Cost optimization is the holy grail for any startup.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers marketing and PR teams the opportunity to boost campaign performance and make data-driven decisions.
AWS enables these teams to easily manage and deliver content globally, optimize costs with flexible pricing, and leverage advanced analytics for deeper insights.
In this blog, we’ll explore seven cost optimization strategies.
1) The AWS pricing model
Opting for AWS is a cost optimization in and of itself. The pricing model is designed to help companies save money without sacrificing campaign quality and the end-user experience.
The main pricing models include:
- Pay-as-you-go: You only pay for the computing you use. There are no long-term commitments or upfront payments. Ideal for teams who need flexibility in their cloud usage.
- Reserved instances: You commit to a specific amount of resources for a predetermined period in exchange for a lower rate than on-demand instances. Opt for reserved instances when you can predict future and current usage patterns.
- Spot instances: You bid on unused AWS compute resources. Spot instances are much cheaper than any other pricing model, providing a 90% savings potential compared to on-demand pricing. The only caveat? You can lose the capacity at short notice, making it ideal only if you are flexible with your computing capacity.
- A 12-month free tier for new users: Includes limited resources and services.
2) Scalability and flexibility
As a PR exec, you can expect website traffic to surge above the average during a product launch or a major announcement.
Maintaining and monitoring site performance can be a challenge. You don’t only want the website to work, but you also need visitors to be able to interact with the content. For example, if you’re announcing pre-orders for a much-anticipated product, the website should be able to handle sign-ups, transactions, and so on.
AWS’ scalable infrastructure is designed to handle these spikes efficiently.
With AWS services like auto-scaling and elastic load balancing, websites and applications automatically adjust their capacities to meet increased traffic demands.
As a result, your website remains strong and stable—even during peak periods, when downtime is not only an annoyance but could also cost you missed transaction opportunities.
Similarly, marketing campaigns like Black Friday or summer sales generate substantial traffic, burdening a website. And if you’re a global provider, traffic can fluctuate randomly, even in non-campaign seasons.
With AWS, you always have the right bandwidth—never too little that the website crashes and never too much that it unnecessarily increases your cost center.
The end result?
A smooth experience for your end user while you pay only for the computing resources you need.
3) Data analytics and insights
AWS offers Amazon QuickSight and AmazonRedShift as part of its analytics suite.
PR professionals can use these AWS services to:
- Perform a detailed media coverage analysis, including an overall sentiment evaluation.
- Monitor metrics that matter, such as CTR, social media interactions, brand mentions, open rates (for email), and website analytics.
This real-time data lets you fine-tune your strategies and optimize future campaigns for a better return on investment (ROI).
Amazon Kinesis and AWS Data Pipeline help marketers collect, process, and analyze large volumes of customer data.
Let’s say a customer visits your website, browses several product pages, and adds a few items to their cart but leaves without completing the purchase.
Kinesis records each of these actions in real-time.
Kinesis does this for every customer’s visit. The Data Pipeline aggregates the data and presents it in a useful format for analysis. Some insights Data Pipeline may gather include:
- Common actions like cart abandonment.
- Product preferences per customer.
You can use the data to send customers relevant marketing content (via AWS Lambda) and dig deeper into the source of issues like cart abandonment.
Additionally, feed customer data into Amazon SageMaker and wait for its machine learning algorithm to predict future customer behavior.
So, when that same customer revisits your website again, the home page will be personalized to their interests, increasing the chances of conversion.
Overall, AWS supports more personalized and effective marketing, which leads to improved customer engagement and marketing ROI.
4) Content delivery and distribution
AWS’ Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, Amazon CloudFront, is an essential tool for PR professionals looking to efficiently distribute press releases, multimedia content, and other PR materials across the globe.
CDN is a network of servers strategically located worldwide (called edge locations) to deliver media to users quickly and efficiently. CDN guarantees the content remains accessible over a specified period, even during failures and maintenance.
How does CDN do this?
CDN stores copies of your content closer to your users’ location as cached web content. Therefore, individuals located in New York can retrieve content from the New York edge location, while those in Tokyo will access it from the corresponding edge location, and so forth.
As a result, CDN prevents common issues like server overloads or slow content delivery, which could otherwise lead to a frustrating user experience.
5) Security and compliance
AWS offers robust security features and compliance certifications, which are invaluable for PR and marketing teams in protecting sensitive data and maintaining regulatory compliance.
These features make sure that personal and financial information is kept safe and according to the law. This builds trust with customers and stakeholders.
A team working on a campaign that collects user data from Europe and California needs to follow strict data protection rules. These rules include GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California.
AWS services, equipped with compliance certifications, enable these teams to manage and protect this data effectively.
AWS’ encryption and security protocols can secure user information from unauthorized access and potential breaches while ensuring data handling practices comply with legal standards.
AWS’ suite of security services includes:
- Amazon Cognito: Manages user authentication and access, enhancing security and compliance with user data management standards like GDPR and CCPA.
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): Manages the authorization of user entry into AWS features.
- AWS Key Management Service (KMS): Manages cryptographic keys for data encryption, helping protect sensitive data and meet compliance requirements.
- AWS Shield: Provides managed DDoS protection to safeguard applications from external threats.
- Amazon GuardDuty: Offers threat detection to protect AWS accounts and workloads from malicious activity and unauthorized access.
- AWS CloudTrail: Logs and monitors account activity for governance, compliance, and operational auditing.
- AWS Config: Tracks resource configurations and changes to benefit in compliance and auditing of AWS environments.
- Amazon Macie: Leverages machine learning to autonomously detect, categorize, and safeguard confidential information stored in AWS.
- Amazon Inspector: Evaluates applications for security weaknesses to enhance compliance and security status.
- AWS Certificate Manager (ACM): Manages SSL/TLS certificates for secure data communication.
6) Cost-efficiency
AWS cost optimization is crucial for startups to maximize the benefits of the cloud.
While the pay-as-you-go model inherently offers cost efficiency and flexibility for fluctuating resource needs, there’s more to the story, such as data storage, especially backups, which can be a hidden cost driver.
Here’s where cloud-based data management platforms like Clumio come into play. They are specifically designed to enhance AWS cost optimization. By integrating seamlessly with AWS, Clumio helps startups significantly reduce backup costs.
7) Collaboration and integration
AWS provides collaboration tools and integrations with third-party marketing platforms, CRM systems, and analytics tools that:
- Improve PR and marketing teams’ workflows and data-sharing capabilities.
- Help both teams execute coordinated campaigns with greater efficiency.
- Allows the sharing of insights more effectively.
- Synchronize their efforts.
For example, AWS works with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot via APIs. These systems let marketing teams of any size analyze and understand customer data to target the right people with their campaigns.
API management is very important since AWS can be integrated with various third-party platforms. And when it comes to API management, the choice between tools like Apigee and Mulesoft often comes into play.
These platforms can greatly influence the architecture and efficiency of data flow between services. By evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of Apigee vs Mulesoft, teams can decide which tool better integrates with AWS to optimize their application development and management processes.
Simultaneously, PR teams can use these insights to tailor their communication strategies, ensuring that messaging is consistent and aligns with broader marketing goals.
This kind of integration enables both teams to track customer interactions and feedback in real-time, adjust strategies promptly, and improve overall campaign responsiveness.
Tools like Amazon Chime and Amazon WorkDocs facilitate smooth communication and collaboration among team members, regardless of location.
These tools support:
- Conducting meetings
- Sharing documents
- Managing projects
Plus, you can connect to advanced analytics tools like Google Analytics or Tableau using AWS services. These tools make it easier to share and view your data.
This helps PR and marketing professionals better understand campaign performance and customer behavior, leading to more informed decisions and refined strategies.
Wrapping up
AWS’ array of powerful tools and flexible pricing models are perfectly suited to helping marketing/PR teams realize cost optimization opportunities.
By opting for AWS, your teams can:
- Apply comprehensive security features to improve your digital campaigns and protect sensitive data
- Prioritize cost savings and reduce monthly costs based on actual usage
- Leverage high-performance computing
- Run personalized campaigns
- Perform robust data analytics
The overall affordability of AWS allows any company (big or small) to pay for what they use (or are predicting to use. That way, your marketing and PR initiatives can scale while staying within budget and without hampering the end-user experience.
