Marketing is vital for the growth and visibility of a small business. A marketing strategy for your small business should not necessarily be expensive, all you need to do is be creative enough. At the end of the day, what you need is to hit your intended targets. Here are 3 approaches to nailing you marketing without spending a dime.
1. Create a killer pitch
As a business owner, you automatically take up the marketing role for your business. This means that wherever you are, whatever you do, you need to be looking out for opportunities to talk about your business and what you do.
To make sure you are always ready when an opportunity arises, prepare a brief pitch that will draw people to listen to what you have to say. The average attention span of an adult is about 8 seconds so this leaves you with less than a minute to effectively market your business.
If you can master this skill, your business ROI will thank you for it.
2. Word of Mouth Marketing
If you master the use of word of mouth marketing for your small business, you may never have to budget a dime for marketing again. There are many small businesses that thrive solely on word of mouth marketing and only use other marketing strategies to help solidify their brand and not necessarily to get new clients because their happy clients bring in more clients.
Here are some tips to make the best out of word of mouth marketing;
- Understand your target market, what they need and focus on fulfilling their needs.
- Have a customer feedback strategy. When customers give feedback, it makes them feel like they are adding value.
- Be unique; Your competitors can do what you are currently doing and even more. However, what makes your business stand out? It might be as simple as how you package your product or your exemplary customer service
- Reward loyalty – Always reward loyal customers and they will recommend more people.
3. Online Marketing
Online Marketing is a wide topic but for this article, we will focus on social media marketing. Social media marketing takes two formats; organic and paid.
With organic marketing, you do not pay to boost your posts or promote your page. However, with paid marketing, you have to pay to have your posts shown to a wider audience and to promote your page.
It is important to boost your posts and pay for social media ads once in a while but your main focus should be making the best out of your organic posts.
With facebook introducing a new algorithm that prioritizes posts from friends and family to business pages, businesses have to work extra hard to create content that stands out.
Here are some tips you can use to promote the organic reach of your page;
- Present a consistent image of your brand from the beginning.
- Be authentic with your posts, let them be natural and not look like you are forcing the sales message.
- Share content that adds that add value to your audience including tips and quotes.
Other online marketing tips you can consider are email marketing and digital marketing through a website.
