Some businesses and startup businesses have limited marketing budgets. If you, too, have financial constraints, do not fret. Here, you can choose from a range of marketing tactics, even if you’re working on a small-scale marketing budget. We have listed 10 marketing ideas for small-sized businesses, which have restricted marketing budgets.
Widen Your Network
To widen your network, you can do a couple of things. You can ask for referrals and identify the most likely places where you can get clients, follow by exploring the given options. More so, you can connect with prospective customers online and offline to raise awareness about your offerings.
Plus, you can contemplate joining a face-to-face networking group. By doing so, you can make contacts. In turn, people can know about you and what you have to offer them. You can also network on web-based platforms.
A more specific way of networking is by joining professional or business organizations. Here again, you can make more contacts.
As part of your efforts to expand your network, you can partake in local business or trade fairs too.
Explore New Ways To Attract New Clients
You can attract new customers in various ways. You can conduct free-of-cost classes and workshops that pertain to your business. People are interested in learning, and by organizing workshops, you can have a meaningful connection with the targeted customers. You can also work as a web developer for a small business for a few months to just know them and to build a good rapport with them. If you manage to serve them well, they may become your full-time clients.
Additionally, you can devise a brochure; they are efficient sales tools. More so, they give potential clients something to take away with them and ponder over what you’re offering. They also work as effective in-hand material when you’re talking about your products and services. You can use them for advertising as well.
Moreover, you can have a flashy business logo and tagline to use on your emails and documents.
Apart from that, you can develop business partnerships and engage in cross-promotion with other business houses. Cross-promotion works out to be cheaper because you and your partners share the advertising costs. Besides, it creates value-added synergies, which is beneficial for all partners.
You can consider participating in a joint venture and sharing costs between businesses as well.
Furthermore, you can send out promotional material along with your invoices. You can also write an impelling sales letter and send it via direct mail or email. And after writing one, you must also find ways of maximizing the response to your sales letter.
Creating an email newsletter is another good way of staying in touch regularly with your client base. This can work especially well when you utilize online course software to develop a free course that you give to others and use email marketing in tandem to drive engagement.
Aside from that, radio is a good way of targeting potential customers.
You can also gain free publicity for your business by leveraging the potential of social media platforms when organizing events, with the inclusion of the charitable ones. You can also sponsor a community-driven charitable event.
More importantly, learn about the worst marketing blunders while making sure you avoid them.
Put Out Instructional Videos
Video content has value and you can try to shoot the videos yourself or consider hiring novices if your budget does not allow for hiring professionals to shoot the YouTube videos.
Wistia guides on video tutorials, depicting how you can shoot good-quality videos using your iPhone.
If you want to take video marketing one step further, consider hosting instructional or educational webinars. That’s a great way to collect qualified email leads and show your audience how to solve a problem by using your product or service. Hosting live webinars can be cheap, but time-consuming, because of the preparation and having to be there live to talk to your audience and answer their questions. However, it creates immense trust and helps you a lot with making sales at the end of the webinar.
If you’re not keen on videos, then you can make slide decks and share them via Slideshare. You can create special videos for your loyal visitors who don’t shy away from making some extra payment to get access to your exclusive videos. For more similar membership website ideas, you can check out this post.
Avail Ad Promo Credits
Large-scale ad campaigns may not come within your budget. However, with coupons and discounts being offered on paid Google ads and Facebook ads, you can venture into this domain.
When availing membership of web-hosting companies, you can get advertising discount codes; so, think about opting for them, if feasible.
Boost Your Online Presence
As part of your efforts to boost your online presence, you can do a couple of things. By creating a website, you can tell users about how your offerings can add value to their lives. Also, you make it possible to be found in search results by having a home on the web.
You can also create a blog for promoting your business. If you go the right way, starting a blog serves as an economical way of getting a larger market for your products and services. Importantly, make sure you post valuable content regularly to have browsers hooked to your pages.
Additionally, you can use popular social media sites (like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) to spread greater awareness about your offerings.
Moreover, you can opt for social media advertising. Some of the big players offer inexpensive marketing plans, with good targeting options.
Plus, you can post articles on subjects that pertain to your business.
Host Online Contests
When hosting online contests, you need to spend on a prize. Even so, you get a sizable number of partakers and new potential leads, which justify the costs incurred.
Also, if you have a small budget, then you do not have to go with expensive prizes. Some fanciful backpacks and water bottles suffice to draw some people.
To know more about hosting a contest, you can opt for Rafflecopter. They can help you to organize the contest and encode the contest entry form on your website.
Breathe New Life into Existing Data
In cases where you cannot afford to hire content writers, you can take data that is available on the web, add your innovative twist, and post on your website. The internet is filled with data studies and statistics, with some of them not getting the due attention.
Search a study that pertains to your business and refine it. Focus on the value-based part of the study and continue by adding images, drawing some charts, and adding your perspective based on the existing data.
No, you need not be an expert writer to adopt this strategy; the data does most of the job. One person’s cast-off data is another person’s content winning tale. Only be sure to mention your sources and give due credit wherever needed.
You can get government data from sites such as the Census Bureau or the data. Gov. For availing global statistics, you can browse through the World Health Organization and UNICEF websites. Eventually, you must find source data that is relevant to your business and serves the interests of prospective customers.
DIY Infographics
As marketing tools, Infographics can help in getting the desired results from your marketing strategies. They are attractive and easily digestible. Also, people love sharing infographics, which can increase your referral traffic and leads.
If you cannot avail the services of infographic professionals, you can develop some yourself. With a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator, you can work with free vector kits that come with all the requisite features to create visually-appealing infographics. With only a little practice, you can come up with astonishing infographics.
Have A Customer Referral Program?
Under your customer referral program, you can offer your existing customers some rewards if they refer new clients. In marketing practices, word-of-mouth is a powerful tool, so people sharing your business contacts with others can prove to be lucrative for you.
Review and Redraft
Go ahead and update your marketing plan. Study your current marketing plan and devise new ways of re-hauling it. Are your marketing objectives the same as before? Or, do you have new marketing goals? If yes, what have you done about it?
Maybe, it’s time to draw a new marketing campaign or go for a complete low-budget marketing makeover.
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