Protect your Marketing Investment: Media Mix is Essential
As an entrepreneur and small business owner, managing marketing expenses while maximizing return on investment (ROI) is a constant challenge. With so many media options available, it is tempting to cut marketing dollars when budgets are tight, especially if metrics do not show quarterly results. Now, more than ever, strategic marketing requires a strong media mix that aligns with your business goals for retention and growth.
Here are a few ideas to consider to protect your marketing investment:
Digital media works
Use social media to its full potential. Craft compelling images, videos, and captions that entice viewers to want to learn more or engage with your business. According to Statista (2025), more than 6.25 billion users are engaged in a combination of social platforms from LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. If your business is still posting the same message across all platforms, it might be one of your biggest mistakes. Talk and demonstrate in videos or REELS differently to each segment audience on the diverse social media platforms.
Overall, a digital campaign is the crux to build brand awareness and market events. Measuring the return is becoming more and more important with time spent on managing sites, crafting posts, and responding to threads. My strategic marketing plan includes earned, owned, and paid social media to gain new followers, build awareness, and ultimately drive sales.
Manage time and talent using AI platforms like Co-Pilot, Claude Sonnet and ChatGPT for framework are fun and easy to use to help spark ideas or clean up grammar. However, be careful to ensure your own unique voice is being portrayed correctly. Try different words to enhance your brand and write a clear message. Authenticity is still key in any social media post.
Two main objectives for digital campaigns:
First, to engage potential, targeted customers
Second, to retain current customers and communicate a strategic message
The key metrics will align to your business goals. To measure awareness, use metrics like reach, exposure, and amplifications. The combination of tracking the impressions, page views, “likes” and reach are more important than ever. The combination of these platforms should drive sales and the quarterly results should display spikes or growth.
An email campaign must mirror the social campaign. The email platforms such as MailChimp (which can be free for small businesses) and Constant Contact will be measured on Users clicks, page views, and links back to the URL. The metric will show how many conversions resulted in the new monthly Email signups over the total clicks from the social networks.
Maximize traditional media
If your strategic marketing plan is comprehensive with clear goals and objectives with a passionate team overlooking implementation, the proper use of traditional media (i.e. print, television, radio, outdoor) is critical to success. Based on your marketing plan, consistent placement on radio, television, print and outdoor will drive new growth and complement the already strong media presence. Radio is an excellent medium to drive immediate attention to your product or service; television will showcase your product to entice buyers; print can display a message in a meaningful way and include your QR code to your website, and outdoor is your billboard to direct customers to your store or event. These mediums are more essential than ever to help increase revenues, drive new growth and retain services. Not to mention retaining business morale. So, just when you think you can save money by cutting the marketing budget, a strategic media mix will aid business growth.
Reducing marketing spending may seem like a smart financial decision, but it typically backfires by damaging business sales — if not immediately, then within 18 months. Protect your marketing investment and do not make the mistake of cutting marketing spending, thinking it is cost-cutting alone. This approach often proves counterproductive. Those who cut back will find themselves needing to spend far more to rebuild their market position, hire better talent, and regain lost ground if they had maintained consistent marketing momentum throughout the challenging period.
Jennifer Bushong is the founder of INSPIRE Northwest and CEO of JBe Marketing Group LLC, a full-service marketing and communications firm in Washington state. Bushong earned a master’s in journalism with a concentration in public relations from Kent State University. She graduated cum laude with a communication degree from the University of Washington. The INSPIRE Northwest conference is Oct. 16. To connect, email jennifer@jbemarketinggroup.com or visit www.jbe-marketing.com.