Are you low on marketing budget, this article will show you 7 ways to effectively market your business on a shoestring budget. Whether you’re just starting out, or you are finding that you’re short on funds, you may need to find ways to market your business on a shoestring budget, and No, just because it is inexpensive doesn’t mean it is not effective.
Use the Good Old Business Card
You can get inexpensive business cards printed online. When you go to any event, be sure to leave your business card. When you have any reason to hand out your phone number to anyone, give them your business card. You never can tell when someone will need the services you offer, or when your friends and family will meet up with someone who needs your services.
Build a Website with a Blog
It is very important to watch your budget, but don’t be cheap. Using self-hosted WordPress makes having a website with a blog that looks professional really easy. If you are not technical enough and can’t afford to hire someone, consider using a website builder that offers a blog function. The next step is to write regular informative, keyword-rich blog posts and promote them via social media.
Use Social Media to Promote Your Business
Set up branded social media accounts for your business. You absolutely don’t have to be on all social media networks. Instead, use the knowledge that you have about your audience to choose which social media networks you should be present on. Make good profiles that represent your brand in a cohesive way.
Find a Joint Venture Partner for a Project
A JV partnership is not a real business partnership. It is a joining of forces or collaboration between complementary business owners who share an audience but are not in direct competition. Finding a project to work on, like this, can essentially help you both double your audience.
Write an eBook
If you are an expert on anything, you can write an eBook about the topic. You can publish it easily on Kindle, or promote it as a PDF document right from your website. You can sell it, or give it away for free. It’s up to you. A book can push you forward in the eyes of your audience as a true expert thereby becoming the go-to guy for such solution/service.
Get on the Speaking Circuit
Using your book as a foundation, put the word out that you’re ready to give talks locally and for the cost of a ticket, room and board, go to other speaking events. Sometimes, you can even get paid for speaking once you’re established and in demand. So, not only can speaking become a good marketing opportunity, it can also become a new revenue stream.
Incentivize Referrals
A really great way to increase your customer base is to convince your customers to refer you to others. Most of the time satisfied customers will tell others about you, but in some cases they may not because they want to keep you to themselves. This is especially true with service-based businesses. So, a great way to overcome this issue is to give your customers a reason to tell others about you such as a discount coupon, or additional freebies for each paying customer they send your way.
If you sell products, consider starting an affiliate program as a way to get more people to tell others about your products and make more sales without it costing you anything more than a percentage of sales.