Smart Strategies for Marketing Your Business and Staying Under Budget

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If you’re like most businesses, you don’t have a huge marketing budget. Here are some ways to build a brand without busting your budget.

Get Good At Writing

Have you ever thought about writing for a trade publication? What about writing to a general audience? If your company doesn’t have a blog, consider starting one. Maybe you could approach your local newspaper about writing a column.

If you’re no good at writing, you could take up a writing course. Writing is one of the best ways to learn about your profession and cement the information. In other words, the more you write, the more knowledgeable you become about your business.

Start out by writing in a journal. Pretend you are addressing your ideal prospect or customer. What would you say to them? Don’t be afraid to start. Put the pen to paper, and just get it out there. It might not be great. Honesty, it’s probably going to be pretty bad. But, this is your starting point.

From there, think about ways you can improve your writing. Have a professional editor take a look at it and give you honest feedback.

Over time, you’ll get better and, when you do, you’ll be developing your most important marketing tool.

Use Low-Cost Advertisements

Low-cost advertisements, like Ad Magic, can be valuable giveaways and promotional materials. Businesses use these kinds of things all the time. They’re called “loss leaders,” and they’re used to incentivize people to become customers.

A business might give away branded playing cards, for example, in the hopes that every time the customer uses them, they think of the business.

Other low-cost ad methods include flyers and business cards. You could also use postcards if you know your audience. For example, if you’re a B2B business, you could mail your cards to local businesses to drum up some business.

Teach A Class

If you’re nervous about public speaking, join a Toastmasters club. Toastmasters will help you get over that fear and become a better speaker. Then, you can approach local colleges, businesses, and the government to do speaking engagements and seminars or workshops.

Hold Contests

Contests are great ways to drum up more business. By offering to give away a free promotional item, you can actually move people through a sales cycle. Most people know that they won’t win, but they’ll enter anyway.

At the same time, they know they need whatever you’re giving away and, if you make it relevant to the customer, you have bona fide sales leads.

For example, a remodeling company might offer a free house full of windows and advertise in the local community. Lots of people will enter that contest because replacement windows are expensive. At the same time, most people know they won’t win.

Of course, one person will win, and everyone else will lose, but everyone who enters still needs windows. So, salesmen can follow up with all participants in the contest. By holding that contest, the remodeling company endeared itself to the community and also made money on the sale of its products.

Loretta Milliner has spent a good part of her working life in a marketing role. She likes to share her insights and observations with a wider audience online. You can find her previous posts on a number of relevant websites.