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3 Easy Strategies For Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
Every successful business starts with a good marketing strategy. However, sometimes your budget is tight, and you can’t afford to spend lots of money on advertising. When this happens, it’s easy to stop all marketing efforts. However, a small budget is not a good enough reason to neglect your marketing. There are many ways you can keep your marketing strong — even when marketing on a shoestring budget.
There are 3 key components to a strong, inexpensive, modern marketing strategy:
- a strong social media presence
- great relationships
- pristine online presence.
If you can rock these three by focusing your marketing efforts here, the sales will follow. Even without the big marketing budget.
Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
No. 1 – Strong Social Media
There’s no way around it: social media is a powerful tool for modern-day businesses. That being said, many businesses don’t know where to begin with social media. Which social platform is best for your business? What kind of content do you share? How do you share it?
Regardless of which social media platform(s) you choose and how you build your social media presence, There are three important steps you need to take to make the most out of social media marketing.
Going Live on Social media
All of the big social media platforms today — Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and so on — have the feature to go live. Live videos are trending in 2022, so today is a great time to begin live streaming. Live streaming is a great way to give your followers a behind the scenes look at what you’re doing, host an interview with someone on the fly, demo and sell your products, answer questions live or do anything else you can think of.
The point is to make connections. Video content is an effective way to establish trust in a brand, build relationships and create intrigue in what your offer. These are all valuable results that lead to sales. Live video amplifies these traits even further in a more intimate setting. Make a point to go live at least once a week to reap these benefits.
Sharing Value on Social Media
Whether you choose to stick with one platform or share content across multiple platforms, the most important thing is always to share value. People like to follow thought leaders, experts, and professionals who have the ability to help them be better and grow.
Think about how you can make your content valuable to your audience. Establishing yourself as a thought leader or expert is a great way to get people to buy from you. Be on social media not just to pitch your product, but also to give back and contribute. This will help you long-term in both sales and your company values.
Be Engaged and Active Consistently
Another solid strategy is to be consistent on social media platforms. Whether you are tweeting, tiktoking, instagramming, or any other sharing; be consistent. What does being consistent look like?
Posting regular content. Whatever you’re sharing, share it often. The more active you are, the better your chances of building rapport with other people. Posting regularly is not about making content perfect, but rather posting often.
Consistency is important and means interacting with other people on the platform. Don’t just post and walk away. Social media platforms are looking to share profiles that are actively engaging and building community with others. This could look like commenting, sharing, saving, or liking content from others on the platform. Staying consistent is one very simple but important way to build your following on social media and increase your sales through this valuable and inexpensive form of marketing.
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Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
No.2 – Great Relationships
Businesses thrive by building relationships with people. It’s always been this way. People want to buy from someone they know will be reliable and they can trust They want a reliable product or service that is worth their investment. And when you build this relationship and come through for them, they will tell others about your business.
Make the Customer Experience Unique
From the start of your customer service experience to the end, you want it to be exceptional. Take a look at your business now. Track a customer’s journey through your business, from learning about you to after they’ve made a purchase.
● Do you collect their email or phone number?
● Do you communicate in a friendly and personalised way?
● Do you continue the conversation after they’ve made a purchase?
Collect their contact information as soon as you can and stay in touch throughout the entire process. And don’t stop after they’ve made their purchase. Repeat customers are extremely valuable.
Continue the communication and build a relationship with your customer so you can continue to get sales from them in the future.
Build Your Word-of-Mouth Business
Word of mouth is often a large part of how businesses make money. This method does rely on your customers to share your business with others. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t play a part. There are three ways you can increase your business through word of mouth marketing:
Build a recommendation or referral programme
Make an offer for customers who refer other customers, this could be a small discount, coupon, or another referral reward
Do everything you can to make a customer’s experience so great, they can’t help but talk about you
Establish solid relationships with your customers and provide them with value as much as possible, making them excited to share your name
Openly ask for people to talk about you
In your emails and social media put the call to action: “Share with your friends!”
Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
No.3 Pristine Online Presence
Finally, a simple and inexpensive way of marketing on a shoestring budget today involves creating a pristine online presence. Where does your business appear online? These are a few online presences that every business should have online:
● Company website
● Google business listing
● Social media presence
● Product or service listings, or as a guest feature
Having an online presence is great. But if your branding, colours, messaging, contact information, and so on are not consistent among these platforms, an online presence may actually work against you.
Here are 3 quick ways to keep these presences working for you.
Search Engine Optimisation Everywhere
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a must for businesses today. While this can be a large marketing effort on which you can spend a lot of money, Here are some simple ways to streamline your search engine optimisation process.
● Know the keywords for your business
○ These could be locational like Europe, or topical like modern fashion
● Insert these keywords into every blog, social media listing or post, company profile, and website copy
Branding + Contact
Whether you’re building a social media presence, website, or any other online activity, your branding must be consistent.
● Logo
● Colours
● Keywords
● Grammar and spelling
● Email, phone number, website
You should have a consistent looking logo throughout your social media channels and website. If you’ve changed niches recently, make sure your messaging is updated everywhere. You want to stand out online and be easily recognisable.
You Can Market Your Business
Don’t give up on marketing just because you are not able to invest a lot of money in advertising now. You can still succeed with marketing efforts that are inexpensive. Remember, most marketing strategies are built upon the same value: building relationships. Every one of these tips is about building relationships.
When Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
You can still build relationships on social media through live streams and consistent engagement. You can grow relationships with your customers through an exceptional customer experience and by playing your part in word of mouth marketing. And you can clean up your online presence so people can recognise and trust you whether they see you on social media, Google, or your own website.
Additional Resources For Marketing on a Shoestring Budget
13 Marketing Strategies That Work On A Shoestring Budget By Forbes
5 Ways to Market Your Business on a Shoestring Budget by NorthOne
Other Low-Cost Marketing Posts You May Be Interested In:
5 Easy Ways To Use Facebook Messenger Marketing
7 Simple & Easy Referral Marketing Strategies For Your Business
Check out our free monthly marketing magazine today – click here. You won’t regret it.