Sometimes, marketing isn’t given the money or manpower it needs to truly succeed in the hyper-competitive B2B landscape.
This is a major challenge for many marketers, who must learn to do more with less. Without a sufficient budget, it’s often difficult for marketers to make a significant enough impact to justify more investment.
For those marketers on a low budget, one or two-person marketing teams, it’s critical to strategize and spend money wisely.
This post has tips to help you do just that. Check out low-cost, high-impact marketing strategies, perfect for any low-budget or low-staffed team.
Use But Don’t Abuse Social
Social media is one of the places your time and energy can go a long way, which makes it perfect for smaller teams with limited resources.
Create a social media account for each channel that your customers use. Be sure to check if it’s worth your while to even post before throwing a lot of energy at a channel. Remember, if your customers aren’t there, you’re wasting your time. If you already have accounts on many channels, check your website analytics to see which channels are bringing traffic to your website.
After you create the social channel, make a plan to post on it consistently. Consistency is the key to successful marketing, otherwise, you won’t remain at the top of your customer’s mind. In some channels, it’s fine to post multiple times a day, like Twitter. But on Facebook, posting more than once a day will actually hurt your brand in the algorithms.
Social media marketing is one of the fastest, easiest, and most budget-friendly ways to ensure that your brand gets the exposure.
But not all that good press will come for free.
Pay for Some Social
Even if your budget is tight, sometimes it’s worth your while to invest a little money into paid advertising. Even $50 goes a long way in promoting your brand on your most effective channel.
Facebook and other social networks are making it difficult for organic social media marketing to be successful. It’s worth spending a little money on, so long as you are strategic and ensure that the audience you are targeting is the one that will buy your product.
Look out for coupons and credits towards sponsored posts. Sometimes platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn will offer you free credits to sponsor your posts. Take them up on these offers to make your budget go even further.
Create Content On What You Know
This one’s easy.
Every business has an angle or specialty.
Now write content about it.
It’s as simple as that. Create content that fits the needs and wants of your customers. This is something you can do regardless if you consider yourself a creative person.
You can take photos, make videos, write blog posts. Whatever you’d like. Just create content and put it out there.
Give Away Some of Your Best Stuff for Free
This is the oldest trick in the content marketing book. Make something valuable, then make it free.
This might seem counterintuitive, why would you give away something if you have a low budget as it is?
Giving away a free webinar, online class, ebook, etc. is a great tactic to make potential customers trust and like your brand.
Network Heavily
They say talk is cheap – and it is.
Network.
Reach out to others and create relationships, and you don’t need an in-person trade show to do it. Make connections, real ones, not just the number of people who follow you on LinkedIn. That means starting and keeping up with conversations.
That’s more challenging than ever. Just remember the basics of socializing. Connect on a commonality. Then go from there.
Ask For Reviews and Referrals
Wield the power of your current customers. This is the cheapest and best way to make others trust you and your brand.
Ask your customers to write reviews about their experience with your offering. Then have them refer other partners to you.
These referrals are much more valuable than any kind of content you create or campaign you run. This is because your audience is far more likely to trust anyone, not on your payroll.
Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. Using these tips, you should be able to find a way to create the content you want and justify the budget that marketing receives each year. You might even find that your marketing does so well that your tiny team can grow and your department receives more money.
- What are your best low-budget marketing tips?
- Where are the easiest places to cut spending?
