One of the major challenges that a Marketer faces in his career is to attain maximum reach and response at minimum cost outlay. The allocated budget always seems to be less than expectation and miles to go with very less fuel situation looming large every time. On the other hand results are crucial and genuine leads, customer acquisition and the awareness quotient becomes vital to enhance performance and expectations keeps ever mounting. To balance the outlay and the expected results, Marketers are always looking to implement a few effective programs that don't pinch the pocket at the same time adds to their kitty.

While different people adopts different kinds of program to suit their requirement on the basis of their product or service, target audience and the market requirements, there is absolutely no dearth of ideas that are implemented in today's fast paced, technology driven world. Of these a few are definitely worth a mention.

India is now leading in the usage of Social media with maximum number of registered users in Facebook are from India. On one hand this is a boon for Marketers who are looking to reach out to a particular set of audience especially pertaining to a Business to Consumer arena, the challenge always remains to get the mind space through effective visibility in a forum whose basic objective remains confined to specific focus area. The challenge is also to find the right kind of serious audience in this ocean. However, this doesn't matter much since the cost of reaching out to this audience remains peanuts compared to a conventional print, television or outdoor campaign. With the current boom in Social media, companies are increasing their focus in Social media which by itself has become a specialized area off late. In a B2B scenario there has been a rapid rise in LinkedIn usage as it is considered to be a more serious and focused platform.

The other cost effective and proven tool which has come up in recent years is "Search engine optimization" or SEO. With the help of SEO, the website or the customer acquisition landing page comes high in the ranking of search in certain keywords by which the customer searches the product or service of the said organization making this a very cost effective as well as useful Marketing tool.

While the above paragraphs cover some proven and widely used cost effective Marketing tools, some extremely innovative ideas implemented by Marketers are also worth a mention. A Marketing head of an organization operating in B2B space finding it difficult to penetrate the boundary to reach the top management of the target companies hit upon a brilliant 'no cost' idea. This person use to wait outside airport and find the names in the board used by the chauffeurs. Once the top executive comes out of airport, the walk-a talk till the parking lot was all he needed to break an important client for clinching a worthy deal. Similarly, a Digital Marketing head of an online company targeting internet savvy professionals for marketing his service uses blog and online media stories to create a great impact on his target group delivering desired results.

In the B2C context, a lot of well known brands take up low budget consumer activation programs to enhance possibility of reaching out to right audience and increase interaction. Since the current Marketing atmosphere demands increased two way communication with the customers, these brands keep focusing on events, road shows, promotions and social campaigns to great effect. A health drink brand keeps doing activities at school level reaching out to all the major schools of a town creating health awareness and promoting their brand in the bargain. Sampling of the product and perception building adds up to the cause.

The list is ever growing and the rapid and phenomenal increase in the internet and mobile penetration in India has only helped the Marketers to keep innovating newer ways of effectively reaching their target audience and create relevant favorable brand image generating response or demand or both. With the recent restrictions in sms based Marketing by TRAI, mobile as a media has taken a partial hit but e-mail remains a favorite punching bag for all kinds of brands. The popularity of Social media keeps attracting leading brands for an effective interaction with their customers and more brands will join the fray in coming months. In spite of all these popular, tried and tested innovative and cost effective Marketing tools, Marketers will keep discovering newer, better and more innovative ways to reach their prospects and customers. The challenge will always be to find the right and most effective tool and mix of such tools that can help in the objective of the organization which in turn can help the Marketer to get recognition in his organization.