Marketing on a shoestring budget

At the core of marketing your business is connecting to your customer. Before any fancy ads or viral videos, understanding who you are serving (and just as importantly, who you are not serving) will make all the difference in the clarity of your messaging and the channels you choose. Us small businesses don’t have the budget or the time to try out multiple channels and ad copy to see what sticks. Instead, dig deep into who you want to work with and pursue them like a dog with a bone. Mailchimp has created guide and template to develop your buyer persona. Get clear AF on what your value proposition is so the rest of the world knows what it is as well. It will cost you time but not budget and it will pay in dividends.

Sector Leadership

You are doing what you do because you care and you are deeply interested. And you got skillz my friend - show ‘em off! If writing is your jam, write articles on linkedin  or blogs for your website that provide your customer with more information about how to make their life easier.  

If you have a jewellery business, you could write about the of the artists who create your jewellery or how to match funky jewellery to an outfit. If you are a coach, embrace your inner geek and get into the neuroscience on why coaching is beneficial. Demonstrate you know your stuff and, over time, that will build confidence in your business.

If you are feeling brave, why not reach out to a podcast you love to be a guest, a website you regularly visit or industry publication and offer to do some writing? I have no doubt there are podcast hosts and publicists who would love to add your expertise to their channel. The worst that could happen? They say no and you try someone else.

Trust

Social proof is the idea that other people think we are great and therefore we must be pretty awesome and worth engaging with. If you have some people who are familiar and happy with your services, ask them for a review for your social media or website. You could even take it up a notch and do a video review - video is king on socials and a quick 15-30 sec testimonial from a real life person will have a greater impact than written reviews.

Let your customers know how they can advocate for you! I reckon you have (or will have if you are just starting out) humans who love what you do - make it easy for them to sing your praises. Provide a short description of how to leave a review, including any tags you would like. Do the heavy lifting so they can easily say how great you are.

People love a free thing that has value - it also allows them to test out your business before exchanging any money. For services, it could be a quick call to temperature check how you could work together. For products, maybe you use AI to let your customers “try on” your clothing or jewellery. There are lots of ways that allow people to become more confident in your product, just give them the opportunity!

Let’s clean house!

Digital hygiene, my friend, makes for cleaner websites, less confusing socials, and more effective mailing lists. If your prospective customer comes to your website or social media and is confused about what you are offering, the website is

too slow to load, or there are broken links, they will navigate away to something easier. Regular checks such as a pagespeed insights are simple and low to no cost ways of keeping your communications clear and easy.

The same goes for your newsletter, are there any contacts that never open your newsletter or regularly bounce? Remove them to make space for your people who do want to hear from you. It’s also important to be doing regular checks of unopened newsletter emails as, overtime, those people may start tagging your emails as spam. This could affect ALL your contacts. So keep it clean to keep connected!

Times are tough right now, the cost of living is hard on lots of people, small business included. But fundamentally, people still want to be connected to each other and innovative things happening in their community. This also won’t last forever, so build relationships, trust, and thought leadership in your business and watch it soar when it's ready.