Marketing your product or services comes with plenty of challenges and perhaps the biggest one is being able to afford your marketing activities. There just seems so many out there to choose from. Should you focus on your direct mail or should you be launching your Facebook advertising campaign?
There are a lot of questions and equally as many answers, all of which seem to cost money. In this blog we take a look at some cheaper or even free marketing solutions you can put in place for your business.
Make a Plan
Just because you’re looking at cheaper options that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get organised and if there’s one thing you need, it’s a plan.
Don’t just throw everything you’ve got into one or two ideas, instead always have your customer at the heart of any action you take, free or not. Make sure you know who your customers are where to find them. Then you can start thinking about how to connect.
Work Your Website
You’ve already done the hard work getting it up and running, so now it’s time to use it to your best advantage. Is your content all working as it should? Is it high quality and updated regularly? You want to drive visitors to the pages that funnel them through from enquiry to sale so make sure that your website is at its best.
You’ve probably got a social media presence so another low-cost alternative is pop up ads. Whether you’re looking for pop up banner design for eLearning companies or for your architectural design services, these little ads can help drive traffic to your site.
Think about running a short campaign before you commit to a big spend and see if it works for you.
Image courtesy of Pexels: CC0 licence
Say Hi
One-to-one marketing is an effective and free way of talking to your customer directly. Take a look at the details you have on your CRM software. Send birthday eCards with vouchers included, ask your customer to take part in a survey, remind them of the last thing they bought from you and ask if they’re still happy with it. Find some personal information and use it to connect with your customer base.
Yes, this is time consuming but making those connections and bringing back existing customers is far easier than attracting new ones, so it’s well worth the effort.
Your marketing efforts, if targeted and sustained will yield results. They don’t have to be costly but instead should be consistent and relevant to your customer base. The more you get to know your customers, the easier you’ll find it to produce marketing materials that are interesting and relevant to them and that they’ll act upon.
Take the time, do your research and come up with a plan. Be specific and targeted and know who it is you’re talking to and what you want to say. It’s not about the cost, it’s about the quality and you have that in abundance.
