6 Easy Ways to Promote Your Business on a Budget
by Sumona Business 28 October 2021
Growing a business from the ground up isn’t easy. It takes an incredible amount of energy, time, and, often, money, which can be problematic if you’re just getting started. However, there are ways that you can promote your business and spread brand awareness without spending tens of thousands of dollars on massive marketing campaigns. If you’re trying to think of ways to promote your business on a budget, read our guide for some tips.
Social Media
If you’re not paying for ads, the only thing that social media is going to cost you is time. This includes time for hashtag research, creating posts, and interacting with other users on the platform. Although, when you take the time necessary to put together a targeted social media campaign, you can see tremendous results as you grow a following, a community, and a reputation online. This will often translate to foot traffic at your brick-and-mortar location.
One great example of this is the baseball apparel company Baseballism. The company started as a youth baseball clinic but grew into a clothing brand over a few short years as they posted their designs to social media, interacted with baseball fans, and shared customers’ posts. In just eight years, they’ve expanded from a small online shop to 10 physical locations with dozens of pop-ups all across the US. Much of their growth can be attributed to their social media activity early on.
Direct Mail
No matter how much we avoid it, we all need to check our mailboxes. Even if it’s simple to clean the junk mail out of it every few days, it needs to be addressed. Sending out a flyer is a great way to get your brand directly into the hands of potential customers.
Should someone take that flyer and drop it directly into the trash can, they’re going to look at it for at least a few steps before reaching the garbage. This is a few seconds of brand awareness that you’ve brought to a potential buyer that they wouldn’t have before. With the cost of sending out mailers, it won’t take more than a few purchases to make up the difference.
Digital Ads
Search engines, social media, and websites all run ads. These digital ad campaigns are often referred to as pay-per-click because you’re charged a certain amount for each impression and click of the ad. This can be a fast way to drive traffic to your website in large volume as these are the results that users will see first on search engine results pages. What’s more, the ads on social media and websites will display for specific users according to the habits they’ve developed on the internet.
Digital ads can be incredibly effective because the ads are catered to users. If you’ve optimized your website with SEO tactics, users will find your website based on their searches. However, paid ads on search engines, websites, and social media will find users based on their internet usage habits that fit the criteria you’ve established for the ads.
Promotional Products
There are few things better than getting your brand directly into the hands of your customers. While selling something is the preferred method, custom promotional items are an affordable tactic that’s been an effective way to increase brand awareness by companies for centuries. You read that right.
The first promotional product known to be given away was a commemorative button to celebrate George Washington’s presidential election in 1789. It was a gold button that had the letters “GW” with “LONG LIVE THE PRESIDENT” engraved in an arch above it.
Since then, promotional products have taken on a life of their own and come in many shapes and sizes. You can get anything you want to be made with your logo or a branded phrase printed on it. This can be a cost-effective pen that you let customers keep to messenger bags and lanyards that you hand out at trade shows. The sky (and your budget) is the limit when it comes to using promotional products.
Email Marketing
It’s not uncommon for your email inbox to be inundated with spam emails every day, which could lead you to think that email marketing is no longer effective. However, a snappy subject line that catches the eye of a user getting ready to dump their inbox can be the difference between getting deleted and opened.
When done correctly, email marketing is a great way to inform prospective customers about upcoming product launches, sales, and simply remind them about the great products you have to offer.
You can use platforms like Constant Contact, MailChimp, and others to send out bulk emails. These platforms will also help you build out emails with linked images, videos, and more. Many of these features are meant to create engaging emails that will grab the attention of the user.
Public Relations
The job of a public relations professional is often reduced to reputation management during a crisis. Although, PR is much more than that. The job of a PR professional is to ensure that a company has a strong reputation by generating positive publicity.
The efforts of your PR team can be as simple as responding to social media posts or as large as hiring a public figure to represent your brand. Everything done with PR is designed to positively promote your company within a designated budget.
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