I was having a discussion with a friend today over money and how we need money to market effectively. A lot of my associates beleive we need large budgets to market effectively. Is this always true? Absolutely not! Throughout my travels, I find it’s very clear that poor marketers throw money at a “vehicle” and hope it solves their problems. They ask for more budget space every year in the hopes that it helps generate more leads or build more brand awareness, when every year the improvements aren’t all that great. You know that means? We need more money! Absolute b.s.

A lot of the great marketers I know are able to get better results by being creative and daring. Their initiatives often didn’t cost a great deal of money and were able to be tracked, improved and built upon as they moved forward. Very simply, you never need a great deal of money to get results, you need just need to make use of the traits that make a good marketer.

It’s important to point out that some marketing initiatives may take a tremendous amount of money that doesn’t mean you’re a poor marketer that just means it’s an expensive initiative. What makes a poor marketer is constantly wanting more money to throw at a problem instead of taking the time to be creative and find new ways to make that money work harder for you. A great example is SEO, if you have the budget, perhaps you should stop spending money on billboard, bus and magazine ads and build up your online presence that can be measured, improved and built on. However,  a great number of people I talk to discount the power of SEO only because they haven’t done their research and would much rather stick to what they know. Notice how I didn’t say they stuck to something they know works.