When starting a small business, the budget is pretty tight. One of the first expenses to get cut is the marketing budget. While both online marketing and traditional marketing can at times be pricey, there are plenty of cost-effective methods to work around a shoestring budget. The best way to market your new business could be more affordable than you think.

Utilize Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to promote your business without spending any money. This marketing method benefits many brands as it often targets your local community but you’re not limited to just your location thanks to hashtags.  While there is the option to pay for ads, many brands choose not to. Having valuable and engaging content will help your brand on social media.

Build Relationships

Establishing strong relationships with your current customers is necessary if you want to continue growing a customer base, plus it’s cheaper to retain current customers than it is to get new ones. There are many ways to build strong relationships such as going the extra mile for a customer or keeping in touch with them such as email marketing.  Having this strong relationship with your customers can also help with the old fashion word-of-mouth marketing where you can potentially get referrals.

Collaborate

If you want to collaborate with other small businesses then you’ll first need to network. Getting to know people takes a lot of time and commitment but this is a free way to get yourself out there and your business known. Once you have some networking established you can then reach out to these non-competitive businesses within your community for some cross-promotions. These cross-promotions are often very cheap if not free and they’re wonderful for expanding your customer base due to reaching out to new people in this method of promotion.

SEO

SEO is a powerful method to marketing your brand. This method of search engine marketing focuses on targeting people who use search engines to look up specific keywords. This can be extremely beneficial and affordable too.

Offer Coupons

This is an old fashion marketing method that stands the test of time. Coupons are an excellent way to attract new customers to your small business. Customers will often go out of their way to use a coupon, and they can also help generate return visits. This is a great way to expand your customer base and producing coupons doesn’t need to be expensive either. Most eCommerce platforms have a free tool or plugin to create coupons and printing coupons is often cheap if you visit your local library or office supply store.

Try Out Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best methods for reaching out to customers because you’re contacting them and it’s being delivered right to their mailbox. Another reason why this is wonderful is because of how affordable email marketing services are. You’ll often find that most services will only begin charging after a few thousand subscribers, so this gives you enough time to focus on generating more income to expand your marketing budget. You should try to encourage customers to sign up for your email list both online and in person. Be sure to devote time to creating value in each email that you send or else you can face dealing with unsubscribers.

Know the Power of Community

Your community can be very powerful, and often a great way to market your business affordably. These can cost a little money or maybe even no money at all. If the area you’re in has a Facebook group, you can try to promote your business there. Printing off flyers or bookmarks to leave at the local library or have hung up on the community bulletin board are both great ways to promote at no extra cost to you. Sponsoring a local sports team or a charity run can also be a great method too if you have the funds.