How to Stretch Your Marketing Budget

We love to give our clients what they want, and sometimes that means coming up with creative ways to help them do more with a smaller budget. To help clients spend less, we’ve found ways to modify the asset format, change the approach (they do more work—we do less), or decrease the number of drafts we deliver. Scoping is an art and a science, and we love to give our clients choices that make sense for them. Here are a few examples:

  • Challenge: Opportunity Fund—California’s largest microlender—needed a for-profit-caliber presentation on a nonprofit budget.
  • Solution: Normally, we would do the PowerPoint work ourselves. But in this case, we provided specific guidance on everything from organizational flow to copyedits to graphics. Then, our client had one of her direct reports do the work. She was really satisfied with this approach, and gave us this lovely case study.
  • Challenge: A leading analytics software company wanted to spend less per eBook in order to deliver a series of eBooks.
  • Solution: To keep costs to a minimum, we asked our client if he would like to write the first draft. Since this was highly specific content, he thought this was a great option. We edited the eBook and created a visually rich template—services our client was happy to outsource.
  • Challenge: One of our Fortune 500 financial services clients asked us to produce a video for an upcoming sales pitch, but she only had a week—and a limited budget.
  • Solution: After much discussion, we decided to create a “photorealistic PowerPoint.” We created a persona, and used real-life images for our backgrounds as our subject moved through her day. Screenshots and marketing messages popped up as our subject interacted with the product. Finally, we layered in subtitles and animation to give the story movement and make it feel video-like. Our client was so happy that she commissioned several additional decks targeted to other VIP prospects.

Don’t be afraid to ask How to Get the Best Value From the Content Bureau. We genuinely want to help our clients find the price/service trade-offs that work for them on each project.

By Allison Hayase