5 Functional Ways to Market and Grow your Business without Breaking the Bank

StrategyDriven Insights Audio

It takes a lot of time and commitment to start a business. Probably that’s the hardest part that most aspiring entrepreneurs have.

Growing a small business comes with numerous challenges. You might be trying to think of the best marketing strategies you can embrace.

You may be on a budget, yet you want to market and grow your business. In this post, we are going to explore five affordable marketing strategies that you could use.

Here we go.

1. Have social media presence

Social media is getting more popular day by day. Most people use it to connect with friends, colleagues and family members.

Of late, there has been an increase in the use of various social media platforms for business purposes and building careers.

For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are among the most popular social media platforms. As a business, you could make use of social media to market your business.

Facebook and Instagram are also the cheapest platforms you can use to grow your business. These platforms are simple to use.

All you need is to create a Facebook page or group relating to your niche. A Facebook page is more effective if you are starting out. You can invite your friends and close contacts to follow you.

You could as well create informative posts that aim to solve people’s problems in your niche. Boost the post by paying a small fee, and that will help you reach out to many people.

The goodness about Facebook ads is that you can target people from various geographical regions. Doing this will make people want to know more about your business and will like your page to follow your posts.

You, therefore, need first to have an active account with informative posts. Within a short time, your audience will grow, and you won’t have to boost posts regularly to reach many people.

Create social media profiles with Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram as well. Having a social media presence is one of the inexpensive ways of marketing and growing your business.

2. Create a website

Having a business without a site is like trying to get noticed in the dark. Did you know that people can know about your business through organic search from search engines?

That’s another cheap way of selling your business out there. However, you need to find ways of getting traffic to your site. You need to learn SEO basics.

For example, you should create content that aims to solve people’s problems in your niche. One of the solutions to those problems could be your products or services.

Use relevant keywords so that you can rank high on Google. Remember, you have other competitors, and you should aim to give the best.

You can include your website URL on your Facebook page about info. Make sure that you are promoting your blog posts using your social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Make use of email marketing

If you are looking for another affordable method of making your business known, email marketing works like magic. While it takes a lot of time, it won’t need a lot of money.

But before starting email marketing campaigns, you need to make sure that you are marketing to the right audience. You might want to create a lead magnet first.

This could be a freebie like an eBook in your niche that solves some problems your audience faces. Create a landing page on your website where you offer the freebie in exchange for their email addresses.

This will help you get people who will be glad to receive emails from you in future. You should find out about lead generation strategies that can boost your business.

Try to avoid marketing emails throughout. Let three-quarters of your emails be educational content, while a quarter of your emails are promotional emails.

Doing this consistently will help you get many subscribers who will turn out to be your customers.

4. Organize a trade show

Would you like to showcase your product one on one to your customers? A trade show is the best place you can use to get instant feedback about it. It doesn’t have to be a big show.

You can plan and start with a small trade show and a few products to test. Later, you can organize a big trade show.

However, you need to prepare well. First of all, you should have a great product that no one will resist buying. Create something that someone would love to use again and gain.

When you showcase the product and give them for testing, they will be glad to use it again.

Before the trade show, ensure that you also have some essential printed marketing materials. You don’t want your customers to lose your contacts after the event.

Since most of them can’t memorize them, you could create attractive business cards for your business.

You could as well create booklets which should have detailed information about your business. Ensure that you mention your products and services and how your clients can benefit from them.

Towards the end of the booklet, include your social media profiles so that people can connect with you. Don’t forget to add your website links and contact details.

Don’t worry about the cost of printing. You can opt for cheap booklet printing and sort out the issue. Just ensure that the booklet has an attractive colour and all the details about your business.

5. Have a loyalty program

Have you started rewarding loyal customers yet? If not, you are missing a lot.

Create exclusive offers only for customers who come back to buy from you. This will help you retain new and old customers.

Every time a former customer comes back, reward them something small. You should also tell your new customers about your loyalty program so that they can come back.

You have taken a crucial step to start your business. That is what you needed because starting has never been easy.

To grow the business, you should make people know about it through marketing. The above marketing tips are affordable and should help you start your marketing journey.

Have you ever marketed your business before? What are some of the budget-friendly marketing techniques you used?