Stop Wasting Your Marketing Dollars: 4 Profit Levers You’re Ignoring

Look, if you think your marketing needs to get more efficient to increase your profits, you might be barking up the wrong tree. Everyone’s so focused on cutting ad costs or improving targeting. But that’s not always the answer. Sometimes, the real money isn’t in squeezing a few extra clicks out of your Facebook ads. It’s in looking at what happens after the customer shows up.

In rural areas, every marketing dollar counts. But if you’re not maximizing how much those customers spend, how often they buy, or what it costs you to serve them, you’re leaving money on the table.

Here are four areas where you can boost your return without touching your marketing budget.

1. Increase Your Average Ticket Value

It doesn’t matter how good your ads are if customers are only buying the bare minimum when they show up. Want to grow your revenue? Get them to spend more. It’s that simple.

Here’s how: stop thinking about selling products and start thinking about selling bundles. If you’re running a farm store, don’t just sell individual items—create packages. Got eggs? Pair them with local cheese, bread, and bacon and sell the “Ultimate Farm Breakfast Kit.” You’ve instantly turned a $5 sale into a $25 sale.

What to Do Today: Look at your best-selling products. What can you bundle together? Or, offer a premium version of something you're already selling. Give people a reason to upgrade.

2. Lower Your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

Here’s a cold, hard truth: you can sell all day long, but if your profit margins are razor-thin, it won’t matter. The fastest way to fix this? Lower your costs. I’m not talking about cutting corners or reducing quality—just being smarter with your suppliers.

As rural entrepreneurs, we have a unique advantage—local connections. Can you source products from nearby at a lower cost? Can you get better bulk deals? Lowering your COGS means every dollar you bring in from your marketing efforts is worth more.

What to Do Today: Start negotiating. Talk to your suppliers. Ask about bulk discounts. Find alternatives. Or, team up with other local businesses to buy in bigger quantities and share the savings.

3. Create Recurring Revenue

If you’re constantly having to find new customers, you’re playing a losing game. It’s far more expensive to acquire a new customer than to sell to someone who already trusts you. That’s where recurring revenue comes in.

For rural businesses, subscription models are a goldmine waiting to be tapped. Are you a local butcher? Offer a “Meat of the Month” club. Running a farm stand? Create a CSA (community-supported agriculture) box where customers sign up for regular deliveries of fresh produce.

Recurring revenue means you’re not starting from zero every month. It stabilizes cash flow and makes every marketing dollar stretch further.

What to Do Today: Find a product or service in your business that lends itself to repeat sales. Create a subscription plan. Make it simple, convenient, and valuable—so good that people would feel dumb not signing up.

4. Get Customers to Buy More Frequently

If your customers are only coming to you once or twice a year, you’ve got a problem. Repeat business is the backbone of any successful company, and the more often people buy, the better your marketing ROI looks.

Here’s where a loyalty program can be a game changer. Give people a reason to come back regularly, whether it’s a punch card, discounts for repeat purchases, or exclusive deals. And don’t forget email and text marketing—if you’re not reminding customers about new products or seasonal offers, you’re missing out.

What to Do Today: Set up a simple loyalty program. Even a basic punch card can encourage people to buy more often. Then, start building an email list and send regular, value-packed updates to keep them coming back.

Final Thoughts: Focus on the Right Levers

Here’s the bottom line: improving your marketing efficiency is great, but it’s not the only way to boost your revenue. In fact, sometimes it’s not even the best way. You don’t need to change your marketing strategy to make more money—you need to squeeze more value out of what you’re already doing.

Increase how much your customers spend. Lower your costs. Get people coming back regularly. Once you start pulling these levers, your return on marketing will skyrocket.