One challenge marketing teams deal with is an ever-reducing budget and great expectation to deliver more business.

With both traditional and digital marketing strategies requiring financial investment, many marketers wonder which strategies to implement and which ones to leave out for later.

The good news is that you don’t have to spend top dollar to generate leads, revenue or to maximize awareness.

Budget-friendly Marketing Strategies

We explore five budget-conscious digital marketing strategies you can explore whether you’re a startup company or working with a shoestring budget.

1. Revamp Your Website

With up to 90 percent of B2B searches happening online before actual purchases are done, think of your website as a digital shopfront. Prospects will meet and engage with your site before they speak to your team.

It’s your best salesperson yet, working 365 days a year, and providing visitors the information they need to arrive at informed decisions.

If your website is static or outdated visitors will leave as soon as they arrive. You’ll miss out on inquiries and opportunities to generate revenue.

How can you revamp an existing website?

• Appearance matters, and it’s a reflection of your brand. Aim for visual appeal and a professional look and use a profanity filter for any comment sections or forums.
• Make the site easy to navigate and ensure visitors can find what they are looking for quickly. Include a search function to help your visitors blow past navigation to find what they are looking for.
• Make the website about your visitors. Rather than just talk about your outstanding products/services, tell your buyer how your solutions can help them achieve their goals.
• Offer different contact methods. Some people prefer phone calls while others are more comfortable with email or chat.
• Assign specific landing pages for your digital marketing campaigns to ensure visitors land on the page they wanted when they clicked the leading link.

2. Leverage User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is just that – content created by your customers/brand fans and not your team. The content may be reviews, testimonials, videos, images, comments, or blog articles by users.

While UGC was previously considered a B2C marketing strategy, it has gained plenty of significance in the B2B communication space.

In a world where the credibility of traditional advertisements is sinking, user-generated content helps speak for you by providing proof of credibility and authenticity.

It also increases your exposure, allowing you to reach new audiences. These audiences may share pain points and needs with your users and are likely to convert to paying customers.

How can you use user-generated content?

• Encourage users to create stories of themselves using your products/services. It will allow prospects to see the products/services in action by real-life customers.
• Create a sense of community by highlighting stories of businesses (your ideal customers), their pain points, and the difference your solutions made.
• Share employee-generated content to position your staff as experts in their fields. It helps humanize brands that otherwise come across as faceless.
• Compile photos and testimonials and repurpose them in videos, webinars, graphics, or email nurture campaigns to help generate leads and conversions.

3. Cold Calling

The cold calling strategy is cheaper than most digital marketing strategies, repeatable, and measurable.

It allows you to make personal connections with prospective buyers, know their pain points, and how your solutions can help solve these problems.

Here’s how to get the most out of cold calling

• Know your prospects. Not everyone will benefit from your solutions, no matter how good they are. It pays to learn about your prospects and challenges they face and existing solutions.
• Know what you’re selling and be ready to demonstrate how your solutions can fix their problems. It’s a confidence booster and helps build your credibility.
• Keep distractions at bay. Listeners can tell when your attention is being pulled in different directions. What are the odds that they will listen to a distracted salesperson?
• Cold calling is about building relationships. You want to have conversations that sell, not those that pass you off as a robotic caller. Have a great opening line, jot down questions that show interest in your prospect’s business, and remember to listen to their answers.
• Remember that rejection is part of the deal. We all strive for “yes” but sometimes, many times, we’ll receive a “no.” See what you can learn from it and move on to the next prospect.
• Ensure you’re both on the same page about the next step. It may involve rescheduling the call, setting up a meeting, or scheduling a demo.

4. Video Marketing

Did you know that more than 70 percent of B2Bs watch videos throughout the buyer journey?

Video content may help you increase customer engagement, reach prospects at different stages of the buyer journey, and maximize audience retention rate. They are a great way to break buy-in barriers where multiple decision-makers are involved.

Examples of videos you can create are product demos, tutorials, how-to-videos, expert interview panels, case studies, and customer testimonials among others.

How do you develop an effective video marketing strategy?

• Know why you want to create video. Is it to teach, nurture, inform, or encourage conversions? It will help you identify the style and content of the finished video.
• Keep videos short, preferably under two minutes to ensure you don’t lose your audience’s interest. In-depth how-to videos and case studies are exceptions and can be longer.
• Repurpose long-form content into interesting live-action videos or slideshows
• Think about the platform you’ll use to publish the video. A brand awareness video may do well on your Facebook page, while case studies may help build trust on LinkedIn.
• Promote the video on your social channels to increase viewership and boost engagement as you respond to viewer comments and feedback.
• Use analytics to track the video’s success and improve future video campaigns.

5. Mobile Marketing

Mobile devices play an important role in the digital marketing ecosystem.

B2B buyers explore solutions and suppliers on their mobile devices, providing a playfield for marketers to engage with prospective clients on the go.

Here are ways marketers can leverage this strategy:

• Consider how mobile marketing initiatives will help your business achieve your goals. Common goals include increasing awareness and conversion rates growing your revenue.
• Avoid tuning out mobile device customers by making navigation smooth and fast. Users are unlikely to return to your site if they had trouble accessing it on their mobile devices.
• List your business on local online directories to ensure search engines find and serve your site to users looking for services similar to yours.
• Create a mobile app to help you serve customers better and improve your sales team’s productivity.
• Design eye-catching simple email templates that can be viewed comfortably n small screens. Service providers like Mailchimp offer tons of pre-designed, responsive templates you can customize to fit your needs.
• Use SMS for running digital marketing campaigns. Limit the number of messages you send to  2 – 4 texts monthly and put them out during business hours. Be sure to provide an opt-out for those who don’t wish to receive any more texts.