No Budget? Low-Cost Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses

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Marketing is important for any business. It increases brand, and product awareness increases sales, and attracts customers. Marketing can also educate the customers about the product/services your business is offering.

It can be a medium to develop and maintain public relations and a strategy to continuously advertise your business to attract potential customers.

As advertising your brand is important, new businesses should invest a handsome amount of capital in the sector of marketing. A good marketing team should be hired who will take all the aspects of the business into consideration. It can take a while to create your own team; instead, appoint a marketing agency.

How to promote your Low-cost business?

  • Be ready to touch with online Communities like forums or social media groups.
  • List business in internet directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.
  • Network with friends who have useful professional links in your business niche. Promote services through word of mouth marketing process.
  • Tie up with relevant business partners and start a referral program. Share a small portion of your sales percentage to encourage their participation.

Low-Cost Marketing Ideas To Promote Your Business

Use Social Media

With the evolution of technology, social media platforms play an indispensable role in promoting a business.  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most popular among the users.

A business page on social media can be used to promote the business to millions of people worldwide. Advertising in social platforms requires money, but there are some inexpensive ways to advertise on social media on your own.

Post regularly about your company and the goods/services you are offering. Publish great content, including questions and opinions on the things you post to engage your customers.  Incentives can encourage people to comment and respond.

For example – if you asked for a suggestion, the person with the best suggestion gets a gift voucher from your company. So more people will try to participate.  All these tactics can be used to drive traffic to your page.

Post tutorials about your product or services. Tutorials or short informative videos can give customers insights into your business. Try to attract the audience with infographics, attractive designs, catchy pictures, and tag lines rather than just information.

Publish details about all the events of your company on various platforms.  Live sessions about your business encourage participation from your customers.

You can do live sessions twice a week on different topics to make more people aware of your brand. Also, ask people to post about your company using hashtags; these are the simple yet fruitful way of brand promotion.

Loyalty program

Customer loyalty is the willingness to buy from a company based on positive customer reviews. Customers with positive experience recommend your business name to their friends and family.

These personal accounts are more productive at bringing in new customers than advertising. Hence to reward customers, businesses can implement various loyalty programs.

Loyalty programs are the best tactics to retain your customers and provide them with benefits.  Businesses introduce membership cards to keep track of purchases and reward regular customers with discounts, goodies, and coupons.

Some customers might even purchase more for the rewards of a membership card. Another loyalty program would be to give rewards based on a point system.

This is a recurrent loyalty program in use. Regular buyers can collect points and enjoy their rewards after an accumulation of targeted points. Rewards could be including e gift vouchers, discounts, free goods, or other benefits, and it varies from business to business.

Organize Events

Events can be a great way to promote your brand among the high profiles of the industry. Esteemed figures who attend the gathering make the event prestigious.

So, you can seize the opportunity to launch new products and announce a partnership with other businesses.

Choose your guests wisely and keep the budget in mind. Send invitations to reputed and established companies, journalists of newspaper and TV channels, celebrities, business tycoons’, motivational speakers, and politicians.

Having your business name associated with prominent businesses at present can be a great marketing strategy.  

As a result, more people will know about your business, the company’s mission and vision, plans for the future, and the facilities you provide to your clients. This can be your chance to expand your business in different markets and attract potential clients.

However, a party teeming with high-profile figures can be expensive to plan, so you can plan a fundraising event as an alternative.

Fundraising events show that you want to make a difference in society, and associating your business name to charitable functions can be a good promotional strategy.

Such events accumulate a handsome amount of donation which can cover the cost of the event, so you do not have to worry about the budget.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is a modern strategy and an alternative to word of mouth strategy, which is to spread your business name by talking to other people about the strengths of the product/service your business is offering.

Business can implement this methodology to give customer incentives when they recommend your product/service to other customers and business both online and offline. Online referral marketing can help escalate brand awareness and profit of the business.

Referral programs can be of two types

1) Existing customers are given an incentive in cash back, gifts, discounts and vouchers and many exciting offers with a validity period.

2) When an existing customer recommends the company to others, they are given a long-term benefit. For example- if a customer recommends your business to 50 other people, they can enjoy a 10% discount for a year.

With most referrals, you can make the customer a partner or your brand ambassador for a certain period. All these will encourage customers to refer your businesses to friends and family.

Moreover, referral marketing can be inexpensive and a good way to describe positive customer-relationship and high customer satisfaction.

It is because few customers referrer indicates the need to evaluate your relationship with the customers and take feedback to restructure your goods/services. Also, a referral strategy can result in a long-term relationship with the customers.

Customer Reviews

Reviews define the customer experience and feedback on the product/service; hence it is an asset for any business.

Majority of the customers choose product/services available in the market based on customer reviews. Owing to that, it is of utmost importance for any business to take customer feedback seriously.  

Reviews can give a clear idea about a business-customer relationship. Encourage customers to give feedback and suggestions about your product/service.

Responding to reviews shows that you care about your customers. So, try to respond to all types of good or bad reviews from a neutral point of view.

Collaboration with similar businesses

Collaboration is important for all types of businesses and markets. It allows businesses to create new connections and explore new opportunities that will ensure the growth of the business and boost of sales.

Business magnates like to meet new people that increase their contacts, connections, and alliances in the industry, creating a network of esteemed individuals.

Knowing more people unfolds different opportunity for you, thus increasing your target segment of consumers.

Alliance gives you access to the customers and contacts of your partner. This can increase the value of the business and can be mutually beneficial for both the parties.

Associating your name with a reputed company can attract more customers increasing your sales profit margin. It can allow you to host and co-sponsor events due to a more stable financial position after collaboration.

All these will allow your small business to be seen as a potential venture in the market.

Get Social Media Promo Code

Social media advertisement can be very expensive; hence look for coupons that give huge discounts for Facebook ads or Google ads. There are some websites who continuously post coupons; search for those type of website and save a fortune.

Moreover, some domain hosting sites do offer a free advertisement policy for premium customers. Search for those sites, and you can even maintain your website free of cost.

Create a website and a blog of your business

A blog and a website for your company are as helpful as a business page on social media sites. Create valuable and worthy content to drive traffic to your page. Implement Google ads as a marketing method to increase the number of visitors for your website.

You can use cookies to track the behavior of your potential customers online. The main purpose of the website and the blog is to attract new customers who are not very active on social media.

Advertise offline

Advertising offline is as important as advertising online to reach customers of all ages, gender, and occupation.

This can be done by advertising in newspapers distributing leaflets, and using posters to advertise. TV commercials can also be a good way to reach customers who are not very active online.

The growth and revenue of a business depend on marketing. Your business may offer the best services/products and have an excellent customer relationship, but these factors may not be enough for your business to strive.

Advertisement for your product is essential. Marketing is vitally important to generate more revenue and expand the business.

Numerous marketing strategies are adopted by businesses, but it is best to publicize your business both online and offline to reach all types of customers.

How to drive sales to your Low-cost business?

  • Promote your business on social media platforms such as Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to get attention.
  • Create videos and promote them through YouTube. Share those videos on social media platforms to get a good response.
  • Be active on Forums and connect with people through E-mail newsletters.
  • Submit press releases on various free press release websites available on the net.
  • Ask your valuable customers to share their reviews on review sites like Google+ and Yelp.
  • Promote your services through Guest Blogging.
  • Offer free coupons, discounts, or other promotional offers to gain more clients.
  • Advertise your business in online classified listings.
  • Create a learning blog post and promote it through social media posts.



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