1. Realize that small is beautiful. Instead of using a big marketing agency, consider working with a small one or choose a consultant/ freelancer.
2. Place your ads through your own house agency or through a media-buying service. You save money with the former, 15% of your ad cost; you save both time and money with the latter. And you get professional consultation thrown in.
3. Obtain free research by relying on industry publications and by creating your own customer questionnaire. Study the answers to gain clues about your customer’s mind. And study the handwriting on the questions for clues about customer personality types – you have no idea how much it helped me.
4. Experiment and test your marketing. Failure to experiment is a common and expensive mistake. Be patient and willing to experiment before committing. The simplest tests measure one thing at a time: price, headline, offer, medium, layout, target audience. Experiment with small publications, small markets, small mailing lists. Don’t expect to break the bank, but to learn a millions of dollars worth of information.
5. Stick with one marketing strategy. Don’t switch around. Jumping from one strategy to another is the gretest waste of marketing funds.
6. Write timeless ads and brochures. Don’t say “Our company is five years old.” because in the next year that will have to be updated. Instead, say “Our company was founded in 2010.” And don’t show photos of employees in your marketing materials. Next month one of them may not be in your team. Judge your brochures through the eyes of a customer in the future as well as the present. Creating a new brochure every year is decidedly ineffective behavior.
7. Reprint any publicity stories about you or your company and use them in your mailings, as signs, in brochures, in press kits, as framed display pieces, and as sales aids for your reps. Yesterday’s newspaper is dead and gone; yesterday’s PR story can—and really should—live forever.
8. If you’re about to do a direct mailing, try to do it with a postcard if possible. You can save money and increase your response rate at the same time.
9. Recognize that a lot of free marketing solutions works better than the costly ones. Effectiveness comes from ideas, not money invested in it.
10. If you’re bound and determined to save money, then spend your time and energy saving money by marketing to your current customers rather than drumming up new ones.

Save even more money by actively pursuing fusion marketing arrangements where you help a few companies market by distributing their brochures or putting up their signs in return for them doing the same for you. But make sure that companies you partner up with have good reputation.

The two biggest mistakes I see while working with my Clients is spending too little and spending too much on marketing.

Don’t worry if your marketing plan is not working well. You will get better overtime. It takes at least 3 years to achieve marketing optimalization. First year you learn, in second improve, on third make it work well.

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