This post is also available in:
If you want consumers to notice your company and buy your products, you have to reach out to them and tell them all about your products and services. This is marketing in its most basic form. Marketing requires three things; time, effort and money. For big conglomerates and multinationals, this is not an issue because they have an entire department dedicated to nothing but marketing.
But, what if you’re a small business that is just starting up? Marketing is absolutely vital for new businesses because no one will ever get to learn about their products and services without it. Even though new companies require the most rigorous marketing, they’re also the ones with the smallest budget.
So, the question is, how does a small business make its voice heard without going over-budget? In today’s world, especially in the work-from-home era, people rely on online shopping and booking more than ever, and that means, businesses are trying harder than ever to attract more customers.
In this time, there are quite a few tips that small businesses can follow to promote their products while sticking to their budget. Let’s have a look at some of the most effective ones.
Publish engaging and high-quality content
Content marketing is so vast and widespread that we could probably write entire books on this topic alone. If you’ve made the smart decision of setting up a website for your company, then you can post informative and engaging content that is related to your products and services.
The first significant benefit of content marketing is that it attracts people to your website by offering them valuable content for free. If the quality of the content that you’re producing is outstanding, you will see your website’s traffic skyrocket in just a matter of months.
The second major benefit of publishing great content is that you can sell your products and services to customers without sounding too pushy. All that’s required is a small mention of your products in the content. As long as the link is relevant, you’ll notice that much of the website traffic will click on the hyperlink that goes to your products.
Moreover, once your website starts seeing a significant amount of traffic, you can also put a few ads on your website and generate revenue from that too.
Now, you might be wondering what kind of content you could publish on your website/blog. Well, here are a few ideas:
- Write informative pieces about topics that users might be interested in (while staying relevant to your products and services). For example, a cybersecurity company could write about the newest vulnerabilities discovered in the past six months.
- Make how-to tutorial videos. For example, a business that sells computer parts online could make a video on building a custom PC from scratch. A shoe vendor could make a video on how to take care of different kinds of shoes properly.
- Show the users some behind-the-scenes. Let’s suppose a company sells custom guitars; this company could post a video about the manufacturing process. They could also interview a few employees for some industry insights.
If you can produce high-quality content yourself, then that’s the best option. However, hiring a freelancer is your next best option if you can’t.
Social media marketing is your best friend
With more than 3 billion regular social platform user accounts, social media has become the centerpiece of everyone’s marketing strategy. Social media could prove a useful tool for a business just getting started. And, in case your business does not have its own website, you could even use your company’s social media accounts to make bookings or place orders book orders. However, it’s not a longterm solution, and you have alternative options. Shopify & WooCommerce for online product sales, and Simplybook.me for service-based businesses can help you with creating a business website.
With Facebook being the largest social media networking platform, and Instagram a close second, it makes sense to start with these two. After that, your choice of social platforms will depend on your brand image, products and services.
For example, if you make products for teenagers and youngsters, Snapchat and TikTok could prove useful. If you’re making products for a specific niche, Reddit could do wonders for you. If you’re trying to reach out to big organizations and multinationals, LinkedIn is the place to be.
Don’t forget email marketing
A lot of new businesses make the mistake of ignoring email marketing. What makes email marketing so powerful is that many customers say they like hearing about the latest promotions through email. Email marketing has proven so successful that a quarter of businesses say it has the best ROI of all marketing strategies.
To further increase sales, you could always give extra offers or discounts to customers who subscribe to your email list. This strategy would also encourage most of your customers to immediately sign-up for your email list.
What’s so amazing about email marketing is that ESPs are readily available, easy to learn, and sourced at budget-friendly rates. Moreover, if your business new, you could easily find email marketing apps that offer a free plan for small businesses.
Refresh old posts
Operating on a tight budget, you won’t always have the luxury of hiring a content writer to create new website content. In such times, you can pick some of your older posts and repost them after updating and expanding them. Moreover, you also have the option of combining a couple of closely related posts into one ebook or turning old videos into one documentary. These solutions require little input yet pack just as big a punch as entirely new posts.
If you have been publishing content regularly, your website’s popularity has likely grown significantly over the past few months. So, even if you refresh some old posts, they’ll be just as good as new posts to many site visitors.
These are some of our favorite ways to market while sticking to a tight budget. Be sure to let us know which one you liked the most in the comments.
Guest Author Bio: Jamal Khan
Jamal writes about the influence of social media on modern-day business activities. He’s best known for designing social media strategies for some of the well-known global brands. His recent interests are in helping a local footwear brand elevate their Peshawari Chappal sales using the power of social.