How to Market Your Business on a Tight Budget

Marketing is vital to a business’s growth. Unless consumers know about a product, they will never buy it. Often this fact is overlooked, as a lot of people wrongly assume that marketing involves huge financial expense. Not all marketing techniques require astronomical spending.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Define your target audience. You wouldn’t want to waste your marketing efforts selling to the wrong person. Be as specific as possible.
2. There is no substitute for good research. Find out about other players in your sector through databases and classifieds sections of local newspapers.
3. Create a value proposition for your business. How does your business score over your competitors?
4. Create a marketing plan and follow it. Consult expert marketing consultants to help you with it. Many of them come cheaper than you think and can help you allocate your budget more effectively.
5. Get creative and use unconventional but effective channels of marketing. Let your keyword be “networking.” Attend local business association meetings. Volunteer to speak at business conventions. Create a news angle for local radio stations or TV channels, which is not only useful for customers but also revolves around your business interest.
6. Retain your existing customers. Initiate loyalty programs. It will cost you much less to keep a regular stream of customers than win new ones.

Tips & Warnings

• Form relationships with companies that complement your operations. Give your customers the option of filling two needs by doing business with you--killing two birds with one stone.
• Design an attractive business card and handout. They help in generating recall value.
• Insist on getting a business card from everyone you meet. This will enable you to build a database.
• Follow up every meeting with a thank you letter or an inexpensive souvenir containing your contact information and details of your business.
• Do not be penny wise and pound-foolish. Do not economize where you need to spend. An ad that is too small may just go unnoticed and you will lose whatever little money you had invested.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin by using a bit of all the marketing tools. Instead, use your tight budget to create the maximum impact through limited tools.