As a new business, you need to stand out from the crowd to draw in those all important first customers. When you’re levelling up your new business, you need a good marketing plan that attracts customers and clients without blowing the budget. Here are some low budget marketing ideas to help your new business stand out.
Publish Great Content
Content marketing is an essential part of your marketing mix. Creating content costs you nothing if you can do it in house. Start a blog on your company website. Use it to share news from your company, industry content or easy articles like top 10 lists. Content is an important factor in your digital marketing plans too, as it gives you something to share on your social media channels.
Make Instructional Videos
Video content is a valuable tool. It takes a little more effort to create, but it is a great way to engage with customers and encourage them to share your content. Video can be made cheaply, and you can even create decent looking videos shot on your phone. Instructional videos are really shareable. Film a video explaining how to use a best selling product, or some quick industry guides.
Create Infographics
While you’re concentrating on creating shareable content, work on producing some infographics. Share industry stats or something similar, and turn information into an easy to digest, visually appealing format. Infographics are very shareable and a great way to generate referral traffic and backlinks. Make sure any that you design look smart and are easy to read on smaller screen sizes.
Recycle Old Content
If you’ve worked hard creating a piece of content, don’t just post it and forget about it. Make it work harder for you by reworking it into something else. Collect a few instructional blog posts into an e-book. Embed videos into new blog posts. You can also revisit existing content and update item with new images, information or statistics. You can then reshare the updated post and get even more traffic.
Apply For Business Awards
There are business awards for just about every industry, and many local areas host their own awards too. Take a look at what awards you could enter. Apply for categories like new business or ones to watch. Even if you don’t win, it can be a good networking opportunity. If you are shortlisted, your name will get out there in front of your industry.
Business Cards
Get smart business cards printed up. Keep some on you all the time, as you never know when someone may bring up a topic that you can help with. Hand them out at networking events and gather business cards from people you meet to help you build those first contacts.
If you have a company office, put a box on the reception desk for visitors to leave their cards. Pick a business card a month to win a prize of some kind, and keep the rest to add to your mailing list.
