For any business to attain customers and gain profits, marketing is a must, regardless of the industry your business operates in. However, marketing is one of the few business functions that can be highly demanding in various aspects, especially the budget. And if yours is a startup or a small business, on an extremely tight budget, things only get more complicated. But, there is good news; marketing doesn’t necessarily have to cost you loads of money, bot even hundreds of dollars.

Whether you own a startup company that’s just finding its grip in the industry, or the owner of an established business looking to cut down on marketing costs, there are numerous ways you can market on a budget. When you spend your money wisely, even the minimal amount you have will be able to bring to your business all the benefits of any traditional marketing plan or strategy. Also, with today’s extremely competitive market and everyone trying to sell their products or services with alluring advertisements, it is important for business owners to understand that even a small budget can bring in great results.

Here are 5 money saving tips for marketing on a budget:

1. Establish a Marketing Strategy

Having a sound strategy is extremely crucial to market your business, even with a shoestring budget. Following are the steps to be followed for the same:

• The first step is to identify and understand your target audience, for which you need to perform market research. With a limited budget, your best bet is to do secondary research, which means using market research data that have been collected and recorded by others.
• Next, you need to know your market potential. This gives you an estimate of the demand for your products over a specific time frame.
• Come up with an idea that resonates best with your target market, and always deliver on the same.
• Once you have all of this done, have your marketing focus only on this customer base in order to prevent using your available resources very thinly that your company goes unrecognized.

2. Take Advantage of Social Media

Today, it is really hard to find someone who is not on at least a single social media platform; therefore, social media is one of the best ways to attain the best benefits off your marketing budget. There are a lot of ways you can market on social media: encourage your customers to follow and leave reviews on your company’s social media pages, so anyone visiting the page can know your positives; post content that attracts people to purchase from you, and this can include contests, coupon codes, photos and videos of new products, and more. For those of your businesses that are image-oriented, Instagram would be an excellent marketing platform.

3. Make Your Content Engaging

Content marketing is an excellent low cost technique that can be used by any business; all you need to do is create a blog on your company’s website and publish content that are not only relevant to your target audience, but also engaging, entertaining, and of high quality. Since you can do this yourself and because publishing content can be done for free, you can make the best use of this technique to market your products. Even if you are not a writer yourself, hiring a couple writers who can also edit and publish content will cost you only meager.

In addition to creating new content, also think about recycling the existing content on your website. For instance, on those articles that contain research or statistics-related content, update the same with new statistics on the topic and re-publish the article on your blog. Another effective option is to create infographics using the data you have in your articles; people always like anything visual, therefore, this will be a great way to attract new customers as well as keep your existing customers engaged.

4. Start a Customer Referral Program

One other cost-effective marketing strategy that can be implemented by any business in any industry is asking for reviews and referrals from your satisfied customers. After all, there is no better way to attain a loyal customer base than word of mouth, and when your existing satisfied customers recommend your company’s name to people they know, their trust in your brand grows automatically.

When you want something from your customers, you must be ready to give them something in return. In this case, you need to offer some kind of reward when customers refer your business to someone. It could be a monetary reward, say $10 off on their next order, or anything that you know will please them.

5. Email Marketing Always Works

Email marketing has always been an underappreciated marketing technique; but, the fact is that, it can deliver amazing results when done right, and is the perfect choice for those on a budget. This far-reaching marketing technique not only helps you attract new customers, but also stay in touch with your existing ones, making your relationships much stronger. From welcome emails to customer service content to sale/discount series to abandoned cart emails, there are plenty of ways you can engage your customers with.

Marketing isn’t something that will empty your bank. It can most certainly be done within your budget while achieving the results you expect.