If you don’t have many pennies to spend on your marketing, don’t worry too much. With a little bit of planning and creative thought, there are plenty of tactics you can use which will not blow your small budget.
1 Business Awards
Most industries and local areas have business awards you can enter and use to boost awareness of your business. If you have a start-up business, you have from around 18 months to 3 years to get all the mileage you can from this category and the various awards you pick out. Check the criteria for each award category and go for the ones which you feel you can best promote your business.
The Awards List website is about the best list you will find for UK Business Awards.
2 Develop your own customer referral programme.
Offer your current customers a free product, or perhaps a free month’s service, or a reward for referring new customers. Word of mouth is about the most powerful way you can build your business, so getting the word out there about your business is incredibly valuable.
3 Sponsor a local event
If you are looking for a local audience, look for a few local events which your ideal customer would be interested in. Offer some sponsorship towards the event. It could be anything from sponsoring a local kids’ football team, to supporting a community event or sponsoring a business award category. Make the most of it by promoting your involvement through PR, blog posts and social media posts.
Make sure your company is well represented by offering great give-aways. Fun stuff such as free branded balloons at family events are always well received!
4 Lounge about on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a major social media site which is often completely ignored.
The key to success is engaging! Join groups, make comments, share your blog posts and, of course, do make new connections. There is a lot happening on LinkedIn and it can be a great place for you to share your content and ideas and build your brand. A great starting point is to look at some of your competitors’ profiles and give yours a tweak to make it more interesting and eye-catching. Make sure you allocate some time each week to spend on LinkedIn.
5 Create killer content
Even if writing is not your strong point, you can still create great content. Create yourself a basic strategy. Strategy is a ‘living’ thing that should evolve as your company grows. It’s a feedback loop– you create, publish and promote your content, you take a look at the engagement through comments and likes and then you repeat what is working and tweak what is not. Try creating content which can be recycled and re-tweaked.
Explore training courses online, such as on Udemy, to help you get the best from your content creation and how best to use each piece for your social media or to share on other platforms. Use all the free options you can find such as the plethora of free image sights!