Small companies and professionals typically spend money on marketing without a clear understanding of the expected returns.

A return in marketing spend is typically measured with the following formula.

(Sales Growth – Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = Return on Marketing Spend.

Large companies use complex tools and different variation of the above formula to understand the return on marketing spend and to guide management decisions. However, many companies still struggle to get a full understanding and visibility on the return on marketing spend.

Small companies and professionals typically do not have access to those tools , and still need to understand how to best spend on marketing activities. Small companies and professionals need to address two main questions:

• What is the expected return on the marketing spend?
• What is the best marketing strategy for the services they are offering?

Expected Return on marketing spend

We collected some benchmarks from Nielsen and ProfitWorks, which can guide small companies and professionals on how to invest on marketing activities. For clarity, a return of 6 USD means that for each dollar spent, the company has a return in sales of 7 USD dollars.

The marketing spend on socials are on the rise given the ability to tailor campaigns to specific customer segments, however there are not enough statistics to demonstrate their effectiveness. Recent research of Smartinsights showed that socials (organic) are mainly used to generate brand awareness (36% of organizations) and customer engagement (325 of the organizations), very few organization uses to generate business leads (12%). The paid marketing on socials is mainly used to generate leads (37% of the organization).

Major global marketing firms also suggests different approaches to increase the effectiveness of marketing activities and spend:

1. Develop specific content to be posted on a website and social sites, in order to attract target customers. Customers are looking for high-quality content typically on business, culture, wellness, and daily life.

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2. Use magazines that have the same customer targets of your business. Customers, especially business customers, are looking for specific content on products and services on specialized magazines. Advertising your products and service on those magazines can be very effective.

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3. Use marketing campaigns that address multiple services and products. If you want to implement a marketing campaign, you should create the halo effect and address multiple products and services to leverage synergies.

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4. Use video both on TV or on YouTube to build brand loyalty. Videos are a great tool to create brand loyalty. TV advertising is typically very expensive, so for a small company and freelancers, it is more convenient to use videos on YouTube. Nevertheless, the quality of the content should be high on both channels.

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5. Use consistent messages across different media and marketing channels to increase effectiveness. It is important to deploy common messages across channels and potentially at the same time to increase the return on marketing spend.

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6. Promote your brand on your website, social sites and store to reinforce loyalty. Promoting your brand across all touch points with the customers, including your online sites and store, increase the brand awareness and loyalty in the long-term.

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7. Provide premium gift packs to increase perceived value. Premium gift (like a small voucher for future purchasing, some chocolates, etc) to your customers can represent a short-term cost, but it will increase the long-term perceived value.

Small companies and freelancers in Saudi Arabia can derive important lessons learned from those global benchmarks and insights. Small companies and professionals could assess applicability to their own business activities with some cheap and simple trails.

Based on our experience, online marketing is growing very fast in Saudi Arabia., and this requires professionals and small companies to have an online presence.

Twitter , together with SNAPCHAT, seems to be the most effective tool to promote content on social channels to Saudi clients. Facebook is mainly used by the expatriate population. Linkedin is highly used by the professionals and large corporation. However all social channels do not focus on generating leads but building mainly brand awareness.

Serviis aims to be a very effective marketing tool for professionals and small companies by allowing to spend on marketing for very specific business leads.

Serviis is promoting all our 100 services through campaigns, media article, videos and other channels which will have benefits for all service providers. A customer looking for a cleaner may also look for other services providers generating synergies for all. Serviis is on all main social channels and you can visit them to look at all our marketing campaigns: Serviis on Twitter, Serviis on Facebook, Serviis on Linkedin, Serviis on IG, Serviis on YouTube and Serviis on Google

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Serviis also provides an opportunity for small companies and freelancers to have its own online profile with a description of service offerings and reviews. See this article on how to build a killer profile

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Serviis allows to use marketing budget only to bid for specific business leads and provides the initial credits for free.  This approach allows freelancers and small companies to use their marketing budget to generate real business leads. Read this article on how serviis works.

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Serviis allows freelancers and small companies to collect additional credits for free by introducing to Serviis new service providers. Read this article on how to get free credits

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Serviis allows freelancers and small companies to collect customer reviews and use them to improve the quality of their businesses and promote their performance. Read this article on how customers’ reviews can bring business

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Join Serviis as a professional service provider on https://www.serviis.com/sa/en/pro-application and enjoy all our benefits.