You’ve got a great product or service. You’ve also secured investments time and time again to make sure you have the inventory to meet demand… but where’s the demand? You know it’s there if people only knew your product or service was available! Let’s be honest, it’s hard to create effective advertising for small business…or is it?
Not only can you do great marketing on a tight budget, but you can create more bang for your buck than you ever imagined!
Social media is a great place to start. Low-budget marketing works on social media sites like Facebook because you can deliver highly-targeted ads to the audience that buys. This does require a little homework on your part, specifically knowing who buys your product. The more you know about the demographics that buy, the better your results on social will turn out. Additionally, you can set the budget with social so you don’t go over a certain limit and ruin the college savings fund for the kids.
When it comes to more traditional forms of marketing, particularly printed materials, the cost-benefit analysis is particularly important for businesses on a tight marketing budget. These promotional materials and physical pieces of advertising need to be distributed and positioned in optimum places for maximum impact. Focus on the aforementioned targeting to know who needs these materials most, and scrutinize locations and vantage points before agreeing to place signage and posters along visible throughways.
Furthermore, the printed marketing materials need to look fantastic, which is where getting the most bang for your buck comes into play. For instance, choose printing on foam board if putting together a series of promotional posters. These will be materials built to last, versus those which are easily ripped and worn. It might cost a bit more upfront, but it prevents having to constantly commission new reprints.
Affiliate advertising, or affiliate marketing, can also be very effective advertising for small business. You can think of this option as a joint venture, where an affiliate of yours will advertise your product or service and the affiliate is paid a commission based on sales. Because sales are the lifeblood of your business, this is often an effective way to take advantage of the circle of influence others have made.
Don’t forget paid search advertising. This can include pay per click (PPC) advertising. We’ve all searched for something we want on Google, and what is the first “result”? You’ll notice the ad is a sponsored link. This is Google AdWords. Simply set the parameters for advertising locally; or go big and globally advertise. This works great for small business as you can set the ads to run a certain distance from your business.
If your company has equity to spare, you can invest that stock in an advertising campaign. There are also credit lines available for media, as well as revenue sharing opportunities (think of this as higher-level affiliate marketing, where the investment is paid back with sales from the campaign). The leveraged advertising budget, whether the revenue share model or credit line model, is paid back through revenues generated from the advertising campaign. If your product will sell with exposure, this is a great option to explore.
You can also trade your company’s products, services, and other assets to fund major advertising campaigns. Barter media is also available. There are advertising opportunities available for trade, including TV, Radio, and digital display ads. This is great for stagnant or aging inventory that you wanted to move yesterday.
Advertise today. Let them know you have it! Sales are coming!
