Marketing is one of the most important and challenging aspects of running any business. An effective marketing campaign helps attract and retain customers. An ineffective campaign can cause you to lose market share to the competition.
Did you know that one of the biggest challenges for a business when it comes to marketing is a lack of budgeting? Without the correct marketing budget, you won’t be able to get as much of a reach as you think you could, which means that you need to figure out powerful ways that you can advertise your business without a huge budget.
It can be a challenge to manage your marketing on a small budget. The thing is, a smaller budget can help you to get creative with your marketing! You can have some of the most powerful ways to market your business, and you can build your SEO traffic and you can become a visible success to your customers. Take the time to learn how to market your business properly and you will have the results you are looking for.
Learn how to advertise your business better with the following marketing strategies:
1. Promotional Items
People like free stuff. Passing out inexpensive items, such as pens, stickers, mugs, or custom magnets with your company name, address, phone number, and logo on them is a good way to get your company noticed and build goodwill in the community.
Additionally, when people use these items, they become ambassadors for your brand.
2. Google
Even if you primarily conduct business in person, getting your business noticed on Google is important for attracting customers.
If you don’t already have a Google Business Profile, create one and verify it. This makes it possible for your business to show up in Google Map and local search results.
These results are vitally important for businesses that mostly rely on local customers.
3. Choose a guerilla campaign.
If you haven’t heard of it before, you need to Google it! Guerilla campaigns leverage creativity and originality, and they don’t have to be expensive, either.
You can do these campaigns on a smaller budget and you can use them to compete with the bigger businesses in your industry. Examples include things like flash mobs to bring in the attention of the crowd.
4. Use social media to your advantage.
Social media doesn’t have to be an expensive marketing tool.
You can ensure that you grow your business simply by engaging and posting on all platforms, and if you knew that ⅔ of Americans use social media, you’d be hot on it to get a slice of that social media pie!
It’s grown 10 fold in the past decade, social media use. The popular social media channels out there like Instagram and Facebook are free for use and while paid advertising can help, it’s not a necessity.
5. Make your content valuable.
If your content isn’t adding value, you’re going to find it hard to create a good option for your audience.
Valuable content is going to matter more and whether you choose to add content with vlogs, blogs, infographics or even podcasts, you can ensure that you create content that counts the most.
You don’t have to do this yourself; you can hire an outsourcing company to do the content for you and they can edit it for you, too.
6. Website
Customers expect businesses to have websites. Even if you never plan to sell anything online you need a website.
One of the first things many customers who discover your company on social media, through advertising or word of mouth will do is search for your company website. If they don’t find one, they may move on to a competitor.
Your website is also an opportunity to provide customers with more information about your business. Tell them your story. Show them what you have for sale. Give them reasons to do business with you instead of a competitor.
Read also: 4 Crucial Things Every Business Website Should Contain
7. Search Engine Optimization
It isn’t enough to just build a website and hope people find it. You need to optimize your content so that people are more likely to find your business when searching for relevant keywords in search engines.
Add relevant keywords to your website, but don’t keyword stuff. Create high-quality content for your website, blog, and social media accounts.
Make sure your website is secure and that the pages load quickly.
8. Business Blog
A business blog is another way to attract customers to your website and advertise your business.
Your blog needs to have high-quality content. Consider writing posts that explain how to do something relevant to your business. Provide customers with useful resources that are relevant to your industry.
Share customer testimonials. Ideally, your blog content should answer a question or provide some information that potential customers will be searching for.
9. Run some contests.
Everyone loves a freebie, and you probably do, too! If you can imagine that everyone loves free gifts, start giving away your own business merchandise.
You don’t have to give away expensive things, however, as you can even give away ebooks and checklist resources. If you have products, you can create a conversation around them on social media and run some contests, too. This will help you to make your marketing go viral.
10. Share Your Content
The power of sharing your content is that when people like the content that you share, they also share it, which helps expand your reach.
Share your blog posts, videos and other content on your social media feeds. Take care not to overshare or to make your feed entirely self-promotional because this can cause people to stop following your account.
11. See how you can scale your advertising.
Conventional advertising like radio and newspaper advertising can be very expensive, and it’s also hard to measure effectiveness in the same way that you can measure your web traffic.
If you use the right methods, though, you can try running telephone messages on your answering machines, using window decals to advertise latest offers and even car bumper stickers.
Advertising on letterheads and email signatures are also a great place to advertise your business and your offers further!
12. Use the media where you can.
Get your business featured by the media for a handy slice of free marketing. Catch their attention by inviting them in and covering your business.
They can then run features on your business and teach others about you! Do something in the community and send a press release out prior to the event so that you can get as many people out to your event as possible.
You can even nominate yourself for a local business award in the media and advertise your nomination. If you win, even better. If there are opportunities for print media advertising, take them!
13. Get help.
If your business has partners, piggy back with them! A limited marketing budget also means that you have less of an insight into manufacturers and suppliers, but if you have partners to work with you can get the help that you need most.
So, exchange customer lists and offer to pay them a commission. Every single sale that you make will be shared, but it’s a good way to extend your reach and impress your partners, too.
14. Help others.
Another great way to advertise your business is to be charitable.
It’s not just about donating for charities but to the local communities! If you help others by providing them with useful information, by educating them on problems that you can solve for them, you’re going to hook a better and bigger audience.
Helping others can be a great way to market your business because you’ll really improve on word of mouth.
15. Create a class.
You don’t have to do this in person but if you want to market your business efficiently, you want to make sure that you can teach people something and you can create webinars and exclusive content for those who sign up.
It’s a very effective marketing tool and you can utilize it to show off your business and you can then provide new assistance for those looking to come on and join with what you’re doing.
16. Entertain.
If you can entertain your audience you’re going to be able to get them on your side and that will help you to market your business entirely. You can do this with a fun day in a life blog and it will get everyone feeling something – and you want people to feel with your business!
There are many different ways you can effectively advertise your business. You don’t have to try to do them all. Experiment with different methods and use the ones that produce the best results.