Starting a business on a shoestring?
Looking for ways to stretch your small business marketing budget?

Almost all small businesses face a financial challenge when they are starting out, finding a marketing budget is often at the back of the queue. The big question is how do you get the word out about your business in the most affordable way?

Here are 10 low-cost methods to advertise and promote your business
1. Have a plan of attack. Determine who your best customers are likely to be, and the best way to reach them. The more specific you are here the better chance you have or targeting them and turning a prospect into a customer. Are they the business owner or the buying manager?, are they male and female? – this makes a difference if you are selling gender specific products, what is their age or marital status? All these types of questions need to be answered before you can really begin to target your marketing.

2. If you don’t have a website, then get one as soon as you can. You can be sure as soon as a potential customer takes even the slightest interest in your company that they will Google you to get more info. There are plenty of cost effective solutions such as ‘www.1and1.co.uk’ and ‘www.webs.com’. Sites such as these are template driven and provide you with the simple tools to create a website yourself without the need for any coding or programming knowledge. Having a good looking website goes a long way to achieving credibility, not having a website will make you inferior to all your competitors.

3. Add you business details to the local search engines and get your organisation on the map, this is completely free and it means customers can find some reference on the web to you, if they search and find nothing then this looks bad. Use these 3 links to get yourself locally listed http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/local/, https://www.bingplaces.com/, and http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings/. Remember to include a small business description, your telephone number and the all important web and email address.

4. Add a business profile using LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. All of these are completely free and its allows you to add a business description, keywords which are relative your products and services. Look for discussion groups within your business sector, join up and participate – this way you’ll start conversations with not only prospective customers but other like minded business owners who could refer you to others. Don’t spam these people with sales speak, you need to build up relationships until such time as you get asked about what your sell.

5. These connections may lead to you being invited to business networking events, some are free others you have to pay for the breakfast – this is a really cheap way to meet people face to face. Remember people buy from people so get your business stationery printed, in particular the all-important business card. This tells everyone you are a professional and you will be taken seriously. Again list your contact information and add your social network information. Get your business cards in the hands of as many people who you think maybe able to help you, leave a handful even friends and family – you never know when the opportunity may arise for you to offer your services.

6. Network on behalf of others, ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine’, if you can help others to make connections and win business then they’ll be more likely to recommend you. Team up with other companies who offer services or products related to yours. For example if you are a photographer then team up with a wedding organising business, you can refer each other as its mutually beneficial.

7. Look for something unusual about your organisation and publicise it. Send a press release to the local newspaper and magazines, as the country is just lifting itself out of the recession it’s the prefect time for a small success story. Send images too, if the publication doesn’t have to pay for a photographer to visit you and you’ve written a quality press release about your organisation then its not going to cost them anything, they are more than likely to publish it if it’s a positive story.

8. Publicise your publicity. Whenever you get any publicity then get the clips copied and use this to help further promote your business. Add it to your website, if the local press have agreed to publicise your story then this builds credibility with other publications and with potential customers.

9. Become an expert in your field. Try to write a blog article once a week and publish it on your website and through your social media channels. Initially this won’t be an immediate success, but if people like what you are writing, then they begin to share it. Over time this will help you become an authority in your field and lead people to trust you and any organisation that you are associated with.

10. Offer to give your services for free to non-profit organisations. This helps to build credibility and gives you something to talk about on your website or social media channels. It costs you nothing, apart from your time. Offer to be a speaker at a conference or business group. You’ll benefit from the name recognition and the publicity this will bring, and once again its great for networking.

I hope you found this of interest Kickstart your business Part 2 coming soon!!

Dean Williams

Dean Williams is a design and marketing blogger working for Print-Print Limited, promoting business and building brands through quality print marketing. If you’re interested in small business promotion then please get in touch hello@print-print.co.uk