Many in B2B are having to adjust to a shrinking marketing budget now. This is particularly true during these economic times. Yet, the expectations haven’t changed with the budget. Qualified account leads and pipeline contribution are KPIs that must be met.

Although it might seem daunting, you can still achieve your marketing goals and KPIs, despite the fact that you have a reduced marketing budget. I understand this firsthand, as I’ve encountered this situation several times. Here are some of the tactics I have used.

• Reducing or cutting SEM (invest more in SEO)
• Investing in fewer channels – what’s performed the best (cut out the other stuff)
• Improving targeted LinkedIn ads with integrated organic posts
• Investing time in your email nurture program (it’s free)
• Re-evaluating the MarTech stack – including our webinar platform
• Utilizing review sites more effectively (don’t let it go to waste)

Reduce or Cut the Marketing Budget for SEM

It seems to be an assumption that you HAVE to make it a priority to invest in SEM. I’ve seen it consistently included in marketing job descriptions. Yet, it is expensive, and often doesn’t measure up when evaluating ROI.

Also, to do it effectively you need to use an agency (or have someone in-house do it full-time). This eats up more of your marketing budget.

I’ve had a couple of occasions within organizations where my team and I analyzed the ROI for SEM. Although we avoided all the typical SEM mistakes, we found:

• poor quality (junk leads)
• leads that never moved through the funnel
• low return on your advertising spend

Your full-funnel data will indicate whether or not these leads move through the funnel to SQL. If your data shows that very few/none of the leads are progressing through the funnel, it’s time to:

• Reduce the ad spend and focus on only a couple of ad campaigns, based on what generates the most interest.
• Stop SEM altogether (I know…this shocked some of you).

At one organization (cybersecurity), I focused on bid on keywords that had buying intent that were centered around two specific use cases. I maximized those because they had the most engagement with the least cost (based on analytics). Relevant high-volume and low-competition keywords for this industry are not easy to come by.

In another situation, I completely removed SEM spend. Instead, I shifted the budget to syndication. I came to this decision after testing, experimentation and optimization still yielded poor results.

Invest in Marketing Channels That Produce Good (Excellent) ROI

You need to pay close attention to the analytics for each channel you use. Marketers tend to use every channel even though they don’t produce good results. Often the leads don’t move through the funnel or don’t convert.

Here are the channels that are often used:

We were using most of them. Some are free (i.e., email, podcasts, SEO).

Optimize and/or remove marketing channels

Here’s some things that I’ve tried:

• Analyzed the channels AND the vendors. I eliminated several syndications (publications). I also eliminated a 3rd party intent vendor due to bad ROI. Instead, I used the intent signals from our existing channels and from ABM vendor (Madison Logic). They were able to provide us with intent data as part of our ABM ad and syndication package. The ROI was much better!

• Put more time and effort into SEO. We reduced or eliminated SEM (depending on the industry and metrics results).

• Optimized our email nurture campaigns and invested in specific content syndication vendors. The vendors I chose provided the best ROI and marketing-sourced sales pipeline.

• Refined our targeted LinkedIn campaigns. Based on metrics, we stopped advertising on other social channels. Additionally, I ungated the content, except for webinars.

All of these decisions were based on analytics and ROI.

Not only did we continue to meet and exceed our KPIs, but we did it on a significantly reduced marketing budget.

Refine Targeted LinkedIn Ads, and Include Organic

I’ll be brief since this is probably something you already know about LinkedIn ad campaigns.  Your uploaded list must have at least 300 contacts. Your list must match a minimum of 300 members to be used in an active campaign.

You can’t go any more targeted than that as far as a list goes. 

The key is that you keep the list narrowly focused. 

Your target account list should be narrowed down, going beyond firmographics, revenue, etc.  You should collaborate with Sales but give them a maximum # of accounts based on your budget.  The lists for your ABM campaigns should be narrowed down from your Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM). 

Given a restricted budget, it’s important to include no more than 10 roles (personas). Additionally, you’ll need to offer personalized content. To achieve this, consider grouping content for certain personas together. If you have too many personas, this will be difficult. Having a well-defined ICP and really knowing who your target audience is helps a lot!

When you focus on a smaller target audience, you’ll save money, achieve better campaign results and improve your ROI.

Here’s an excellent LinkedIn ads tutorial with reminders of what you should and shouldn’t do to make sure you run a successful campaign on LinkedIn. 

Maximize your marketing budget, avoid these mistakes.

To get the most out of your LinkedIn ad spend you need to avoid making these mistakes:

• Not checking the percentage of your budget that is going to LinkedIn audience (3rd party) networks
• No LinkedIn retargeting framework in place. Examples include:
  • Not adding in qualifying filters on top of retargeting criteria
  • Not having 30, 90, 180-day matched audience retargeting
  • Not using high-value assets (content) for your retargeting
  • Gating your high-value assets

I also made sure to included organic posts because it provided an additional way to stay in front of our audience. The key for these posts was to have ungated, relevant material and to use the appropriate #hashtags. 

Optimize Your Email Program – It’s Free

Email is still one of the most cost-effective channels (and best) ways to continue to provide your targeted (account) prospects with helpful information, gain their trust, and drive engagement.

This doesn’t cost extra and is essential regardless of what your budget is. Done right, it is still one of the best ways to maintain ongoing communication.

Here are ways that I’ve optimized emails to get maximum results:

With a limited marketing budget, or not, it is necessary to review the email program analytics regularly. I set up reports to auto-generate once a week. The team and I would collaborate or evaluate why the metrics were or weren’t good. 

Even without budget constraints you should optimize your emails first, rather than investing (too much) in SEM, retargeting, or other digital ads. Here are some ideas to improve your email programs.

In one situation I ran just a couple of SEM ads, had no retargeting, and cut back on other display ads. This strategy improved our overall ROI. We still stayed in front of the new contacts we gained by using email. The reason it worked is that we reworked our emails (and the content for it).

According to HubSpot, email marketing has an ROI of 36%.  So, for every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect an ROI of $36 (on average).  That’s a fantastic ROI, especially when you have a smaller marketing budget. 

Reconsider your webinar platform…and the rest of your MarTech stack!

Webinars are STILL one of the best forms of content (despite what some say). Your webinar program/content must be developed with the audience in mind (what they need, their schedule, their challenges, etc.). Read my previous blog “Five Ways to Improve Your Webinar Program” to get more insights.

At one organization I had just started at, I discovered that the marketing budget was being wasted on a web hosting company. The leads/contacts did NOT move through the funnel. In my experience, it is never a good idea to farm out the hosting of webinars to a web hosting company. There are more than a few reasons why it isn’t good. I won’t go into that in this post.

Needless to say, I stopped using that vendor and utilized a well-known video conferencing platform instead. They had a very affordable webinar hosting solution (less than $1000/year). It checked all the boxes we needed. I compared the webinar platform on the basis of:

• What the goal of our webinars were
• How many attendees did we expect per webinar
• How we would interact with attendees 
• What we would do with the videos after the webinar
• Ease of setup and use
• Cost

We were able to get it up and running within a short time. It didn’t take long to see the impact it made towards meeting our conversions and KPIs. Also, the cost was minimal. Many webinar platforms have a lot of bells and whistles, but you have to determine what you actually NEED.

When it comes to getting the most out of your budget – doing an audit of your MarTech stack is necessary! Too often there is overlap or it doesn’t make a significant impact towards your marketing goals.

MarTech Must Provide Value in Proportion to What It Costs

I didn’t just evaluate the webinar hosting service. In addition, I reviewed everything we allocated marketing budget for.

The metrics and analysis proved that there several vendors/technologies that didn’t move the needle. Also, their fees were not lining up with what they provided. In other words, the ROI was abysmal.

I applied the MoSCoW method to marketing. This enabled me to identify whether a vendor or technology was critical when it came to budget cuts.

When you evaluate your MarTech stack, the following criteria is a must:

• Understand how your MarTech and vendors support your strategy and goal.
• Establish clear KPIs and objectives for both.
• Ensure that they support/help you meet your KPIs.
• Regularly review metrics to ensure that you meet established ROI.
• Avoid overlap of capabilities.
• As your goals & objective evolve, you may need to evaluate if your vendors and technology need to change.
• Determine if you are getting the support you need from them.

Keep (Add) Product Review Sites in Your Marketing Budget

Marketers already know the importance of product review sites. Statistics show that B2B prospects are more likely to purchase your product if you have customers (peer groups) touting the benefits of your product and services.

As I went through the budget cut and analysis process at one organization, I realized we weren’t utilizing the marketing services of a review site. We already had an affordable contract with them which included:

• Access Traffic Analytics
• Access Competitor Analytics
• Add FAQs for Buyers, Banner Images, Gated Content, and More
• Managed Review Campaigns w/Gift Cards
• Custom Landing and Reference Review Pages
• Send Leads to CRM or MA
• Track Prospects Visiting our Website
• Buyer Intent Information

I immediately started integrating this into the existing demand generation program.

Review Sites = Good ROI

I’ve seen organizations pay little or no attention to review sites they are featured in. This is a missed opportunity. On review sites, you have potential customers actively seeking your product information. They are finding out what their peers are saying about your product. This should be a part of your customer lifecycle program. In addition, it should be included as a tactic for your demand generation strategy.

If you have a reduced/small budget, don’t overlook this as a resource to include in your plans. Compared to other marketing initiatives, review sites carry a very affordable price tag. This means they have a higher chance for good ROI. Here’s a list and details of the top 12 b2b review sites.

Marketing Budget Wrap-Up

Don’t be discouraged because you have a small/reduced marketing budget! It’s more important HOW you use your budget rather than how much you have. Don’t feel that you have to use a channel or technology just because marketing thought leaders tell you too, or because everyone else does. Do what makes sense for your unique organization and customers. Dare to be different to achieve your KPIs!

This blog is via AI – Anne’s Insights NOT Artificial Intelligence.