As a small business owner, one of your most significant challenges may relate to marketing on a dime. In fact, 50 percent of small businesses contacted in a survey reported that they spend less than $300 per month on online marketing. You may be wondering how a small business can afford to spend such a small amount of money on marketing while still gaining dominance in the marketplace. With a closer look at how this money may be spent, you can see that this is a healthy starting budget for a small business in most markets.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is popular with businesses of any size, and this is because this is an effective way to reach consumers. In fact, many consumers may even prefer this type of marketing over other options, such as having someone call them on the phone or receiving junk mail in their physical mailbox. Email marketing is more than just effective. It is also very affordable. You can design your content in-house to save money, and you may only pay for the cost to send the email blast. Remember to add value to your email messages so that your consumers read the messages and act as desired.
Put up Video Content
Some companies thrive on video marketing (some even go viral!), and you can easily create your own in-house video if you have the proper equipment. A great video can have far-reaching effects that can dramatically benefit your business. Consider that companies, like ASEA—as you can see on their Crunchbase profile—use video marketing to help their brand get more awareness. With ASEA’s videos, they explain the health benefits of their product and even make it visually appealing so that people will want to watch them. Such videos have proven to be very cost-effective for a variety of companies, and it shouldn’t be too hard for you to mimic these efforts in your own business. The best videos are well-designed, and they often are humorous, thought-provoking or educational.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is another cost-effective solution for small businesses to consider. It costs nothing to have a business account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other similar social media platforms. You can easily create your own posts and tweets, and you can post them online free of charge. This is also a great way to announce new blog posts that you have created. While this is a free option, avoid making too many posts or tweets. This is because a high frequency of messages to your customers can cause annoyance. A few strategic and thoughtful posts per week may be ideal. It may be helpful to plan your posts ahead of time so that you do not repeat yourself and to help you save time during the week.
A College Intern
Some small business owners do not have the time or creativity to launch a great online marketing campaign, and you may be thinking about outsourcing the work. A more cost-effective alternative is to hire a college intern. This could be an unpaid position, or you may pay a small amount of money to the intern for a few hours of work each week. Altogether, both options may be far more affordable than using a professional marketing firm for your needs.
The ability to reach your customers successfully through a cost-effective marketing campaign is critical. Online marketing is a great option to consider, and you can see that there are many ways you can design and execute this type of campaign on a dime. Take time to explore these different ideas more fully to determine which ones you should apply to your own efforts. By doing so, you may be able to enjoy greater marketing results while reducing your spending in this area.