Can you effectively market your business on a shoestring budget? Definitely.
Many small and midsize businesses look to decrease their marketing spend when finances are tight, but this is the wrong move. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make marketing successful. Businesses of all sizes have access to economical, trackable measuring tools that make it possible to know where every dollar is going.
As a small business once ourselves, we know a thing or two about marketing on a budget. Here are some of my favorite tips on how to stretch your advertising dollars without sacrificing results.
Publish Great Content
Content can work wonders for a business with a limited budget. Creating content allows you to share your brand’s knowledge and experience, position yourself as a thought leader and develop stronger relationships with customers. By regularly updating your website with helpful content, you can also boost your search engine rankings.
Creating and publishing content doesn’t have to cost much, if anything. You and your employees know your business best, so you can handle a lot of the writing. You can also post content to your blog and social media channels for free.
Create How-to Videos
People learn best when looking at visuals, so create instructional videos that highlight your products and services. You don’t need a professional to film your video. Today’s smartphones offer all the technology needed to film high quality videos. For added stability, purchase an inexpensive tripod and microphone. These items will give your videos a professional look and sound.
Get Active on Reddit
Reddit refers to itself as the “front page of the internet.” When used strategically, it can be an effective marketing tool. The Reddit community is active and engaged, but only the most epic content is valued. Post your content to extreme niches so that the content is most relevant. This is also a great way to dominate in your niche. Here’s a great article to help market your business on Reddit.
Make Your Own Infographics
People love infographics because they are colorful, fun and easy to digest. Thanks to DIY infographic tools like Canva and Venngage, you can make your own infographics for free or low cost. Once your infographic is complete, share it on your social channels to drive up referral traffic and links.
Develop a Customer Referral Program
Customer referral programs promote word-of-mouth sales. Offer existing customers a free product or reward for referring new customers to your business. To start a successful referral program, be sure to set your goals, identify your incentives and track the results. Hubspot has great advice on building customer referral programs.
Be Active on Social Media
It doesn’t cost anything to set up a business profile on social media and start posting content. If you want to promote some of your content, you can do so on a small budget. Use the targeting features to show your content to a highly targeted audience.
Managing your budget on social media is easy, too. You can spread it out for as long as you want, add more money if it’s doing well and tweak your campaigns while live.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing engages new visitors by nurturing them through the funnel, as well as maintains relationships with existing customers. Segment your email lists so that you can send targeted emails to your buyer personas. By offering worthwhile discounts and incentives, you can keep people coming back to your site to complete sales.
These are just some of the ways that you can market your business on a small budget. Track and measure your results to better understand what’s working. As you see marketing strategies that are effective at driving traffic and sales, you can put a little more money into them to make them more successful for your business.
