It is a dilemma that every small business faces: how to cut marketing costs. When a company reaches the point where they no longer fret about their marketing costs, then they are no longer a small business; at that point, they move on to the world of big business. For the rest of us that are still stuck in small business land, we need to find ways to cut some corners.

The best way to figure out how to streamline your marketing plan is to evaluate your current efforts. You can do this by conducting an audit of your own company.

Step One: Determine Who Your Customers Are

Obviously, you should have done this before you even started your business. But it’s never a bad idea to go back and look at this all important question again. Who exactly are you targeting in your marketing campaigns? Who needs the product or service that you provide? How can you best persuade those customers to come to you? What types of media do they use most often?

These are the first questions you need to ask yourself as you evaluate your marketing strategy. You may be surprised at some of the answers you find.

Step Two: What Are Your Customers Buying?

Are you getting your target customers into your store with your current efforts? Are they buying the things you expected them to buy? Are you selling as much as you expected to sell? Are products that you didn’t put much faith in outselling other, more promising products? Are you getting a different kind of customer than you thought you would?

Asking yourself these questions can reveal one of two things: either your business is not what you thought it was, or your marketing is reaching the wrong people.

Step Three: How Happy Are Your Customers?

In order to find out how pleased your past customers are with your business, you need to ask them. Design a postcard printing project where you include what amounts to a survey for the customers to fill out. Send these cards to any past customers for whom you have address information (which should be all of them). Hopefully, you will get a healthy response. Also, include surveys right in your store for customers to fill out.

It is important to know how well your company is fulfilling its promises when you evaluate your marketing efforts.

Step Four: Take a Look Backwards

Look at the marketing strategies you employed in the past. Which ones worked the best? Which ones fell flat? This can tell you a lot about the techniques you should use as you go forward. If a strategy worked before, there is no reason not to try it again – especially if your current ads are not performing up to your expectations.

Carefully go through these four steps to determine how effective your current marketing strategy is. Most importantly, you must be willing to make changes if they are needed. Do not stick with a plan just because you are afraid to take a chance. If something is not working, change it.