Whether it's a pandemic or a tough year sales-wise, the challenges of a reduced marketing budget can be troubling.

So, what should a business do?

Here are some actions to take even if your marketing budget is cut.

1) Talk to your clients

Pick up the phone to talk to clients. Find out:

• How they are faring under the New Normal
• What their biggest challenges are
• How you might be able to help

2) Value-add activities

Based on the client feedback and your understanding of the business, make use of digital marketing to send a number of targeted, personalised emails to these clients. Provide loyal clients with special offers, value adding articles, a specific client-only area on the website…

3) Audit Your Content

a. Website Content

A lot of businesses are too focused on creating new content for their website when that is not always the best way to go. If you are a business that has been around for a while, you are going to have quite a bit of content under your belt already.

This is a good thing!

It's time to focus on this content and audit it in detail. Does it need updating? (The staff page immediately springs to mind.) Is it properly targeting keywords to rank highly on Google/Bing? Is it in line with your brand's image?

b. Reposition and repurpose older content

If you publish newsletters, blog posts or use LinkedIn (or other social media) to upload posts and articles, you may be sitting on a gold mine.

Reposition this content to suit all three publishing platforms – one article for three marketing channels. It certainly saves us time and money.

Update and promote older content. (it’s something we do.) Just because you have published an article once doesn’t mean it cannot be updated and reused.

There are so many things to focus on and sometimes repurposing older content is the way to go. It will save you money and will lead to a more efficient content marketing strategy.

4) Focus on SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has to be an essential part of your marketing strategy at all times. There is never a good reason to take your foot off the pedal when it comes to ranking well on Google and/or Bing.

Find the right keywords to use for each website page so that they rank highly for buyer-intent keywords. Make use of keywords to optimise your blog and LinkedIn articles, as these are also discoverable via Google.

The beauty of SEO is that it enables your firm to rank highly on Google – to be found by potential clients and to generate leads around the clock. This doesn't take a large budget to optimise when done in house!

5) Avoid business as usual

It’s a much more virtual world than before, just think how popular remote working has become, and how business travel has slumped as it’s a great way to generate substantial savings in the short term. A ‘business as usual’ approach is going to struggle on the post Covid-19 world.

The next six months or so are going to be challenging and a test of our marketing skills as we discover what the post Covid-19 looks like both in NZ and around the world. Firms that stay in close contact with their clients, talking about the changing situation and unexpected business challenges will be able to figure out new ways to help those clients.