If you want your business to grow, you have to market your brand. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling products or if you’re selling services, every company has to know how to get the word out about what they do.
There are just as many ways to market as there are businesses looking to connect with customers and clients! Unfortunately, many effective marketing strategies also cost a lot of money—money you may be unwilling or unable to spend.
Although many marketing strategies cost a lot of green, that doesn’t mean they all do! There are also plenty of ways to market that don’t cost a lot of money, but still have a big impact. Here are a few that are just as effective as more expensive marketing campaigns.
1. Get Your Email Newsletters Right
Email newsletters are a great way to connect with customers and clients, and they cost little to no money. You can create as little or as many messages as you want, and if you do it yourself, you don’t have to pay a writer. When you first get started, you may not have to pay an email provider either!
However, it is important to do a little research before you get too carried away. You should understand the difference between a marketing email versus a transactional email, and you may want to look into the best times to send each kind of email to ensure you reach the widest audience possible without alienating them with irrelevant or poorly timed messages.
2. Create Valuable Content
Creating content is another great way to market your business. It can make your footprint on the internet much larger, and you can do it for free when you create the content yourself!
That doesn’t mean all content is created equal. Only valuable content gets the right kind of positive attention.
That means creating blog articles that are educational or entertaining. Videos should be high-quality and offer true value to your viewers. It may take a little extra time upfront to create valuable content, and you may not have as many blog articles or videos, but it’s always quality over quantity when it comes to content.
3. Start Partnerships with Other Businesses
You may think you should avoid partnering other businesses, especially if they are in the same industry. You shouldn’t!
Teaming up with other companies is actually beneficial. For example, a complementary business could promote your brand by throwing your business card in every bag or offering a limited supply of your items in their store. In turn, you would do the same for them.
Reaching out to businesses in the same industry can be a great way to help you both save money. You could team up to get special deals from manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors, or you could provide each other with recommendations for quality businesses and contractors in the area to work with.
4. Try a Little Guerrilla Marketing
Paid advertisements may be effective, but they aren’t the marketing efforts that everyone remembers. For that, you have to turn to guerrilla marketing.
Guerrilla marketing is always attention-grabbing, and it very often doesn’t cost a penny. A few guerrilla marketing examples include:
- Putting temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets using sidewalk chalk
- Live streaming a special event on Facebook
- Decorating trees with branded items for Christmas
- Organizing a flash mob outside your store to get attention
When it comes to guerrilla marketing, the more creative you can be, the better. It’s the most creative stunts that people are most likely to remember!
5. Volunteer
Marketing a business isn’t always so straight forward. Sometimes, it’s the things you do behind the scenes that help you get the most attention for your brand.
That’s definitely the case when it comes to volunteering.
Volunteering comes with many benefits for your business, one being that you can show customers and clients that you care about your neighborhood and/or important causes. Not to mention, you’ll probably speak to lots of new people while you’re volunteering who may not have heard of your brand before.
Get even more out of your volunteering experience by sharing it on social media. That way, everyone can see exactly how your brand gives back.
Takeaway
Don’t think that not having a lot of money means your marketing campaign won’t be successful. You just have to get creative! With the ideas on this list, you can get a lot of attention for your brand without spending a fortune on traditional advertising methods.