Low Cost Marketing Tips for Low-Budget Businesses

Many small businesses are always constrained by their marketing budgets. Even at that, many operate on extremely low budgets and they still get results. That comes about because of the skills and techniques the business owners choose to deploy in their marketing activities. Since traditional marketing methods are hugely expensive, digital marketing techniques deployed with skills come in very handy. Many of these techniques are budget-friendly, cheaper and cost-effective. These, here marketing tips are not only low cost to implement, they help to get good results as well.

Build Customer Loyalty: Every marketing campaign revolves mainly around customers. That is, getting new customers and retaining old ones to keep your business growing. That is why business owners must always explore any and every way to cultivate a very good relationship with customers. One of such ways is to use loyalty programs to motivate customers to keep them coming back to do repeat business with you. You can reward customers with gifts, discounts on repeat purchases, discount coupons etc. etc. all in a bid to establish an emotional bond with them. Customers usually reciprocate such efforts with sustained loyalty.
 
Become a Speaker on Demand: If you have the knowledge and requisite skills, you can always seize every opportunity to speak about your business and its niche. You can offer to speak at trade shows, exhibitions and industry association meetings to make yourself known as an expert in the industry. Alternatively, you can choose to organize your own speaking events and do webinars to attract patronage to your business.

Share Quality Content: If you write high quality and informative content, sharing it should not be much of a headache. The internet is awash with free tools to distribute content very widely. You can always choose which of these tools is the best suitable for your type of business. Either for free or at minimal amount of money, you can use free news services channels such as PRWeb.com, i-Newswire.com, Mininova.org and TheFreeLibrary.com to share your content online.

Build a Reliable Sales Team: Every business needs a team of super salespeople to survive. When all members of the team are positively driven and they share in the business goals, the results are amazing. Such teams help the business with unlimited promotions even by their conducts, mannerisms and general behavior as well as running the systems smoothly, effectively and efficiently.  This is why the business owner must endeavor to train and prepare all his employees to be expert marketers of the brand.

Conduct Quality Surveys: It is through quality surveys marketers derive reliable and dependable info to prepare sales pitches. Business owners can simply conduct opinion polls to gather very useful marketing information from the field. By asking consumers direct questions about what issues or topics are of importance to them, you can use the results in your blog content or other articles you publish elsewhere. That is one very effective way to get out vital information about your business such as what the business offers, what is new in the stores and what promos are ongoing.

Specialize and Specialize: You must go to great lengths to be very good in and be known for what you do. You must specialize and be special in what you do. That is what stands you out from the crowd. Always go for the best quality product/service and be sure you always do it well. If you promise customers something special, be sure it is really special. The icing on the cake is if you manage to gain the recognition of some institution or association that endorses your business as a prestigious business in your local area. That helps to give the business some valuable mileage of free publicity.

Reward Referrals: Human beings love rewards no matter how token. If you promise to reward referrals, people take up the offer and you get more referrals. In a restaurant for instance, offering one free meal (subject to a limit in cost though) for every two meals paid for is a very good incentive. Discount coupons are also good for certain referrals.

Create a Blog: Blogging has become a perfect avenue for business owners to share high quality and informative content. It is a highly valuable marketing resource. Business owners can create blogs freely on blog sites such as Wordpress.com or Blogger.com. A blog provides business owners the perfect space to write comments related their businesses. You can also invite as guest bloggers people that have huge online reputation. The popularity of their blogs helps your brand reputation immensely.

Leverage Your Resources: Your email list, social media accounts, social media friends/followers, business associations and even your regular correspondence are great assets you can leverage on to advertise. Letterheads and email signature boxes are very good avenues to advertise your business. Leverage on them all. Offer new promos and price adjustments on your blog and other correspondences. Be sure there is a link back to your website/blog to allow your content users easily have access to what is new and on offer.

Tap Ideas from Your Customers: If you do not have customers, you cannot have a business. That says a lot about how important they are to your business. You can invite your consumers to contribute their comments and recommendations to help you improve on your service to them. Such comments can be on any aspect of your business, be it packaging, quality, design, service delivery, ads campaigns and so on. You can invite them to contribute ideas on how to develop new or better channels to keep your business in touch with them and to win more customers. You can reward any such useful contributions with token gifts and or special discounts.

Cultivate Strategic Alliances: Yes indeed! Every business needs strategic alliances to survive. You can study and investigate what other businesses are doing better than you are. If you are in the same business niche, you can explore the possibility of creating a partnership and better synergy to serve the market better. Explore the possibility of your products serving as upselling products to some other well-serviced business. That way, their success will help push up your own success.

Promote Yourself with Business Articles: Write articles relating to your business for publication in newspapers and magazines specializing in same business niche. That helps to establish your authority and reputation in the industry/niche. The more popular you are, the more your business will be in demand.

Seize Every Opportunity to Advertise: Smart marketers never fail to seize any business opportunity to advertise their businesses. As a local business owner, be sure to take part in popular community services and self-help projects. Participating in competitions sponsored by the media, associations and institutions is an effective and cheap avenue to promote your brand very widely. If there is a local derby or sports activity going on in your local community, do not fail to seize the opportunity to advertise your business. Generously handing out handbills and even business cards in a local popular activity is one great way to advertise your business very cheaply.

Create and Share Sales Videos: Marketing videos are gradually becoming better materials for advertising. With a simple VCR, you can create short marketing videos to promote your business. For wider publicity, you can upload these videos free on YouTube, Google Video, and any other sites. The results from these efforts are usually very encouraging for marketers.

Publish Stories about Your Business: Never miss any opportunity to chronicle and publish milestone achievements about your business. If there is any important event happening around your business, make sure to write something about it and have it published either as a newsletter or as free newspaper article. If a newspaper, magazine or website carries your published article, they can give you direct credit and even a link to your business. That is very good publicity for your business. 

 
Be Active on Social Media: These days, social media is where nearly everyone is at doing one thing or another mostly social. Smart business owners are taking advantage of that. If you create a business profile in any of the most popular social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, you can post quality content consistently and regularly to build  huge following/friends. That becomes a very good audience you can segment and market to directly free of cost.

Take Good Advantage of the Internet: Business owners should always take maximum advantage of the use of the internet. The internet means different things to different people but how it is used is what matters most. Among many other uses, business owners can take deliberate steps to include their business websites on free sites that help them to get traffic. Websites like Delicious.com, Digg.com and Squidoo.com are very good at this. No smart business owner passes up any opportunity to promote his business. Anywhere on the internet where you can do so at little or no costs at all is highly recommended.

Deliberately Hunt for Customers: It is not smart for a business owner to open up a business and keep a lid on it. If no one knows about your business, no one patronizes it. If is very smart therefore for business owners to go out and deliberately hunt for customers. That is what aggressive business promotion aims to achieve. You can woo customers with gifts, promos, discounts, price slashes, improved and better products and better service.

Take Advantage of your Business Location: Location matters a great deal in the quest for businesses to get customers. Be sure your business is well located for easy access and patronage by your customers. When your store is obscure and difficult to reach, it gets less patronage. Storefront signs and directions to your business location help a great deal to get customers. On the internet, optimizing your business website for local searches is usually very helpful.

Market with Emails: Marketing with emails is not only cheap and cost-effective it gets good results as well. But first, you have to build a credible email list before starting an email marketing campaign. If you segment your email list based on shopping habits and buying patterns of your consumers, you can design emails with offers and promotions tailored to each one. You get better results that way.