3 Essential Free Ideas for Low Cost Marketing

Running a small business is, let’s face it, incredibly hard. Between your supply chain, staff, customers and bank manager, keeping all the plates spinning can be tough. Ultimately though, everything comes down to your cash flow and improving that means effective low cost marketing.

The only trouble is the sheer expense of most traditional marketing campaigns. After all, how are you meant to drive customers to your business without spending big money to end up in the paper or on the TV?

• Ask for reviews
  

  The way people interact with businesses has changed dramatically over the last decade. We see the rise of smartphones and ultra-fast mobile internet. We now cross reference every company and product we come across in both real life and online. The tool we use to do that? Google. Which brings us to our 1^st essential low cost marketing strategy – reviews.

  Ask your customer for a review on Google. You’ll not only prove your legitimacy to future customers, but you’ll help push your business up the Google rankings. It’s incredibly effective and totally free.

• Blog
  

  As a small business, getting people to come to your website isn’t easy. Especially if you don’t have the money to force your product to the top of the rankings. However, there is a low cost marketing tactic for driving traffic and sales: good, old fashioned blogging.

  Not only does Google love regularly updated blogs, but your customers do too. Become an essential resource in your industry (think incredible recipes for a cake shop or top holiday locations for a travel agency). You build a relationship between you and your customers, drive traffic and earn valuable credibility.

• Build local contacts 

  As a rule, add every person and every business you meet on LinkedIn. But the best networking trick for small businesses is still to get out there and make local connections.

  Go and speak with local businesses, whether that’s local freelancers or physical locations. Get your name out there and build connections with these businesses. From experience, these kind of connections pull in a huge number of leads to help grow your business dramatically.

  For more help have a look at my resources page or download my Accomplish Quick Guide to Marketing.