It may require a bit of hustle, but with a low marketing budget, you can still hit your goals! 🎯
First, what budget can be referred to as a low marketing budget? Most roofing companies invest between 0-10% of their revenue on marketing. This range can be further classified into:
- 7% and above as an intense or aggressive marketing budget.
- 5-7% – A medium budget
- <5% – A low marketing budget
While some businesses can afford to splurge on their marketing campaigns, there’s still good news for the ones with a bit of a low budget. Yes! Even with a limited budget, there are strategies you can implement to promote your business effectively.
Michael Stearns and I discuss some different ways roofing companies can make the most of a low marketing budget. Stick around to find out more!
What Do You Suggest People With Low Marketing Budgets Do?
If you have a low marketing budget, you must implement cost-effective strategies to help you reach your goals. But first, you’ll need to work on your business’s unique selling proposition (USP) for your campaign.
A unique selling proposition (USP) is the one quality that makes your company better than the competition. It tells your customers why they should choose you, not the next person. Without a USP, you fail to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market, and your audience will tend to work with the cheapest option if they don’t notice anything special about your business. You’ll end up wasting the efforts and money you are investing into your marketing without a USP.
After discovering your Unique Selling Point, the next thing is to try out a few of the points listed below.
1. Learn to Do It Yourself
What pays off better than having hands-on knowledge or experience in what you do? Nothing!
Of course, you can always hire an agency or bring someone in to handle different facets of your marketing. But when you have a low budget, doing it yourself to start out can help. Why? Because you get the chance to add your company’s unique flavor to your marketing.
If you’ll be handling your marketing yourself, you should learn from experts on the subject. When considering who to learn from, don’t forget to prove their expertise before settling to open up your mind to them.
For example, many people do SEO marketing, but not everyone does it aggressively. And your small business needs some aggressiveness. So you want to follow the instruction of only those that have done it themselves, gotten remarkable results, and can break down the pathway to success for you to see clearly.
Also, the more equipped or knowledgeable you are in certain areas of your marketing, the better equipped you are to hold others accountable when you do start to outsource the work. Even if you only have a baseline understanding of the technical things, you can still hold people accountable when it’s time to see results because you know what to look for. Summarily, it’s good to know a little something about everything! 🤓
2. Get Guaranteed by Google ✅
Another strategy for those with a low marketing budget is showing your prospects that your business is Google guaranteed. Help people understand what it means that you have that green check mark ✅.
Let them know you’ve been vetted by Google, passed all the background checks, and have all the licenses and insurance. All these show how confident Google is in your company and go a long way in selling to a homeowner.
3. Take Your Partners out for Coffee☕!!
This point may not be your typical marketing strategy, but you’d be surprised to know how well it works! You can collaborate with referral partners better and make a meaningful impact by having your sales team members take them out for coffee. Let them make a habit of it and observe the results that follow.
Networking is key to success in business, and it’s not free. You can allocate about $5k to your sales team for the next two months. Just say, “Guys, this is a coffee budget for you. Go make best friends with all the realtors and insurance agents you can find, and see if they’ll be willing to become referral partners with us.” It’s one secret ingredient to strengthen your business’s growth.
4. Go for the Hungry and Ambitious 👩🎓
When it comes to marketing, you do not always need the most experienced people. What you need is an effective person who has some of the qualities you are looking for but needs a chance to grow their portfolio. If such a person is willing to do it on a reduced budget, you have gotten a good deal.🤝
Of course, going for such people doesn’t undermine the undeniable quality a marketing agency can bring to help your business. But marketing aims to generate leads and ultimately drive more sales. So it might be worth considering if your hire can help generate these results with lesser costs.
Two simple, cost-effective solutions you can explore are:
- College students or newbies, and
- Talents on an online market like Upwork.
You don’t have to engage them for the long term. Nonetheless, it’s a great and out-of-the-box way to acquire people that can help you do some of the things you need, like video content development, blogging, and SEO.
Here are some steps to go about hiring college students:
- Search Google to find colleges near you,
- Head over to the department more about what you need to do,
- Get the information from their faculty pages, and then
- Reach out to them individually to ask for their interest.
5. Explore Videos 🎬
Video content is another inexpensive way to put yourself out there. The best part of videos? You can get started on them immediately! Use different video content to provide value and resonate with your target audience, thus increasing your reach.
Many business owners see videos as a lot of work; they aren’t aware of their undeniable results! So go ahead and make videos of your roofing services by:
- Answering a popular question,
- showing off your company’s culture,
- reviewing products, and
- showing off customer feedback and testimonials.
Summarily, leveraging videos will make people trust your brand more. 💡
6. Start With the Most Important Things,
For instance, a common question among new business owners trying to reduce expenses is, “Which should I start with? SEO or an awesome website?”
If your marketing budget can not cover both at once, it’s best to invest in a functional website first. And if you are on an even tighter budget, start with a basic website on WordPress with a roofing theme.
No doubt, SEO is the long-term money maker, but it’s the more expensive of the two. SEO is also more of a recurring expense than building a new website. You could hire an agency later on to help out with your SEO
7. Maximize your Salespersons for Marketing 🧑🤝🧑
Sales and marketing are related but not entirely alike. You can find creative ways to engage your salespeople for marketing purposes instead of hiring a separate marketing team. A good way to go about doing this is to create incentives for your sales reps that encourage them to generate more leads and close more sales.
Conclusion
Building a successful roofing business goes beyond closing sales and contracts. It involves investing in marketing so you can continuously generate new leads and, eventually, more sales and more money.
Strategies for a low marketing budget like those listed above are some of the most effective ways to get the work done for less money. Some may require you to roll up your sleeves and participate in the work. Nonetheless, in the future, you’ll have yourself to thank for taking marketing seriously, even with a low budget.
Hook Agency specializes in cutting-edge SEO marketing, so we love talking about this, and we’d love to hear from you! Reach out today or check out other articles on our blog.
