It's a fact - marketing is essential for a successful business. But what if you have a tight budget? Worry not! Promoting your beloved business can be done without blowing your savings. Yes, you've heard us well! You can actually stretch your bucks and wisely market your biz with these amazing and cost-effective tips.
1. Flawless website: spot-on design and great content
Your website is the online mirror of your business. Nowadays, having a mint and concise webpage in terms of content and design is really affordable and will certainly get you the crown. A nice look along with utterly authentic, interesting, and useful content will reap big rewards. Your audience is online, therefore, a website that offers well-structured, precious details about your biz will increase the chances to sell more and attract new clients.
Content-wise, besides the top-notch pieces that you can write yourself or use an awesome website designer, recycling is always a good idea. Repurposing and rehashing what you already have to something new is easy, fast, and effective.
2. Build an active community on social media
Social platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest give you direct access to millions of potential consumers all over the world. Be a savvy social networker and create original, meaningful, and helpful content in order to broaden your community.
Be careful not to suffocate your audience with an invasion of promotional offers. Those who watch you online are definitely interested in what you offer, thus you don't need to expose them to an abundance of direct ads. Instead, choose to create smart, unique and appealing postings that will further enhance their interest in your brand.
Staying on the social media topic, another great idea is to lounge about your business on LinkedIn. There's a lot happening on this awesome platform. The best things you can do is to join groups, engage in conversations, and share your content. All of this will help you build your brand and create relevant B2B and B2C connections in no time.
3. E-mail marketing
This is an excellent way to reach potential customers, to get them to engage with the biz, and to maintain a valuable relationship with your existing customers. You can convince your website visitors to subscribe to the newsletter in exchange for a free ebook, free webinars or a discount coupon. When you have a consistent list of subscribers, you can start promoting your business via email, slowly nurturing your audience until they are ready to become paying customers.
4. Create awe-inspiring videos
Video marketing is an excellent way to promote your business. Videos are powerful marketing tools, visual eye candy, thus easy to digest by your audience. People love to share entertaining and helpful videos, which makes this a great strategy to drive up referral traffic and links. Wise, right? And, to make this method cost-effective, all you need to do is either create them yourself (if you have the right skills and knowledge) or collaborate with a freelancer. From blunt self-promotional, branded instructional or explanatory vids, to webinars turned into tutorials, the content has to be enjoyable, making watchers take some sort of action. By the way, it wouldn't hurt (on the contrary!) to add a call to action at the end of the clip to enhance the chances of creating valuable interaction with your audience.
5. PPC marketing
The pay per click method is an awesome, cost-effective way of investing some bucks in paid ads (on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, etc.) that target the exact potential customers you are looking for. You can create text, image, or video ads that reach people worldwide or located in your town, with specific interests or education, displayed at certain times, and so on. The targeting options are endless and this helps you 'talk' to the right people, pay only for the clicks you get on your ad, and make yourself seen by the relevant audience.
6. Referrals - partnering with websites and blogs in your niche
A referral can be a website, a blog, a social media page, etc. that promotes a short text, image, video or article from your website to their audience. The secret is to get in touch with as many people in the biz as possible to discuss your business and create valuable, win-win partnerships. The benefits will be great for both of you - you will get promotion and your services will get known by new potential customers, while the referral will have you as a partner to promote its services in exchange.
7. Write an article for an industry magazine
Contributing a helpful article to a magazine, webzine, or blog is usually free and gives you the chance to reach out to people who have a huge potential of becoming paying customers. Of course, this doesn't mean that you have to write the article yourself - you can hire a skilled freelancer if writing is not your thing or you simply don't have much time on your hands.
As you can see, there are a lot of efficient ways to market your business when you're operating on a shoestring. These tips and tricks will help you get attention and interest for pennies on the dollar. Keep in mind to have a well-defined strategy, stay focused, and delegate work whenever you feel overwhelmed.