Small Business Strategies With Little to No Money
Low-cost Small Business Marketing Strategies
There are lots of low-cost business ideas out there. But once you start a business, how do you know where to put your money to get the most “bang for your buck”? Here are some ideas of how to market and develop your business when you may not have the capital funds to buy ad space or purchase the supplies needed to expand your business all at once.
Keep in mind that these are just general ideas. What works best for your business needs will be unique and individualized combinations of these ideas.
Every business will need to customize its strategy to best reach its ideal customer.
This list of ideas does not guarantee results or success.
Need help coming up with your plan and strategy?
Low Investment Marketing Ideas
Creating Valuable Content with Your Web Presence and SEO
Using your website, blog, or YouTube channel to provide value to your ideal customer is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness and brand loyalty.
Content marketing requires a strategy to be effective. Your content should answer your ideal customer’s questions about your products and your industry. Your content needs to be engaging and high-quality to keep your customer’s attention. And your content should have clear call-to-actions to convert to sales.
Your content should also be optimized for search engines that people can easily find it! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help increase organic traffic to your website. Studies show that websites that have 50+ blog posts increase their organic traffic by 77%.
Some blogging statistics from Optinmonster show:
Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI.
Companies who blog get 97% more links to their websites.
Another interesting statistic they shared is that 64% of Business-To-Business (B2B) marketers hire a professional copywriter for their blog.
Do you need help with your blog strategy and content writing?
Utilizing bloggers and other influencers to market your products or service
Influencers on the web and social media are a great resource for showcasing your product or service. Influencers use their established platforms to share things that they love with followers who trust them. This increases your trustworthiness to that audience and exposes your product to a wide audience via a reliable source in their mind.
When choosing influencers that you want to pitch your product to, here are some things to keep in mind:
Not every influencer will agree to feature your product or service.
You will have to pitch your product/service and how it will benefit their audience.
This is the influencer's JOB, you will need to compensate them (commission, referral bonus, percentage of sales, advanced payment, etc).
Reach out to influencers that have your ideal customer in their following already.
Reviews from friends and referral codes
When you are first starting out, you CAN (if you want to) give away some of your products to people you trust. I would not recommend giving away more than 5 full-scale products, though giving away larger amounts of samples or snippets can be very valuable. It’s not ideal, obviously. But there are other ways people can compensate you.
Asking for a review or asking for networking opportunities can be appropriate options for the exchange. Be strategic with who you choose. Giving away hair products to your bald uncle is not going to benefit you unless your product is hair implants. DO NOT give away too much!
Other creative ways you can give away your product for “Not Quite Free”:
Ask for a positive review
Ask for a share on social media
Ask for a backlink to your website on their website
Ask for referrals
Ask for an exchange of their product or service if available
Ask for your product sample or marketing material to be displayed in their home or business
Use Social Media to Build an Audience
Social Media is a great tool. I would stress that it is NOT the most important tool in every situation even though A LOT of new business owners think that they need a strong social media presence to be successful. That is not the case. But it can be a great tool when utilized strategically and appropriately for your individual business.
Building a social media presence can be a full-time job.
Some businesses, even small businesses, hire someone to create content and manage their social media because it can be very time-consuming. Remember that your time has value and you have a limited amount of it. You can absolutely use social media by batching content that provides value and connects with your ideal customer, but remember that your business is your product or service, not your social media presence, unless you are an influencer.
Tips and tricks for utilizing social media efficiently:
Come up with 3-6 categories that you want for content on your social media.
Batch 3-4 topics/content clusters for each of those categories.
Batch graphic/video/photo creation for each of those topics/clusters.
Utilize a scheduler so that you can schedule a month or two or content at a time.
Manage comments and engage with your online community for a set time limit (example:15 minutes per day, 1 hour every other day, etc).
Email Campaigns
Email campaigns can be a great place to invest your money. On average, every $1 spent on email campaigns returns $36 in sales. This number comes from building an email list and not just purchasing one.
Building your email list will require you to utilize other forms of marketing (social media, website content, etc) to gather ideal customers to your subscription list.
The copy in your emails will also have an enormous impact on the ROI. The content/copy of your email campaigns will affect the open rate of your emails and then the sales conversion rate. Email campaign copy requires catchy headlines, easy-to-read content, emotional sales techniques, and a compelling call-to-action. Hiring a copywriter who understands these concepts is crucial to having a profitable campaign.
Get involved in your community
When you invest in other people, they will often invest back in you. Getting involved in your community can be as simple as volunteering with a charity or joining a Business Networking group. Your community can be in-person or online!
Networking is inexpensive and attaches a person to your product. When people trust you as a member of their community, this builds your credibility and increases trust in your product or service. They are also more likely to refer your business to other people they know who may benefit from it. It may not be exposing your business to the thousands of people that paid marketing can bring, but when you are taking the budget-friendly route, it can be a great resource.
Return on investment (ROI) for community involvement is difficult to measure. However, FeverBee has an example that shows that their online community has a 62% ROI.
Ideas for how to get involved with your community:
Volunteer for a non-profit
Join or start meet-up groups
Create a small business alliance
Join a business networking group
Get involved in sports or other regular community gatherings
Request interview time on a local TV or radio station
Request interview time on a podcast
Get involved in virtual groups (Facebook groups, subreddits, etc)
Guest post on industry blogs
You may already read or be aware of popular web content sites for your business's industry. If not, taking the time to research and find industry-related blogs can give you a lot of insight. You can learn what other people in the industry are creating content about to bring in an audience, you can learn new things about your industry, and you can contribute to that content in order to market your product.
Some blogs take guest writers while others do not. Almost all of them will require approval of your content before publishing.
Why should you write a guest blog?
Guest blogging can increase traffic to your website, build brand reputation, and provide backlinks to your website which increases your website’s authority in SEO.
When writing a guest post:
Submit a finished article or at least an outline so that the reviewer knows what you are going to be writing about
If there are explicit requirements stated, follow them
You may have to submit requests to 10+ blogs before getting a “yes”, that is ok
Make sure your article is well written with links to your website and products
Make sure you have a clear call-to-action in the article that will result in sales conversion for you
Low Investment Doesn’t Mean Low Quality
You don’t have to have tens of thousands of dollars to build a successful business. But it will take additional time investment. Be patient. Customize your strategy. Don’t be afraid to change what is not working. Don’t be afraid to hire someone to help you increase the quality of your content to improve your results!
