of a great landing page and just kind of dissecting it um you want to keep it very clear and concise and Visually appealing you want a strong call to action in the headline you want to highlight your key benefits throw in testimonials for that uh credibility and social proof and overall minimize distractions if you're optimizing for mobile just know that you know we use a lot of different heat map tools for our cro or conversion rate optim optimization program and we're showing a lot of different Trends with users hardly going past the first phone screen length or first first phone screen length and a half if that's if that's a way to measure it but basically what I'm trying to say is you want to make sure the most relevant and the most valuable information is upfront to keep things concise and convincing and trustworthy as we're saying here so allocating your Media budget effectively is one of the most critical decisions you'll make as a media planner because you know we're not simply spreading our budget across channels and hoping for the best especially in a time when we recognize budget might be tight so as we've all been saying data helps Empower us to make smart strategic choices that maximizes our return and ensures that every dollar is spent in the right place at the right time but it's also important to plan for flexibility scale and growth data is constantly evolving so as your performance metrics shift you'll the ability to reallocate budgets quickly so as an example we might have seen really strong performance from Tik Tock last year but then Rising costs in competition this year as it became more widely adopted so rather than just relying on what's worked in the past we have to consistently evaluate performance to make shifts in our media plan it is very helpful if you can to set aside a portion of your budget for testing new channels or adjusting tactics so this can ensure you optimize on the Fly and increase your efficiency over over the duration of the campaign so by continuously analyzing past performance you can really ensure that your budget is working as efficiently as possible to drive the greatest impact for your business finally wrapping things up on the paid side similar to level up SEO that Britney shared earlier NPA also offers LevelUp paid this consists of management of your Google Microsoft and meta campaigns Um this can consist of strategic optimizations detailed monthly reporting quarterly strategy calls to really maximize your Roi and drive growth and have that consultation with an expert in the field yeah level up is pretty much a really affordable get started program and then you see result once you start seeing results you can scale up your campaign with us and we can grow with you and you know uh spend more time in in different areas leveling up your marketing but it's just a way to get kickstarted and see results on a very tiny budget so now let's talk about leveraging Omni channels uh synergies to maximize your Investments right and Omni channel is super important and the reason it is super important is people now leverage many channels like according to demand Sage the average person uses 6.6 social networks just think about that for a minute people may say they don't use Facebook but meta generates roughly the same amount of Revenue from Facebook that they do from Instagram there's all these channels that we take for granted and if you can leverage Omni Channel marketing you can get a high Roi the first step with Omni Channel marketing is understand the difference between Omni Channel and multi- channel most people do multi- channel multi- channel is like I'm on Facebook I'm on Instagram I'm on Tik Tok and email and SEO and paid ads but we operate them in silos and they're separate and we're not taking the learning from any of them to improve the others and we're not really having the channels work together Omni Channel you know is pretty much the opposite you're on all the platforms but you'll take your learnings from Instagram and use it to help you on Tik Tok or LinkedIn or vice versa and same with your email campaigns and you're seeing what copy Works in some of these channels like email and SEO and paid ads or your landing pages and leveraging them from the social you're also keeping in mind the main kpis the business has or the markeet team has and making sure that the channels are working together to help you achieve those kpis and that's the key when they're integrated they perform better when they're not integrated they operate independently some work some don't and you see a lot of inefficiencies and wastage and this is why integrated media and SEO strategy is so important SEO and media don't have to go separate when they're integrated you'll see see more traffic better visibility and you'll see better results I was meeting with a buddy named Tony Tai in Canada at the time he worked for Expedia Canada and he saw a lot of data because Expedia has so many properties all over the world like hotels.com trago Travelocity and the list goes on and on uh I believe tripid I think it Trip Advisor uh was theirs too and some of these they spun off into separate companies but what they saw is when they use the integrated media strategy and leveraging Omni Channel and they're working together you know all the channels started Rising roughly by 10% uh from an increase in Roi so now we've talked quite a bit about getting started on a budget um we're going to answer some questions but if you want our team to just help you getting started on a budget scan that QR code and you can talk to someone on our team um and make sure you mention the level up program if you're looking to start and you don't have a big budget we do quite a bit for businesses that are just starting off so let's dive into some more questions now right on hello everyone Colin here part of the marketing team some good questions and I'm so glad we ended that presentation with the the Omni Channel approach because you can learn so much from testing in let's just say pay search that you can then apply to your organic search strategy so a good way to kind of wrap up the presentation um let's start with Sherry uh Roi on on limited budgets so we had an awesome chart that showed you know where money is being spent and what the ROI is but with restricted budgets which marketing strategies do you find have the best return on investment um the survey we pull thousands of people so it's it's totally legit but Sher you're managing all sorts of campaigns you know what strategies have you found have the best Roi on a limited budget absolutely so when I create media plans for my client I do max out paid search because when people are searching and I know we've talked about search everywhere right the concept of not just search engines traditionally but also social platforms and also other areas where people are getting their information but at the end of the day if people are searching for something they're more likely to click on that ad because they have that higher intent because you know that they're looking for something they're raising their hands and and expressing that they are interested so we always try to maximize our search budget from a non-brand and a brand perspective um but it also does come with that balance of paid and organic of course um the caveat to mention here is obviously you need to carve out budget to create that demand because you don't want to be over reliant on search to the point where you're continuously not reaching out to and tapping into new audiences um so even though paid search would be my priority to answer the question simply it is not that simple it's all about balance um so another thing that you should also consider is your historic performance and this will depend this will vary depending on the type of business you are but if you're an e-commerce brand you might have seen really great success with last click performance from Paid social or email marketing campaigns um and then search of course from a non-brand keyword pect perspective if you have very high category demand or brand demand um It's a combination of start with search make sure you're not over reliant on search look at what's worked with you on the past um so overall that helps combine a media strategy that helps optimize your return on investment reverse direct marketing is an old phrase instead of pushing you know there's people out there looking for your stuff it's so important that your products and services are there when people are looking and it's not just search on Google you know there's marketplaces and you can have products showing up on Walmart and Target and eBay and all these other places that do provide paid search options so I'm not totally surprised that you said search let's move over to Britney everyone loves free tools we've got a couple of free tools ourself you know Uber suggest answer the public the list goes on and on but what are some of the most effective free digital tools uh Britney that you like uh that really don't inquire a ton of cost they're free they're free um so really I think it just depends on like what you're trying to use it for um tools that I use I love answer the public um definitely one of my favorites whenever I'm trying to come up with content uh because it's all segmented out from like what where who it like creates everything for you basically right um but but there's also tools aside from the other ones that we already talked about Google analytics and Google search console um if you're looking for something more specific like trying to check on like schema markup there is a tool that you can use um results it's like Google schema test results um and it'll pop up um and you literally can just put in like the URL of like your FAQ page put it in are there errors it'll pop up and let you know it'll tell you if there isn't any um and then there's also on the other side of that another tool that will also pop up it'll be one or two on the Google search whenever you type in schema tester um are you talking about the Google one uh schema markup testing tool by Google search Central there's Rich results test Rich results test that one will be the one that tells you to um whether or not your schema is good or existing at all um and then there is another one that will pop up underneath it um with the little red logo data markup that Google search support searches or a site blub structure data testing tool that's Alternatives rank [Music] Ranger um those sounds like a lot of different options yeah schema app it would be schema markup validator um all right yeah there you go I just Googled it um so basically you can use that and it'll give you um lots of options to create your schema so those are some of my favorite tools but also um another one that I like that I use often especially when sites come to us and they're like hey I'm new and I have no idea what happened our site dropped there's no traffic we lost all the keywords and all of these things so I go back to way back machine and I look back and I'm like okay is it the same did something change did they you know switch platforms whatever it might be so that is also a free tool I use that just to kind of see what possibly might have changed um so those are some of my favorites the best the way back machine and like if you're keeping if you're keeping track of your competitors and Uber suggest just or sem rush or whatever and you see some crazy big increase or decrease like let's go to the way back machine and see what the heck happened there he has all the secrets one of the best for sure um Neil I'm gonna ask this question to you but Sher you spoke to it as well during the presentation influencer marketing like how can businesses leverage micro influencer Partnerships like any tips tricks like I know it needs to be super Niche maybe it needs to be you know to to your city or location but any tips or tricks because this is definitely your cup of tea yeah so one they need to be relevant to your space um two I know there was four cies of influencers celebrities medium influencers there was one in between the celebrities and the medium influencers um but forget those three categories at the left side look at the one on the right side which was micro influencers micro influencers is what we're really seeing Drive conversions you got to just make sure they're relevant to your industry they have high engagement and you're paying them on either a performance model or you're paying them to push hard you know if it's not a performance model they keep the post up for a long time and you're using their marketing material because you're paying for it not just on their social profiles but a you're have the ability to run ads but B you're able to take their uh what was it called you're able to take their name their image and showcase it on your website so when they drive traffic to you you want them to drive traffic to a landing page and they need to be on that landing page so when it flows consistently what you'll find is the conversions go up because they're not just promoting it but they're also part of the site and the promotion in and of itself the big drop off happens when you get influencers from motorpro they send them to a random landing page it's like oh this person just got paid either way in this model they're still paid but it just flows way better yeah and in many cases with these micro influencers you're just providing products to you know get reviews and get their thoughts their takes so you know if we have a limited budget um this is a a pretty good tactic or strategy to to use let's go over I'm going to put you on the spot Sherry um let's see here retention versus acquisition if you've got a limited paid budget where should you focus is it all about getting the new customers how do you break it up you know what's the media mix look like when it comes to retention or acquisition yeah uh I feel like I I somewhat answered this with the paid search question too but from the perspective of retention versus acquisition you and I keep saying balance but you really you do want to focus on a balance where first evalu what that lifetime value of the Cur current customer is is it worth getting them to buy again really understand the proportion of where their customer value is in your entire business um obviously when resources are limited you do want to focus on retention since it is a lower cost it tends to be um these retained customers can spend more over time and really be become your brand Advocate um provide referrals Word of Mouth um you can develop loyalty programs to reward customers I mean I know I love that whenever I get that in my inbox but um overall it can help build that strong customer base to drive that long-term success but I just would be remiss not to say you do need to have a proportion of it on the acquisition side as well to continue getting your name out there to continue driving that interest so um yeah I would say lean more towards retention but carve out opportunity for acquisition it's hard getting more with less and that seems to be the the trend the last couple of years years uh so last question and I'm going to put you on the spot Neil we talked about a lot of things and AI is changing so much but emerging Trends you know what are the top maybe one or two emerging trends that everyone on this webinar should be aware of I think we got about one minute left so go yeah sure so I think we're actually running over but no worries so the first thing I would say is using AI for data and analy Antics there's data everywhere there's so much wasted in marketing spent um having a data analytics team is great but if you can't and even if you do using AI to analyze all your data uh and give you real-time insights is a great way to create more efficiencies and profit within your organization another Trend that we're seeing is even though short form videos are really popular we're actually encouraging companies to do the opposite of creating more so long form videos because you can slice and dice a long form into short form but short form is grabbing attention but long form what we're seeing is converting more people into customers so you need both so might will create the long form and then slice and dice the third one is is a lot of organizations are focusing on creating new content there's tons of content because of AI we're seeing a better Roi not just optimizing for traditional SEO but also optimizing for the AI platforms to um rank you better and Microsoft even gave the same feedback um and they have platforms as well and one of the biggest investors in open AI is updating content so both the AI platforms and the traditional platforms are looking for people to update their content yes you can create new content but don't forget to update your content and it's a great way to just generate a ton of traffic and at least maintain your traffic as well it's why Wikipedia ranks for everything on the web yeah Britney spoke to the 6rs and that's all about leveraging and optimizing the content that you already have so great answer we're a little over that's all we we appreciate everything thank you guys for uh attending the webinar and I know we're over so sorry about that if you ever need help with your marketing go to NPD digital.com um and you can reach out and just let people know that you're also looking for the level up program as well if you're on a budget thanks everyone my name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more Revenue through digital marketing Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number one marketer in the world and they also said I created one of the 100 most brilliant companies I started my first website at the age of 16 I took all the money that I earned from working at amusement park and I paid a marketing firm the marketing firm provided no results and I quickly learned that I wasn't alone out of my frustration and from being broke I had no choice but to learn marketing my first client was a power supply manufacturer I helped him generate another $25 million in sales and from that point I realized the power of marketing I helped everyone that I could and I built my reputation by being honest and overd delivering I've helped companies like Google NBC Viacom General Motors eBay but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed I founded four multi-million dollar companies and I've learned all the mistakes that you should avoid I've written about them on Forbes entrepreneur Inc fast comp company and even on my own blogs it's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom over the years I've received awards from the president of the United States the House of Representatives and the United Nations people believe marketing is expensive and difficult fortunately that's not true there is a Formula even if you don't have a technical bone in your body you can get results and my mission is to share this formula with you [Music]
