Part 2: 10 Low Budget Marketing Tips for Startups

By Trevor Shorte

Last week we went through the first 5 low budget marketing tips for startups and here are 5 more. It is important for entrepreneurs to recognize that you don’t need a big budget to get big returns on your investment.

GET DIGITAL

UP YOUR GAME (AND ENGAGEMENT) ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has become the place for people to go when they are looking for information on a brand or business. If you don’t have an active social media presence, you could be missing out on opportunities to generate business. When people go to check you out on social and you haven’t posted in over a year, then you run the risk of people thinking that your business no longer exists. And in this day and age, it’s important not to turn away potential customers. So get active on your social media by posting regular content that will engage your audience with things like special offers or announcements, instructional how to content, tips and tricks, links back to your blog content, etc.

BUILD A MAILING LIST

Depending on who you ask, email marketing is dead and doesn’t work. We don’t buy into that theory. If you haven’t already, build a mailing list that you can send emails to you. It’s great that you can create a group on Facebook or have plenty of fans or followers on your other social channels. But what happens if that platform ever goes away? You have now lost access to that community that you spent so much time growing.  If you spend some time trying to build up your email list, that’s something that you own and have control of. Once they’re on your mailing list, you can now send out promos to your list directly. You can offer people a free coupon in exchange for their email addresses or run a contest where the entry requirement includes their email address. Just make sure that you get their permission to send them e-mails. You don’t want those pesky CASL rules to get you into trouble.

FIND A PARTNER TO DANCE WITH

TEAM UP WITH ANOTHER BUSINESS

Keep an eye out for other businesses that sell complementary services to the same target audience that you do. You can work out an arrangement where you can do cross promotion and refer leads to each other or even create a joint package for customers where if they order from their business, they get something like a special price or special freebie that comes from your business.

GIVE BACK TO YOUR COMMUNITY

SPONSOR A LOCAL EVENT OR TEAM

It doesn’t matter where you live, there’s always going to be local events that you could be involved in. Perhaps it’s the annual talent show at the local music school, or annual summer festival looking for sponsors. Or maybe even the local sports team that the whole city rallies around when they play their games. The organizers of these types of things are always open to having local businesses involved in their events.

Volunteer at a Local Charitable Organization

The last year has been hard for so many individuals and families that there are record numbers of people going to food banks or looking for other types of assistance. If you are one of the fortunate ones, you or your employees volunteering their time at a charitable organization will not only help those in need, but it is good for your business karma as well.  Besides, it’s just a good thing to do, even when there’s not a pandemic.

When it comes to marketing your business, there’s no one size fits all type of strategy so you should take the time to find out which combination of these will work for you and your business. Remember, the goal is to create an overall marketing strategy that creates multiple opportunities for potential customers to learn about and interact with your business. Keep in mind that most successful business owners can't do everything themselves, so if there are aspects of your marketing strategy that you feel you aren’t particularly good at or aren’t comfortable doing, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help from a qualified professional.  Click here to talk to us and see if there’s an area with your marketing that we can help you with.