Marketing is a challenge when the budget is low. But a business can take it a challenge and convert into a wonderland opportunity if it’s ready to explore and show some creativity along the way. Mind you, not all businesses have a million-dollar budget for marketing purpose but most of them get by through ingenious ways. Even if you don’t have the support of venture or angel capital, this should never stop you from dreaming big as marketing goes. Your limited marketing budget can be a blessing in disguise if you’re ready to break free from the conventional and try something innovative. So, go ahead and try something you haven’t done yet.
Here are some powerful ways to market your business on a limited budget –
1. Benefit from social media
Social media is the best bet for businesses to achieve their marketing goals when their budget is low. The social networks have a huge user base running into millions, and they offer benefits of reaching to a wider audience and bigger geography in an extremely cost-effective manner. You can leverage them by using organic as well as paid advertising, depending on the extent to which you want to spend, and then achieve marketing targets easily.
More so, social channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram are quite effective and unique with demography. They can open a great opportunity for your business to engage with the target audience and boost conversion easily. The best thing, it’s possible to devise a channel-specific strategy and reach out to the intended audience rather easily and without spending big.
2. Create valuable content
Content is always the king when it comes to marketing. The power of engaging and well-written content is hard to ignore as people do love great content. Plus, search engines like Google give great preference to content and use it as a ranking factor in delivering better visibility on the web. You can use content to share information in various ways including blog, video, podcast, infographic, and score well with search engines.
The content you produce will inform and engage the target audience, catch their attention and win traffic for your business, all in a cost-effective manner. There are sites where you can post articles etc. and improve the ranking and visibility of your business, products, and services. Creating quality content won’t cost you a fortune, and it will help a great deal in achieving marketing results.
3. Contests and giveaways
Marketing is not always about the big budget. A lot of brands benefit from contests and giveaways to realize their marketing goals easily. You too can take a leaf out of their book and score well on this front. You should know that free gifts are loved by everyone and when you offer that to people, it gives an opportunity to connect with the potential customers and build brand awareness.
There are lots of cheap options to give as free gifts like key chains, pens, notepads, caps, hat, etc. in which you can invest and create brand awareness easily. You can run contests either online or offline and take a solid step to connect to the target audience. Charity is another fine way to reach out to the audience and show them your intent towards brand building.
4. Leverage partnerships in the market
Small businesses can leverage strategic business partnerships in the market and broaden their reach easily. You can seek a partner with other complementary businesses and benefit from their network and reach in the market. In such cases, your business will be recommended by others in the industry which often has added advantage. This kind of partnership can be forged based on mutual benefits.
You can ask a retailer to display your products or distribute flyers and cards from their outlets. You both can exchange customer lists. You can also reward customers for referring business to you and this will also prove to be quite a cost-effective marketing tactic.
5. Use online advertising methods
When the budget is limited, it’s not possible to benefit from conventional advertising avenues like TV, radio, newspaper, etc. They are quite costly and best suited to only those companies with a hefty marketing budget. There are however online marketing methods to benefit that include ads through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, SEO, and PPC. Any business can benefit from online marketing and boost its reach and exposure in the market.
More importantly, you can trust online ads for event management as well where cost-effective avenues can help you reach to a wider audience easily. You can let experts promote your event and take it in front of the right audience and this is how awareness is spread. This is why online advertising is growing in popularity and neither do they cost more nor remain suitable only for big entities only.
6. Add your business to Google my business
In the present digital world, you are lucky enough to avail the opportunity of free business promotion. As part of your free marketing strategy, you can open up a Google business profile by adding your business to the Google platform. In the earlier times, all this process was done by the print media platforms but the present digital world offers you endless possibilities through Google.
When you add your budding business to the Google business profile, it will add up your business on Google maps to be ready for display. It will also add it to the knowledge panel for the branded search. If you want your business profile at the top position on google maps or in the local results, you can optimize your business profile to optimize it, you need the complete verification of your business and this can be done through Google my business account. This is one of the free budget marketing procedures.
When someone types your business name as well as the location, all the details will appear on the right side knowledge panel in the search results. As your business ranks on Google maps, know that you are doing the business promotion round the clock without spending any money.
7. Interact with the social influencers
You can interact as well as engage with your social influencers for the promotion of your small business and this will hardly cost you. You have enough options to tag your loyal customers, fellow companies, brand evangelists as well as vendors. You can do all this on the well-known social media platforms for widening the prospects of your small business or the business you just started to a new audience. One of the very good results of all this will be the new clients in your possession.
Social media influncer for marketing
You can also tag your social media handle or your business location through the posts of your followers. Social media marketing is an effective way to engage with social influencers. In this way, you can adopt a free method of your business promotion. You can make use of the very popular social influencer and media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn as well as many others available today. You should make use of the social media sites that are specific to the business that you operate.
By making use of the Facebook social media platform for your small business, you can engage with both existing as well as new customers. The promotion of your small business on the Facebook platform varies based on the business niche you are operating into. After creating your Facebook page, you can make use of the Facebook events to maximize attendance by doing the promotion. Running live sessions on Facebook is one of the effective means of how to do marketing on a low budget. With the help of Facebook advertising for your small or start-up business, you can have access to an incredibly specific audience for your business promotion and success.
You can also hold group discussions on the LinkedIn platform for the promotion of your small business. With the help of online networking through this platform, you can take your small business to a higher level. You also have the choice to upload videos associated with your business on the YouTube platform. By this, you can connect with potential clients as well as customers. An overview video on YouTube related to your business will boost your sales. You can also post this video on your website or can send it via email for the promotion of your small business.
8. Ask customers for testimonials
For the promotion of your small business, your customer base is the key that can take your business to greater heights. The more customers you have, it provides the indication of the business expansion thereby deciding its growth. But all this is not enough.
You need to develop a positive customer relationship as well and you can analyze this through customer testimonials. Through the customer testimonials about your small or start-up business, you will come to know about their thoughts and approach related to your business growth. You can publish some of the best customer testimonials on your websites as well as other social media platforms. This will help you with business growth and development. All this is a zero-budget marketing procedure and pays in the long run.
9. Listings on major directories
You can list your small business in the major directories. When you do this, the small directory site will automatically extract the data from the larger directory on which you have listed your small business. This means your listing will be in the small directory as well. This is effective for the growth as well as the development of your business. You can make use of the free directories some of these are better business bureau, glassdoor, yelp, four square, and more.
When you think of the business listing, you may not be excited to such an extent because you do not know the extended benefits it is going to provide you for your small business. But your little understanding becomes an altogether different story when you come to know about the potential benefits of directory listings like traffic drive, sales increase, and getting new customers.
1 comment
Hello, Vikram! You have penned down such a superb article.
Marketing your business on a limited budget is entirely possible. You need to get creative and think out of the box. A widespread misperception amongst small business owners is to make their business stand out from the competition; big bucks have to be splashed on advertising. From all the way to market a business you have mentioned, I loved the first, second, and fourth one. Liked this post, do share more!