You're working with an advertising campaign budget of $5,000 per month for a local small business. How would you spend it?

Focus on High ROI Yielding Strategies

With limited funds, the key to effective local advertising is focusing on strategies that bring in the highest ROI. Here are five strategies you can use to make the most of your $5,000 budget:

1. Search engine marketing (SEM).

2. Social media marketing (SMM).

3. Email marketing.

4. Content marketing.

5. Local SEO tactics.

By implementing these strategies, you can make the most of your $5,000 monthly budget and see an increase in brand awareness, engagement, conversions, and ultimately, ROI.

Use a Combination of Marketing Channels

The answer here very much depends on the type of business it is, as social media can be a lot more suitable for businesses in the beauty and food space, but not as good for things like plumbing. I would focus on a mix of digital and traditional marketing channels to reach the target audience effectively.

Spend 20% of the budget on Social Media, allowing you to target specific demographics and interests, as well as hyper-local targeting.

Use 40% on Local SEO to improve the business' visibility in local search results. This would involve optimizing the business's website for local keywords, building citations and links, and improving the local listings on Google My Business and other directories.

The other 40% of the budget should go towards Google Ads to target people who are actively searching for products or services like the ones offered by the business. The main reason is you can implement them quickly and get instant results just when you need them.

Create High-Quality Content

When working with a limited budget, it's crucial to prioritize creating high-quality content for a small business. Quality content can take many forms, including blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, and social media posts. Investing in content creation can improve visibility for the business, drive website traffic, and establish it as an authority in the industry.

This can enhance the business's image for search engines and potential customers, ultimately leading to increased brand awareness and customer engagement. By allocating resources toward quality content creation, small businesses can maximize their marketing efforts while staying within their budget.

Split Your Budget Between Digital and Print for Max ROI

With a budget of $5,000 per month to work with, it's important to prioritize and get creative. Splurging on one form of advertising might sound nice, but if you're looking to take this budget as far as possible, then it's wise to spread the budget across diverse campaigns. For instance, you could use some budgets for digital promotions such as Google Ads or display ads, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, while allocating the remaining funds for more traditional forms such as radio ads, mailers, or even newspaper placements (yes, they still exist!).

Investing in a mix of channels helps ensure your message reaches a larger audience while also giving you great insights into where your budget is best spent. After all, it's not just how much money you invest in an advertising campaign—it's how intelligently you invest that pushes your ROI up!

Direct Website Traffic Through Hyper-Targeting

4K in PPC and 1K in Facebook ads, focusing on long-tail keywords and running hyper-targeted campaigns, I'd be looking to get as many customers as driving direct website traffic.

This would be a general starting point, but of course, it depends on the business niche, or more precisely, the customer journey. Most times, online ads would take up about half the budget, with the rest going to target social channels and email marketing, usually.