The best thing that you can do when it comes to Marketing is to figure out how to do it for less money. Marketing is never a sure-shot. Whether you’re running a small local campaign or a global push, there’s some luck and a whole lot of trial and error involved.

When you bring your marketing costs down, you’re able to take those shots without breaking the bank. That allows you to take more shots, and it allows you to stay in the game for as long as you need in order to make an impact.

It can be tricky figuring out where you should be putting your advertising budget, where you can afford to cut costs and how to bring your marketing plan in under-budget. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

Take stock monthly

If it’s been a month since you launched that radio ad campaign and it doesn’t seem to be doing you any good, you may want to go ahead and put that money towards something else. It’s unlikely that any campaign will completely pay for itself in the first thirty days, but if it’s not generating a single lead in that time, then it’s unlikely to generate a lead in the next thirty day following, either.

Message, not materials

All marketing is communication. It’s about getting your Message out to people. The only reason to consider the materials you’re using is because they are part of the message. A Xeroxed flier sends the right message for a punk show, but maybe not for a luxury condominium community. Generally, what you want from your marketing materials is something cost-effective, above all. This can mean cheap to the point of disposability, or it can just mean reusable, like flexible, modular stands for your exhibition setup that can easily be reused. It’s rare that you make a sale because you spent the extra cash on something fancy. If you’re getting your message across, that’s all that really counts.

Talk about your brand

Whether at conventions or neighbourhood parties, telling people about what you do tends to go a lot farther than impersonal newspaper ads and radio spots. Think about it, was your favourite band recommended to you by a TV commercial, or by a friend who has great taste in music? Did you settle on your favourite drink because of a radio ad, or because you remember sipping it with friends on long Summer days?

The most effective way to push your Brand is to connect with people in person. That’s not always easy, and you may have to reach beyond just the people you can talk to face-to-face in order to make a healthy profit, but face-to-face is the foundation of a strong brand and strong salesmanship.

Always be promoting

T-shirts and car magnets are a great way to promote your brand in your everyday life while you’re out and about. And aren’t people always asking if you have a pen handy? All those little promotional items you see with phone numbers and websites printed on them, they do, in fact, work like a charm. They allow you to promote your brand without having to buy a minute of advertising time.

Building a brand requires a lot of hard work, from creating and testing the product, to getting it into people’s hands, to doing the promotion and marketing that helps to establish your presence in the consumer’s mind.

The best way to approach all of this is to make sure that you can do it cheaply. Marketing is not done through grand slams and big hits, it’s done through persistence. For every overnight sensation, every Dollar Shave Club or GoDaddy, that seems to spring up in a single day with a massive viral campaign, there are thousands of brands that build through slow, steady work, that win a few more customers every day.