Get the Most from Your Marketing Budget

In our post today, we look at some ideas on getting the most from your marketing budgets and how Ticketsolve can help along the way.

Online all the time.

Recent ecommerce studies have shown that more and more people are purchasing online than ever before. A whooping 9 in 10 people purchase goods online in the UK spending an average of £1,175 per annum. In Ireland 2.6 million people go online to purchase spending €1,392 per annum. That is a lot of spending power online. And perhaps pretty obvious. However, not everyone is online, so before throwing all your euros and pounds into the digital basket consider your target market.

Is your target market online?

While some of your target market is probably online, some may not be online at all. Consider a story related to us by one of our customers. He gets a phone call from a rather irate and frustrated customer who was unable to get a ticket to a show (said show being sold out). After probing further, he soon found out that the patron isn't really online at all. The patron had missed all the tweets, facebook postings, emails, paid for ads and banners about the show. He had been waiting for his mailer, that he always gets, and when it didn't arrive, he called, only to find out the show he wanted to see was sold out. This is only one patron granted, but our customer wondered how many patrons they had lost to moving over to all digital advertising and marketing.

The lesson here is about knowing who your customers are, and where they are getting their information. Going digital is smart, so long as you don't lose your other patrons along the way.

Offline - think targeted.

So if a portion of your budget needs must go to offline strategies, be sure they are very targeted. This will minimise costs and waste, while still allowing you to communicate with those customers who are not online savvy. Also, consider how your offline efforts can be reused. There may be ways to create reusable offline materials for other purposes.

Digital marketing

Digital and social media marketing is all that anyone really discusses. And why not? It is an inexpensive and engaging way to interact with your audience. Digital marketing does require its own plan and budget, and some research in order to optimally utilise things like twitter, Facebook, etc. When thinking digital marketing don't forget about your website. Responsive design and new website design techniques can help distinguish your organisation considerably, while creating a seamless experience for your patron. Digital marketing is moving tremendously fast, what is popular now, may not be in a few months time. So be ready to change, but . . .

If it works - stick with it.

To many times we change for the sake of changing. There may not be a real need for the change, but we think, I can't possibly use the same marketing plan from the last two years! If it works and you are getting results, stick with it. That of course does not apply for building new audiences - that takes another layer of thinking.

Do what you can, but hire the rest

This is the single biggest balancing act. Doing what you can, but getting help where you need it. Getting the right help, while costs in the short term, can gain you some serious long term gains - and cost you less in the long run. That also means being very smart about those hires.

Use your data and be customer driven

To make a budget go further, you have to be customer driven. This means you get fewer shots in the dark. But let's face it, we all fail sometimes. Using your data to see where things have gone pear shaped can help you learn and come back smarter. Using Ticketsolve sales reports, plus your marketing stats from for example, Google Analytics and the new Twitter analysis lets you see how your marketing efforts are impacting your sales. Mailchimp, which is integrated into Ticketsolve and allows you to send targeted email campaigns, can be tracked to see opens and thus to track conversions.

Build your network and share

At Ticketsolve, we have a 150 organisations working to build amazing cultural organisations and fantastic patron experiences. This represents a huge opportunity to share, and learn from each other's experiences so we all create better, leaner and more efficient organisations. Want to join us? Have some great marketing tips?