Negosentro.com | Getting Big Advertising Reach on a Small Business Marketing Budget | If you’re an entrepreneur in the early stages of marketing a new business, the good news is that there has never been a wider variety of effective advertising channels as there is right now. From traditional media like broadcast television and radio to new media like digital, SEO and social, there’s practically no limit to the ways you can reach a potential audience.
The bad news is, comprehensive advertising campaign costs add up quickly, and as the owner of a startup, you’ve likely got a backlog of upfront expenses. This may tempt you to put marketing on the back burner. That’s understandable, but without an advertising presence, your awareness will stay right where it is. For a new business, that’s a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, there are ways to have your marketing cake and eat it too, successfully reaching an audience on even the most modest of budgets. Here are some tips to help you do that successfully.
Get Social
Entrepreneurs have access to many small business marketing tools that they may not know about. Most, however, understand the value of having a social media presence. They may not understand how best to use it, though. This is especially true if they are operating on a limited or non-existent ad budget. A small business owner may think the key to building their social footprint is to open accounts on as many platforms as possible. Opening business accounts without engagement will do you more harm than good. It’s far better to focus on a small number of platforms that are relevant to your brand’s target audience and post and interact often, instead of spreading across the social spectrum and checking in once a week.
Utilize Content Marketing
It doesn’t take long for consumers to recognize they’re being advertised to, no matter how creative the messaging and design may be. Modern humans have built up a natural aversion to advertising; we resent that it insults our intelligence. That doesn’t mean it can’t work. Rather, it means that marketers must provide value in their messaging beyond pricing and features. They must either make an emotional connection with the audience, or they must offer a seemingly unrelated benefit. Content marketing is an effective way to do both. Content marketing is a form of advertising that focuses on either the good a brand is doing in the world or giving useful information to the person watching it.
For example, a company committed to giving back to its community may produce a longform video showing its staff painting a school playground or volunteering at a soup kitchen. This can be done without hiring an agency or videographer. This sort of content can be shot on a smartphone and edited with free software that is easily learned by a modestly tech-savvy employee. Another approach would be to produce a similar style video with a recipe or instructions on how to complete a DIY project. You’re providing a useful benefit to the audience. The trick here is to pepper in mentions of your product a few short times. If you make mixing bowls, the cook in the recipe video can use them and mention them. If you make hammers, the DIY instructor can pointedly mention what kind of hammer will best get the job done. Viewers will register and forgive these moves if the content is valuable enough.
Ask Customers to Sign up for Email Blasts and Text Messages
In the earliest days of digital advertising, email was King. With so many other channels available now, the idea of email blasts paying off may seem quaint. It’s not. If you keep an email short, provide an offer, discount, or link to valuable resources, customers on your mailing list are likely to check it out. The same is true, perhaps even more so, for text messages. Always ask your customers to opt-in to these messages. Offer them a discount to do so; 20% off a single item will pay off quickly if they make repeated purchases.
If you use social media pages effectively, provide content people want to see, and reach out to them with deals, you can generate astonishing ROI with little or no advertising budget.
