When marketing your small business, it’s not just the ROI that you have to worry about. You see, even if a major marketing campaign would eventually give you a positive ROI, the truth is that the initial investment is something that you couldn’t bear. What you need instead is a method that’s more budget-friendly, more startup-friendly. What you need is something that’s better optimized for a small business. With that in mind and without further ado, here are five solutions that you should check out.
Make a website
A professional website is not cheap, however, it’s an expense that you just have to make. There are some decent DIY website builders out there that you can use to get started on a budget. If you’re still not comfortable with some of the advanced features, you need to try and go for the minimalist approach. Keep the website simple and elegant and limit the number of features on your website. This method helps your audience make up their mind a lot easier. It also requires fewer HTTP requests, which makes the page more responsive.
Make a blog
Another thing you can do is make a blog. Why? Well, because it helps you give your business a more humane side. It helps you express your opinions, demonstrate your knowledge and give your audience something of value. Keep in mind, however, that what you save in money (blogs can be quite inexpensive to make), you will have to make up for in effort. An average blog post takes about 3 hours and 28 minutes to write and if you’re going for quality, you need to shoot for far more than this. We’re talking about 6+ hours per post and well over 3000 words.
Attend trade shows
Meeting your audience in person is a surprisingly frugal way of converting them. Think about it, your main objective is to build trust with them and this is something that’s a lot easier to do in person. It’s only natural that people emotionally respond better to a human face than the display of their screen. While you’re there, it would be also a good idea to make some promotional materials to display there. By printing in bulk, you can make this quite frugal. Nowadays, companies like FastPromotional Products can allow you to make these orders online, which makes the whole plan even easier to execute.
Do it in live communication
The cheapest way to promote your business is through a live conversation. The way in which this works is fairly simple. The next time you’re in a live event or meet someone who is interested in your services, you can tell them what you do and how they can contact you. Going for a hard-sell in these scenarios is usually not a good idea. Instead, you need to try and be subtler. Don’t discuss the price and terms right away. A casual chat with a casual mention of your services is all that it takes, for the moment.
Consider PPC
The reason why PPC gives a positive ROI is that it’s a promotional method designed for optimal productivity. First, it only makes you pay for those ads that do get clicked on. Those that remain dormant cost you literally nothing. Other than this, it’s not a secret that both search engines and social networks tend to favor sponsored content, which means that this is an easy way for you to get to the top. Therefore, paying consideration to your PPC strategy is one of the first things that you should do.
Conclusion
In the very end, you’ll find no shortage of solutions when you decide to opt for a budget-friendly marketing option. All you have to do now is find a way to integrate all of them into your overall marketing strategy. You see, in order to give the best result, all of your methods need to move in unison.