Small Business, Big Impact: Cost-Effective Marketing Tips
Is your marketing budget tight? Learn to make the most of it with these cost-effective marketing strategies.
Starting a business is by no means an easy task. It involves immense dedication, effort, management, and marketing. And if you mess up with marketing, all will be for naught.
Small businesses often find themselves in a deadlock. They won’t have enough to spend appropriately on marketing. Only if they market will they make money, but for marketing they need money. Although it might seem like they will be stuck in a loop, with the help of a sound strategy they can break out of it.
Here are some strategies that cost less to implement but make a big impact.
Social Media Marketing
With almost half the people on the globe using social media, this makes it one of the mediums with the most reach. Pair it with targeted advertising and watch the number tick. You don’t have to spend anything to create a social media account. All you have to do is build and maintain your social media presence through engaging and quality content.
Email Marketing
Yes, it is still alive and continues to be one of the market channels with the highest ROI. ROI is Return on investment, it is a popular metric used to measure profit based on the investment. With regular emails, you can keep in touch with your customers through newsletters, and inform them of new products or services, promotions, and other events.
SEO
Short for Search Engine Optimization, it is all about trying to rank your site pages on the search engine results. This is done by optimizing your site with proper metadata, and high-value content, and following good search engine practices. This allows you to increase your site’s visibility and drive valuable traffic to it. This is a long-term strategy that can either make or break your site.
Referral
What better way than to have your own customers do the marketing for you? Providing incentives for referrals is a great way to increase your reach through the word-of-mouth approach. The customer gets rewarded for referring their friends and family, and you get potential new customers. It is a win-win situation for both.
Guerilla Marketing
Guerilla Marketing is a very unconventional marketing approach. It uses creative methods to boost sales or increase brand awareness by using low-cost attention-grabbing tactics. Using those tactics you reach your target audience in a way that captures their attention. This method relies heavily on personal interaction, word-of-mouth, and viral marketing.
This is also what makes it a very popular choice for startups and small businesses due to the low cost involved. Some examples of Guerilla marketing include flash mobs, street art, and viral social media campaigns.
These are some great marketing strategies to kick off your business without having to dig deep into your wallet. While SEO takes time, it brings great results in the long term, so it shouldn’t be put on the back burner. Building your Social media presence takes time too, but it also depends on the amount of money you are ready to spend on it.
At the end of the day quality and engaging content will increase your reach organically. The other methods don’t take too long of a time to show you results. So chart out your marketing strategy based on your budget and time.
Is your business still in the ideating stage? This article might help you- How to Grow your Business.