“Marketing is the biggest expense in business”
Sounds about right.
While there’s no specific number for how much a typical start-up should spend on marketing, it’s estimated that a start-up business should spend around 20-25% of it’s budget on marketing. But what if you have a low budget? This amount would no way cover the expenses associated to marketing.
Find investment!! Get a VC on board!!! Ever heard of Angel Investors?!?!? This would be easier if the investment market wasn’t in the state it’s currently in. As a start-up, it’s almost impossible to get the right investment you need, as since COVID-19, most investors won’t actually put any money towards a business until they actually see good returns.
But how can you get a good return if you haven’t got a significant sum of money to pump into marketing? It’s a brutal catch-22 which causes business to stumble at the first hurdle. It’s very important to have a solid marketing plan in place, so read here for our article on building a marketing plan.
Marketing is truly the greatest investment you can make as a business leader. So, is there a way to avoid this catch-22 and have a solid marketing plan which doesn’t require a huge amount of investment? If you look at these marketing tips, you might just be saving a lot of money for your start-up business!
Cheap Marketing Tips for Start-up businesses
We’ve compiled a list of different, cheap marketing tips, which are completely free, or relatively cheap when growing your start-up business without the need of getting investment elsewhere. Let’s see what they are:
#1 Social Media
Quite possibly the most obvious is social media. There are currently 4.59 billion social media users online, so there’s a huge market to access. If you haven’t used this to promote your business yet, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. The most common social media platforms which can help your social media are Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. While these are the more popular ones, there’s certainly a lot more to choose from!
It’s usually free to create a profile and regularly post on these sites. This is a great way to make your business more well-known by building a larger follower-base where you’re generating high quality content.
While this may not lead to more sales or leads directly, it can be a great strategy for public relations and to create brand awareness for free.
#2 Website & Blog
While you might think that you need to hire a professional web designer to develop your website from scratch, this isn’t the case.
With a tight budget, you can build a website yourself with the use of templates. There are relatively cheap platforms where you can build a website from a template at a low cost. For example, WordPress is free to use once you have purchased web hosting and a domain. WordPress offers free templates, or you can purchase cheap templates from Envato to work from and build in WordPress.
Try to choose a template which has a blog format, as it’ll be a great idea to get a blog going for your business, as posts can increase engagement with your audience. Try to make a blog which is related to your business.
You can get a Rank Math SEO plugin on WordPress which can help boost your Search Engine Optimisation. This helps improve the overall quality and quantity of website traffic to your website from search engines – making your posts easier to find.
#3 Ask for reviews
If you’re already operating at your start-up business, reviews can be a great way to boost your brand. If you encourage customers or clients to leave a review, then this can increase the chances of future customers using your services. Customers tend to trust the opinions of other customers!
Using Google reviews or TrustPilot is the best way to get online reviews. Make sure that your services are of a high quality standard… because it can go the other way if customers decide to leave a bad review. 94% of consumers say a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business – keep this in mind!
#4 Creating an email list
Having an email list is an essential for any start-up business. You can build a database of emails through having a signup form on your website, where you gather names and email addresses of the people who are interested in your services. Networking online is also a great way to build your email addresses, as you can find plenty of this information online!
With this list, you can then regularly send out emails with information on what your business has to offer. A great way of doing this is sending out regular newsletters containing any relevant or promotional content. Not only can this keep people up-to-date with your business, but it can allow you to communicate any promotions or deals you currently have on offer. This is proven to be an extremely effective way to promote your brand, with 87% of marketers using email marketing to disseminate their content.
#5 Deals & Giveaways
People love free stuff. Offering a quality deal or promoting giveaways on your social media or website is a fantastic way of building more of a following and increasing awareness of your brand. You don’t have to offer anything big, often a small item can do the trick!
With regards to deals, you can offer a voucher or a discount code as a way to attract people to your products/services. Make sure that you don’t overdo it with the offer where you’re then in a financial hole!
#6 Referrals & Affiliates
Having an affiliate or referral program is ideal to boost the word-of-mouth strategy for your business. This is a way of rewarding loyal customers for sharing the news about your business with their friends or associates.
You can offer a small percentage of your sales, or give a set cash amount to those who refer new customers to your business. Those loyal customers will typically appreciate any financial reward for being your active promoter, and likely to continue doing so if they’re fairly compensated!
#7 Networking
Having friends and connections in your business niche is a fantastic idea. Such connections will provide a wonderful way to promote your business online for little or no cost.
Attending relevant networking events or conferences is a great way to meet people operating in your sector, and most importantly, it increases your reach to potential customers. The best thing about this is that it won’t cost you a penny!
Read here for our article on building a business network.
Are you confident to start your marketing with a low budget?
Now we’ve gone over some of the most valuable cheap marketing strategies, it’s time for you to give them a go to promote your business! Remember, try to be consistent with your marketing, and post consistently on social media to engage your followers.
Have any other suggestions for marketing your business with a low budget? Give us an email at [email protected], or let us know on our LinkedIn or Facebook Pages!
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