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You’re in the early stages of business right now, and that means you’re working within a strict budget. But you can’t just not market your company or your products! You’ve got to make a name for yourself, and ensure your profit margins reach the level you promised the investors!
And while that can seem impossible in the moment, you often don’t need a huge marketing budget in these early stages to get your business off the ground. You can do so with small (yet effective) marketing methods, as long as you’re using a few in tandem, and you have a defined goal to reach for. But what are these marketing methods? Well, let’s go through a few of them below for your convenience.
Use Your Social Media Account
Social media is your oyster; it’s a way to open up the world around you from the comfort of your own office and/or sitting room, and that should never be underestimated. And it’s totally free to create an account for your business across all social media sites you know of, so you won’t have to pay for any kind of subscription either. Sure, you’re going to have to fork out to use this page to run adverts, but you don’t necessarily have to resort to this straight away.
Instead, it’s time to try and get your own buzz going. Social media has a lot of features for you to make good use of, and when you’ve got something like personalized hashtags on your side and the ability to directly mention people, you can draw people in from other audiences. You don’t quite have your own yet, but you know there’s a shared audience out there, and you’ve just got to dive right into it.
After all, someone who wants to sell their own range of cooking equipment can tag locally known bakeries and/or restaurants. Someone who is trying to sell their own knitwear patterns and/or sewing materials can interact with online embroidery groups, etc. It’s all about knowing who can give you a little leg up right now, and it won’t be hard to research these possibilities!
Employ Your USP
What is it about your product that sets it out from the crowd? What is special and/or unique about it? Maybe it functions differently to similar items already for sale? Maybe it is made of materials that are more eco friendly? Whatever it is that’s just a little bit different, employ this fact to the max! It’s a free way to generate some word of mouth marketing (a.k.a., the most effective form of marketing), and it also ensures you’ve always got something good to say about your product.
Once you’ve got your USP down, you can start writing about it online, in social media profile descriptions and posts, as well as on review websites and within marketing emails. You have more targeted questions to ask of people who have bought from you, and you’ve got a surefire way to generate the kind of feedback you need for improving the product and/or service you provide. And all of this comes from simply writing out a few short sentences that are easy to digest – who would have thought it could be so easy?!
Focus on Your Product’s Look
The way your product looks is one of the main selling points it has. Sure it’s functional, and you’ve designed it to make life easier for the people who buy it, but even something like a slow cooker is going to struggle to sell if it just doesn’t catch the eye! This means it’s time to focus on your product’s look a little more. Delve into the way competing products look, or what the market tends to respond to, according to sales graphs. You’re going to be investing heavily in your product’s look anyway, so why not go the extra mile here? It’s just another way to use this portion of the budget, and it’s a very clever yet simple way to ensure a better return later on.
Indeed, even just your packaging can speak wonders for you. If you use sustainable, recycled packaging only, for example, that’s another element to add to your USP that we talked about before! And no matter what kind of product you’re sending out, whether you need Food and Beverage Packaging or you simply need to wrap up some cardboard boxes, make sure your company name, logo, and slogan is front and center. Make it hard to ignore, with bright colors and bold letters, and even add an eyecatching discount promotion inside the package available for customers only.
Do Something Locally
You’re living and working in your local area, and that’s something you should look to capitalize on right now. As a small business, this is one of the best ways to make some noise, and the people who live and work near you are always your best customers. So take some time right now to think about what’s going on in your area. Are any events coming up? Are there any charities or other non-profit organizations (such as schools) looking for collaborators and/or sponsors? Because you’ve got the chance to chip in here, be acknowledged, and ensure that the people around you understand what you’re really about.
And the more you can do things locally, the further your influence is likely to spread. You may pick up customers in the surrounding towns as well, and you may find yourself invited to networking events or conferences and even to exhibit at a trade exhibition. Remember, this is another place that your USP comes in handy! You can talk to potential customers and/or investors face to face with that practiced line and smile.
Get a Newsletter Going
People love knowing they’re going to score a bargain, so make sure you create the sense that they have to be ‘in it’ to find one. To do that, get a newsletter going via your website. Make sure people have to hand over their own email in order to receive it, and once they’re in, they’re going to get plenty of good news and offers in their inbox week by week or month by month.
And if you don’t have a newsletter yet, or you’re just putting one together now, make sure it’s written in a way that leads the reader on to the end. Keep it short and sweet, of course, but also ensure there’s some kind of reward waiting at the bottom. You need to be about quality here, as that’s another thing your free word-of-mouth marketing can spread around for you. Making a name for yourself is all in your own actions, and a worthy newsletter is only going to support that.
The Takeaway Here:
If you’ve got a small business you need to start marketing, make sure you keep ideas like those above in mind. You don’t have much to work with, and you’ve got a long way to go, and that means setting things in motion in small and sustainable ways. Baby steps, if you will.
The more time you take in putting a marketing campaign together, the better the result it’s going to generate! Marketing can happen at any stage in your company’s lifetime, so don’t feel like you’re missing out because of your budget. Grab low-cost and/or free methods by the horns and use them to the fullest you can.
