The 4 F’s of Technology Marketing on a Limited Budget

The 4 Fs of Technology Marketing on a Limited Budget An unlimited budget for your technology marketing?

Dream on! Few if any organizations have that privilege.

So here are four hints on how to get more out of your limited technology marketing budget and spend it effectively:

Focus. If your budget is limited, don’t stretch it too thinly over too many marketing campaigns, or any real impact will be zero. Make a list of campaign ideas and arrange them in order of the most important or strategic one first, next most important, and so on. Starting at the top, allocate the full budget each item needs, until your strategic items are budgeted.
Free. If you run out of technology marketing budget too soon, then see which items could benefit from free or inexpensive resources. Want to know what your market wants? Call your customers and ask them. See what people are saying on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Want leads? Ask satisfied customers for referrals to people they know. Write posts on your blog. Write guest posts on other blogs. Only use marketing budget when you reach the limits of what you can usefully get for free.
Friends. Make business friends with whom you can swap ideas for effective low-cost marketing, or possibly undertake joint-venture technology marketing actions and thus split the costs. Get a little help from them if you haven’t used tools like social media or Google AdWords before, and give some help back.
Figures. Calculate your return on investment (ROI). If you did an advertising campaign, how many inquiries? And how many sales? If you exhibited at a trade show, how many leads? Rank your investments in order of decreasing profitability. Eliminate the losers. Continue with the winners.