In small business, every dollar and hour counts. When you’re running a marketing campaign on a limited budget and timeframe, it’s important to produce results — otherwise, what’s the point?

In this article, I’ll teach you some of the techniques to maximize the results of your marketing campaigns and boost efficiency for the same (or smaller!) budget. Consider these tips a guide to increase the effectiveness of all of your marketing campaigns and to maximize your limited time and energy as an entrepreneur.

1. Develop Actionable Insights

Developing insight allows you to draw actionable conclusions about your marketing campaigns, so that you can iterate, expand, and attract more customers. The biggest challenge I see with entrepreneurs is that they think their marketing campaigns are too small to draw any conclusions.

To develop actionable insights, you need to have proper tracking so you know where your customers are coming from. If your customer volume is small, it’s important to go over conversions with a fine-tooth comb to determine which channels and specific campaigns are actually sending customers to you.

Ask these questions to gain actionable insights:

• Where did my last 3 customers come from?
• What insights or conclusions can I draw about where that customer came from?
• What are their business needs?
• How can I adapt my marketing messaging to speak to those business needs?
• Are there any patterns in how customers are finding me or the business needs they talk about?

Write these insights down. They might be small in number, but they’re the key to developing marketing messages that speak to your customers’ needs and developing more efficient campaigns.

2. Focus on What Works

Hypothesize

Too many entrepreneurs spend their precious time and money on marketing projects that don’t actually produce results. The key to maximizing your time and money is to ask yourself,

• Why am I doing this?
• What is the intended result?

This inquiry is your hypothesis. For example, I’m writing guest posts to increase backlinks to my website, increase search ranking, and increase traffic and leads. My hypothesis is, “if I write more guest posts, my leads will increase.”

Search engine optimization takes a while, but I’ve written down my hypothesis, and remind myself of my intention every time I write a guest blog post. This helps keep me focused around my core goal. I see the intended results as our website slowly climbs the search ranking for keywords.

Audit Your Current Strategies

Effective growth marketing is about making small bets and changes to see what works and what doesn’t. Taking your insights from the first step, you can begin to refine, eliminate, and expand campaigns.

Think about:

• Where am I spending money on marketing with little or no results?
• How can I expand my successful campaigns to get more customers?

This analysis allows you to eliminate wasteful spending and save time while maximizing the effectiveness of your successful marketing campaigns.

3. A/B Test

A/B testing allows you to find the most resonant messaging, creative, and content for your target audience. Essentially, you’re showing customers two variations of the same ad or web page to determine which one is more successful.

It’s hard to know for sure which messaging is going to resonate with your audience until you test it. I’ve been consulting companies for years, and my hunch for A/B tests is still wrong about 40% of the time.

If you can increase your conversion rate by 50%, you’re essentially doubling your ad spend without spending any extra money. VWO provides a cost-effective way to create A/B tests on your website.

4. Follow Through

The worst thing that an entrepreneur can do in their business and in marketing is to have little or no follow-through. Setting up and promptly forgetting marketing campaigns wastes valuable time, money, and resources.

Some marketing campaigns may take longer to see results. Following through on a marketing initiative means working on a project long after the excitement and sparkle has worn off. The worst thing you can do is abandon an effort halfway through. Giving up means wasted time, and you may never really develop any actionable insights for future campaigns.

There are a few instances where it’s okay to end a marketing initiative before you planned, and that’s if you’re seeing zero traction (i.e. no indicators of success or progress), or if your other marketing campaigns are far outperforming. Otherwise, finish what you start.

Get the Most Out of Your Marketing

I hope that these tips give you some practical advice for how to maximize your marketing campaigns. By following the steps outlined above, you can make your marketing campaigns a lot more efficient and spend your limited marketing budget more effectively. Creating super efficient campaigns often requires more work on the front-end, but the investment is well worth the long-term benefits.

Want to learn more about maximizing your marketing campaigns? Download the checklist to optimize your campaigns for different channels.