Time and budget can be limiting factors for small business owners when it comes to their promotion. There are always other priorities that consume the hours in the day and any profits are often required to support the business operations.
Financially, small businesses are accustomed to looking back (paying debts) and keeping things running day-to-day. This doesn’t always leave much capacity for looking forward, which is essentially what marketing is all about – etching out your place in the market for tomorrow, next week, next year and beyond.
Practically, most small business owners are time-poor and to be effective with your promotion you need to ring-fence dedicated time each day, week and month to communicate with your target audience. It is a tough one…
Here are 5 cost-effective marketing campaigns you can start yourself or “go pro” and seek the help of professionals like us.
(1) Social Media
Social media is mostly about being present online on a regular basis. The good news is that creating your own social media profile/channel is free! Aim to (broadly) create a post per day on your preferred channels.
Top Tip – Not all social media channels will be right for your business. Choose wisely the one/s that will reach your target audience. Also, be warned – if you didn’t know it already, social media can be a time-vacuum!
When you are getting started, it is easy to portray the wrong message, misuse hashtags and end up with images that are the wrong size, which can make your profile look unprofessional. So take a little time to suss out some good profiles to use as a guide.
Go Pro – Marketing Square offer “banner bundles”, to give your social media campaign a professional look. Each graphic will be branded, correctly sized for the channel of choice, has original messaging and includes images, where relevant.
(2) Short Videos
These days people don’t want to always read lots of text, so video clips go down well online. With a neutral back-drop and a clean shirt 😉 creating a series of short (30-60 second) video clips discussing topical issues around your area of expertise is achievable and will help your customers get to know you better.
Top Tip – Videos don’t need to be pro-quality and if you read about successful you-tubers and vloggers, it is mostly about building rapport with the audience and keeping up appearances on a regular basis. However, poor quality video clips will likely reflect badly on your business image so take care to get it right.
Go Pro – Marketing Square offer promotional videos that can be used in your marketing. Or, to take it to the next level we can recommend marketing specialists that focus on video production.
3) Online Articles (Blogs)
Assuming you have a website with a blog facility, publishing articles is a great way to enhance the information you are providing to your customers, or potential customers. Offer a little free information each month and give your connections a reason to engage with your brand. If you don’t have a website, you could use LinkedIn articles.
Top Tip – There is more to writing blogs than meets the eye and whilst you should be able to get to grips with using a Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Squarespace or Wix, which are user-friendly, you need to make sure you are doing all the behind-the-scenes bits too.
Go Pro – Marketing Square provide bespoke online articles, taking into account SEO. We also include images, categories, tags, infographics and branded banners to enhance the customer journey, which helps to retain readers on your website for longer.
(4) Email Marketing Campaigns (Newsletters)
Mailchimp is free for under 2,000 subscribers, so keeping in touch with a small audience really couldn’t be simpler and more cost-effective. Not only does it give your customers something a little extra, but it also gives you a way to reach out to them with new services, information and offers.
Top Tip – GDPR is in full swing and so it is important to play by the rules. Make sure you seek permission to send each specific mailing to your audience.
Go Pro – Marketing Square offer fully managed email campaigns, database management, template design and / or training to get you set up to do your own.
(5) Refer a Friend Scheme
Assuming you already have good customers that you enjoy working with, it is highly likely the people they know will have a similar mindset, taste and attitude, and to that effect would also make good new customers for you.
A “Refer a Friend Scheme” is a tried and tested marketing model and essentially it is free to set up. You could (and should) offer a small incentive for the referrer and referee to make it worthwhile though – after all if they will become a long-standing customer, think of the overall benefit to your business.
Top Tip – Your incentive schemes do need to be communicated. There is little point in having the scheme in place and not telling anyone about it. Outline your T&Cs so people are clear how it works and you can use your social media, videos, blog and newsletter to talk about it!
Go Pro – Marketing Square is happy to discuss any ideas like this to see how they could fit your business model.
Next steps
- If you are not doing any (or only a little) marketing, make a start. Even with something small-scale that you can build on as you get more resources.
- Any marketing you do, ensure you monitor the performance. All the above examples are quantifiable – so you can see the response, engagement and effectiveness of your communications.
- Manage your own expectations. If you are only posting once a week on social media and creating one blog every three months, then your progress will naturally be much slower than daily posts, a weekly blog and a monthly newsletter.
- If you are starting small, your expectations need to be aligned but “something is better than nothing” and you do “have to start somewhere”.
Best of luck – you know where we are if you need anything!
