Marketing your small business is important, but doing it on a tight budget can be challenging. The good news is that you don’t need thousands of dollars to develop a powerful small business marketing strategy.
With a little creativity and some marketing know-how, you can turn your tight marketing budget into sales.
Having your small business popping up on local Google search results is a sure-fire way to boost your brand awareness locally. It is also free! Use your Google Business account to appear in Google SERPs, Google+, and Google Maps.
Another tight budget marketing tip involves your blog content. Your small business blog should serve as your marketing foundation. Develop longer posts, use a number of keywords and LSIs, and ensure your blog content is answering your audience’s questions, comments, and needs.
Affiliate programs are perfect for raising brand awareness and serving up foundational content like eBooks and white papers. Affiliate programs for your small business can generate more leads and drive your customers down the buying funnel faster.
Every small business owner on a tight budget loves free PR, and HARO can make that happen. You simply create a free HARO account and offer up key insight as an authority in your industry. HARO can also deliver backlinks to your website, increasing your Domain Authority and Google ranking.
Does your small business have an email list? If not, this is a great marketing strategy that you can employ to add more touch points with potential customers. You can send emails introducing timely deals and discounts, as well as newsletters using MailChimp, an automated marketing platform. It is a free email marketing service for businesses with less than 2,000 subscribers.
Small business owners like yourself need to stick together. This opens up opportunities for you to share your industry insight. You can do a quick Google search with “your industry” + “write for us” to find a number of potential guest blogging opportunities.
Webinars are a great way to advertise your small business and insert your industry authority. Webinars have traditionally been seen as not so budget-friendly, but there are actually a few cost-effective options for small business owners. You can get your webinars up and running at ClickMeeting for just $25 per month.
The digital era has made it easier than ever to find like-minded small business owners and entrepreneurs. You can join local networking groups and find businesses that may need your products or services. You can do a quick search of groups and events, free to join, and of interest on MeetUp.com.
Social media serves up a number of marketing opportunities for small businesses on a tight budget. You can raise brand awareness, engage with potential customers, and post ads that are personal and localized to your audience’s interests and location. Social media ads on Facebook are excellent, because they are scalable. You can post an ad for $1 or $100.
Videos have become a very important marketing asset. Consumers want more engaging content, and videos deliver just that. Create a YouTube channel for your small business and create videos highlighting your products, services, and community. It is free, and you can even hire a video production freelancer on Fiverr to make your videos really stand out.
Yelp is another free marketing asset for local small businesses. You not only increase your online visibility and brand awareness, but you also net an audience looking to visit your store and make a purchase. Yelp also serves as a place for your customers to leave reviews about your business. This is a great way to add confidence to buy for future customers.
Influencer marketing has a high ROI, with an average return of $6.50 per every dollar invested. For local small businesses, you can offer free products or services to a well-known community member to try and recommend on his or her social media. You can also find influencers on sites like FameBit, but be sure your influencer is relevant to your industry and has a high follower engagement.
Consumers love a good deal, and they definitely love free rewards. You can co-sponsor a contest with another small business to sweeten the reward and cross-promote. For example, if you’re an indie game publisher, you can team up with a company that sells gaming accessories for mobile devices.
There are definitely a variety of strategies to market your small business on a tight budget. You can also do a little financial detox to find a little more marketing money, allowing you to employ several of the above tactics. The important thing is to measure your marketing success with key goals and metrics in place. How will you market your small business in 2018?
