11 Ways To Promote Your Brand On A Budget
It’s no surprise that marketing your company is difficult, especially if you’re a start-up owner on a tight budget. This challenge becomes even more daunting, considering that many of your competitors are likely to spend big bucks on their marketing efforts.
It’s easy to lose hope and believe that your business doesn’t stand a chance against its competitors. However, you’ll be happy to know that you can still promote your brand and have a chance of success despite being on a tight budget and eventually reaching out to your potential customers.
While this might sound somewhat like baiting you to read this article, this isn’t the case. Continue reading to overview some of the different ways you can promote your brand on a budget.
1. Promote Your Business On Social Media
Today, most people use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to connect with others.
As a business owner, these platforms present you with a chance to market your business to a sea of potential customers. Properly marketing your brand on social media increases the likelihood of your products or services going viral, which isn’t an opportunity you want to miss out on. When this happens, users will be the ones sharing your marketing campaign with other emails or accounts.
With this in mind, you should consider using social media platforms to promote your brand regardless of your industry. The best thing is that social media marketing doesn’t have to be expensive because you don’t need to use certain tools, which might somewhat be too pricey. Instead, you can create accounts on business pages for free on sites such as LinkedIn among others and start promoting your brand.
To gain traction on the different social media platforms, you need to consistently post exciting and informative content that’ll attract the interest of your target audience. This will allow you to increase the popularity of your brand without having to pay for social media tools.
2. Network In Person
While digital marketing has taken the lead, traditional marketing approaches remain effective. In fact, one essential strategy that you must employ to this day to guarantee the success of your business is networking to create connections with other like-minded individuals. Generally, networking refers to the process of developing contacts and opportunities to meet people and keep strong relationships with them.
Networking remains an effective method of promoting your brand without having to spend a lot of money. If you haven’t done networking before, it’s essential to know that this marketing strategy can be done in various ways. For example, you can attend major business networking events, where you can make strong connections with business owners and other professionals.
During such events, you also get the opportunity to do some subtle marketing for your brand by issuing freebies such as custom printed lanyards in Australia to potential clients. As you give these items away, you can talk to people about your business and the services it provides.
On the other hand, networking doesn’t only happen at business events. You can also utilize your social media connections to engage with new people online. Additionally, you can ask for the business cards of people who are open to establishing a business relationship with you.
Once you create these connections, be sure to nurture your relationship with them and build trust. By doing all these things, you can help advance your brand without putting a strain on your budget.
3. Create A Blog
Another effective method of promoting your brand to your target audience is blogging.
Writing detailed and informative articles offers you a free advertising platform where you can market your brand. As a result, blogging enables you to connect with prospects, build relationships with current customers, boost your online visibility, and generate new leads. This consequently drives more traffic to your website and further boosts your brand’s online image, thereby guaranteeing chances of your business succeeding.
Blogging helps boost your brand’s image because it allows you to share your expertise, particularly when you write in a conversational tone. This is why you must always write all your blogs in simple, easy-to-read sentences rather than complex sentences. Otherwise, you risk scaring away interested readers from your blog. You should also naturally include the targeted keywords that boost your visibility to your target audience. In addition, consider incorporating high-quality images.
When starting your blog, there are specific tactics you should follow to ensure you don’t spend a ton of money on it, including;
- Choose a blog platform that’s easy to use and set up, and many platforms exist today to choose from, including WordPress and Wix.
- Always make sure to post at least once a week. This will keep your audience engaged with your content rather than posting once and then disappearing. You should also backlinks to your content as this will further help you reach a greater pool of target audience and gain more traffic in the long run.
- Pay attention to how people interact with your content and make necessary changes if necessary.
When posting content to your blog, it’s best to use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to reach a larger target audience. Doing this is advised because observing SEO practices helps your blog rank higher on search engines compared to your business competitors’ sites. As a result, your chances of connecting with your target audience improve.
You must make sure you only publish high-quality content on your blog. If you don’t have the expertise or have enough time to do this, consider hiring a skilled freelance writer.
4. Offer Coupons
When purchasing a product or service, it is human nature to want the best deal possible. One effective strategy you can employ to take advantage of this is to offer coupons to your clients. This is extremely effective when launching a new product or service as it’ll allow your customers to get a feel of what you have to offer without spending a dime. And if the quality of the product or service is exceptional, you’ve won yourself a customer for life. In addition, these clients might further promote your brand to their friends and family members.
5. Employ Interactive Email Marketing
Are you looking to reach new customers and expand your business? If yes, another great marketing strategy you should consider is email marketing, which is a simple and efficient way of reaching out to your potential clients. All you need to do is to add a signup form on your site, using which you’ll collect the email addresses and names of individuals interested in your goods or services. Subsequently, you can start emailing these interested parties as they have already shown interest in your brand.
Email marketing is a highly cost-effective approach you should consider when promoting your business because it targets people who express an interest in your brand.
Through this type of marketing, you can significantly increase your company’s sales and profits without any additional costs when done correctly.
6. Attend Trade Shows
You should consider attending trade shows, especially if you’re looking to market your products to retailers or a national audience. Trade shows provide you with an excellent opportunity to launch a new product, brand, or service line. And if you’ve been looking for an inexpensive way to start promoting your company, this is undoubtedly a viable option.
Attending trade shows provides you with the opportunity to capture the attention of prospective customers. In addition, attending trade shows also offers you an excellent chance to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry. This is necessary because you must always strive to know what new trends are coming so that you can continue to improve and grow as a business owner.
7. Host Informative Webinars
If you don’t have the money to make a big splash in your market, you can still get your name to your potential clients by hosting webinars. Webinars are free and easy to produce and allow you to reach large audiences with valuable information. You can talk about what sets your company apart from the competition during your webinars. You’ll also have a chance to answer any questions your audience might have about your business and product or service.
The best thing about webinars is that they’re easy to set up and free. And to start hosting webinars, you can use any free online services such as Google Hangouts or Skype. This means you don’t need to shell out any cash for equipment or marketing materials. However, in order for your webinar to be a success, make sure to first promote it either through email newsletters or social media platforms to remind everyone who’s signed up about it to make sure they do attend.
8. Host Giveaways
Customers love feeling appreciated, and there’s no better way of doing this than conducting giveaways. Therefore, you should incorporate hosting giveaways into your marketing strategy, as this helps you better interact with your existing and potential clients. With the help of social media platforms, it’s easier than ever to host giveaways, and this is why many businesses have embraced this trend in the past few years. There are different approaches you can follow when hosting giveaways. For instance, you may encourage your clients to fill out a survey that will qualify them for a draw and stand a chance of winning a free giveaway. This strategy is ideal if you want to get feedback from your target audience.
Another strategy you can follow is to host a giveaway on Instagram, where you tell the participants to like, share certain posts, mention their friends in the comment section, follow you, or stand a chance of winning. Doing this exposes your brand to a greater pool of target audiences. Consequently, you should select a winner either by using a comment picker or a randomizer. These are just some ideas of approaches you can follow when conducting free giveaways, so take a moment to be as creative as you want.
However, before hosting free giveaways through a social media platform, it’s best to know the specific rules and guidelines.
9. Turn Your Staff Into Your Brand Ambassadors
With marketing budgets shrinking and less money available for advertising, it’s more important than ever to promote your brand in creative ways. One way to do that is to turn your staff into your brand ambassadors. This means using your employees as your main marketing tool, which makes perfect sense; after all, they are the face of your company.
For your staff to be your brand ambassadors, you want them to be confident, friendly, and knowledgeable about your product or services. By educating them on what you want them to say about your brand, you’re creating a strategy for promoting yourself through them. But this doesn’t happen by luck, and you need to hold brainstorming sessions with them. Consequently, they’ll promote your brand by attending local events, sharing on employee blog posts, and hosting fireside chats.
However, in order for employees to positively advocate your brand to your potential clients, you must first treat them well and be a good leader. This will ensure that they will naturally promote your business not because they’re required to but because they want to. And since they’re the ones with existing relationships with your customers, advocating for your business will help boost brand loyalty and build a deeper connection between your company and its customers.
10. Launch A Customer Referral Program
Word-of-mouth is usually one of the best forms of marketing, more so when it’s coming from your customers. One effective approach that can entice your customers to do this is launching a customer referral program. This usually comes in many forms and can either be a free month of service, a free product, or any other appropriate reward for referring a new customer.
By employing a customer referral program, you’ll be able to deal with the challenge of acquiring new clients, a challenge that many start-ups that are yet to establish their names in the industry face. But thanks to the customer referral program, you’ll be able to appease your existing clients by offering them a free token of appreciation while simultaneously winning over new customers. This marketing tactic is less forced and will likely get authentic and long-term customers.
11. Use Press Release
You can promote your brand on a tight budget by using press releases since there are sites that allow you to do so for free. However, for this marketing tactic to be effective, the information included in the release must be informative, engaging, and newsworthy.
Issuing press releases will allow you to expand your company’s brand image to potential clients, and some of the information you can share include:
- Your company has won an award.
- Your business is partaking in a promotional event, for instance, supporting a charity event.
- The launch of a new product.
You can print or publish the press release online depending on what you feel can better reach your target audience.
Takeaway
You don’t need a big budget to market your business. In fact, you may be surprised how little money you need when you have the right strategy. Firstly, you must understand your target market and where they hang out before you can effectively reach them.
If you’re not sure who your target market is, do some research and find out. Once you know this information, it will be easier for you to create content that resonates with them and reaches them in the places they already spend time online.
Finally, always remember to put your customer first. When all else fails, focus on creating valuable content and experiences that help solve their problems. This is what will set your brand apart from the rest and help it succeed no matter what size
