Small Business Marketing Ideas On a Limited Budget

It is not always necessary to spend a lot of money to market your business efficiently, as long as you do the basics well. Check out our small business marketing ideas below for tips on how to secure  new customers and keep them coming back.

Secure New Customers

It’s not difficult to convince potential customers to purchase from you when you know a lot about them. Research, that allows you to create customer personas for your target audience, need to be a key part of your marketing strategy.

Monitor Online Behaviour

You’ll find it easier of selling to your target audience if you understand their online habits.

• Google Analytics helps monitor website traffic, including what’s being searched. It also allows you to discover statistics, such as: which types of devices your visitors’ are using; their geographic location; and which pages are most often visited and which aren’t. It’s also possible to see how many people are being referred to you site from other web pages.
• To find out what your target audience is looking for, try running surveys or polls through your social media channels. Survey Monkey is an easy-to-use survey building site, which can be easily embedded into your Facebook page. This enables you to easily distribute your surveys and get your responses in an uncomplicated format.

Based on your survey results, and your findings, you can alter your products, services, or simply how you talk to them. For example, if you sell baby clothes, and your customers respond to your survey asking for an gift-wrapping service, you can add this option to your site.

This is unmistakably most useful to online businesses.  Businesses that see their customers in person, for example builders, cafes, etc, should have a decent understanding of who their customers are.

If you have a physical store as well as an online store, you may find that the customers that come into your shop have different needs to those that shop online.

Record Contact Details

Collect customer contact information such as email addresses using your website.  Give them an incentive such as providing free downloads, running competitions, starting a loyalty scheme, or by asking them to subscribe to your newsletter.

You wonder why collecting website prospect contact details is important.  The best way to use this information is by sending email newsletters, allowing you to stay in regular contact with you customers. 

By sending pertinent, practical content, such as discounts, exclusive sales, updates, you will keep yourself at the forefront of your customers minds.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This is a practice to help optimise your website so it’s more visible in internet search results. It is unlikely that your website will be found if it’s not on the first few pages of results.

AdWords/Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is another way to promote your website in certain searches, to drive increased traffic to your website. With Google, this is done through Adwords.  Adwords allows to you to create an advert that will appear at the top of search engine results, when a relevant search is entered into Google. 

You pay Google an agreed amount (dependent on popularity of keywords targeted), every time someone clicks on your advert.  The amount spent on SEM can vary, but the more prominent you want your advert to be, the more you’ll need to pay.

Find Free Advertising

It’s possible to persuade others to advocate your business if you use a little imagination and perseverance. One option is advertising your business through another business and doing the same in return.

Check your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn pages. If there are businesses that follow you on social media, or business that you follow, and you are happy to refer customers to them, it may be worth discussing cross-promoting.

Leverage Guarantees and Endorsements.

Testimonials from existing customers helps convert prospects that are contemplating purchasing your product or services. The knowledge that others have bought from you and recommend you, builds your credibility.  It increases the likelihood that prospects will become customers themselves.

Retaining Customers & Improving Satisfaction

Customer retention should be a key part of your strategy.  You want your customers to keep coming back for more. Consistently come up with new strategies to improve your customer experience, and convince them that you’re better than your competitors.

Complementary Marketing

It’s possible to increase your sales and improve your customer experience by giving away products or services to customers at the time of purchase.

If it’s not possible for you to offer complementary products or services, you could consider collaborating with a business that offers related services or products. For example, if you are a local event planner, you could make an agreement with a cake baker.

The concept is you can endorse each other’s business to your customers, benefitting both businesses, and costing very little.

Collaborate With Suppliers

Running shared promotions with reliable suppliers, or asking them to divide the costs of signage or events can be a great way to promote your business. Suppliers may have a separate marketing budget to spend on co-op marketing.

Another idea is to have an expert sent by the supplier, at an event at your business, to show off a new product or help customers with product-related queries.

Word-of-Mouth and Referrals

One of the more cost-effective and persuasive forms of advertising you can use is by word-of-mouth. To leverage this, try to encourage conversations about you amongst your customers to prospects, both in person and on social media.

Make sure you also get their permission, and use their endorsements on your website.

Summary

If you’re looking to use some small business marketing ideas, the internet, with so many social media opportunities and SEO initiatives, is a great place to start.

Keep your website up-to-date.  Make the most of the sites that allow you to analyse your web visitors.  And use social media channels that are relevant to you, and adapt your marketing appropriately.

Use these easy and productive small business marketing ideas to ensure your current customers are content and encouraging others to use your business.