17 Affordable But Highly Effective Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses
Marketing strategies you can start implementing now with advice on how to use them to set your small business up for success.
You’re in the process of launching a new business idea or you already have a small business. You need to find customers quickly but you have a limited marketing budget and resources to work with.
You know that the success of your small business depends a lot on its brand and marketing strategies.
You also know that building an engaging brand and having a strong online presence is extremely important for your business.
But you believe it is expensive and you don’t have the marketing knowledge or experience to do it right.
Let me stop you here. It’s gonna be okay!
In this post, I am going to share with you 17 affordable but highly effective marketing strategies you can start implementing now with advice on how to use them to set your small business up for success.
These marketing strategies might not be all relevant to you but most of them are worth testing out. Not knowing your product or service nor market, I can’t guarantee these will work for you. But what I can say is that if you put in the work, these options are viable growth strategies for small businesses.
After reading this article, you will know what to do next with your marketing strategy and what marketing mix you can try out now to grow your business.
When writing a marketing strategy, or when consulting a professional marketer to craft one, you need to consider what makes the most sense for your business while identifying gaps in the market that you’ll try to fill with the right solutions and marketing ideas.
Ok. So where do I start?
1. start with a brand strategy that defines who you are, and how you communicate and behave.
Too often, brand strategy is not viewed as a top priority for founders and small business owners, and understandably so since it's easy to think product/service and marketing are.
In reality, starting with brand strategy is very important for businesses of any size. Start with answering the following fundamental questions:
Why do you do what you do? It is the reason why you exist, besides making money. Explain your higher purpose.
How do you do what you do? Explain the process you undertake every day to realize your purpose and what makes you special in the making.
What do you do? It can be expressed as the product(s) you sell or the service(s) you offer. It is the result of your actions and the proof of your existence.
Why does it matter and why should people care? Here you should describe your brand values or the principles you embody and will never compromise.
Here are my favorite 24 questions to jump-start your brand strategy.
Once you have answers to these questions, the next step is to clearly define who you serve and how you help these people in their daily lives.
Who do you serve? There is no such thing as a one size fits all in marketing strategy. You must know your audience:
Who are these people?
Where do they live?
What are their interests?
How do they think about certain issues?
What do they value?
Where do they hang out online and in real life?
How do they look for products and services in your niche?
Who do they listen to when making purchase decisions?
Knowing these things about your ideal customer will inform the development of an effective marketing strategy that will focus on the right marketing mix to produce the best outcome for your business.
Identify The Problem You Solve: This can take many forms but knowing the problem you solve is key to developing your brand positioning strategy and to crafting the right message that will incite the right customer to make a purchase.
Articulate The Value You Provide: Your value proposition is a one-sentence compelling argument that describes how your brand is different from the competition. It explains why you do what you do differently and better than those who do the same thing you do. You will want to promote your value proposition across various marketing channels and touchpoints.
Name Your Brand: Choosing a compelling brand name is important for your business. It is not the most important but it matters for your branding efforts especially when you are competing in a crowded market. Remember your name is an extension of your brand. It can and should describe what you do. It can and should reinforce the value you provide.
Develop A Clear Visual Identity: Your branding is not only your logo. Once you have landed on a name that feels right to you (and to your target customer - I recommend testing name options), here comes the exciting part, developing your visual expression which includes the visual elements (logo, color palette, typography, photography, design executions) reflective of your brand personality.
Here are my favorite 18 questions to jump-start your logo design.
Before creating any marketing material, I recommend developing a brand book to keep all the elements of your brand in one booklet that you can hang out to employees and partners.
The purpose of a brand book is to present in one document the important WHOWHYWHATHOWs of your brand, helping everyone have a shared vision.
To help you with that, I have created a brand book template that will make your work life so much easier!
Next is the creation of a marketing website that best represents your brand.
2. Create a website that reflects your brand story and values.
A professional-looking website is one of the most important assets for your small business. It is a channel you will always own. And that part is very important. This is why I am going to elaborate on the things you can do with your website.
Your website is a window into your world
Your website is most likely the first thing potential customers will see when they Google search for something similar to what you offer. Or when they search for your brand name on Google.
It is your chance to make a good first impression. Your website is the hub of your brand marketing strategy. Everything should revolve around it.
You will use your website to showcase your brand, provide valuable information, sell your product or service online, collect potential customer information, and drive traffic to your social channels. In addition to being the place to point advertising and marketing initiatives to.
In turn, your website will receive organic traffic via search engines, the content you create and publish, and other marketing tactics you employ.
If you don’t have a website yet, nowadays, it is very easy to get one.
Buy a domain name: See if your brand name is available. If not, choose a domain name that comes close to it. Purchase a monthly or annual fee associated with owning that domain.
Sign up for web hosting: This is where your website will be hosted and served to your customers via servers. This is often available through the same company you purchased your domain name.
Purchase a content management software (CMS): To create and update your website. There are several free templates but if you want something customizable, they can charge $50-100 for premium themes.
Or simply get a website builder & solution: I wanted to buy a solution that would take care of all the above for me, that was user-friendly, integrate nicely with other services such as Google Workspace and Stripe, and would allow me to create a beautifully designed website (because let’s be honest, good design is very important!) to showcase my work, start a blog, but also sell digital products and services in the future.
I was also looking for a website solution with professional-looking templates. This is why I went with Squarespace and I highly recommend this service.
Once your website is set up, consider going multilingual. The Internet has made things global and your audience might be larger than what you think. And might be speaking other languages than just yours.
Use the power of SEO & multilingual SEO:
SEO is one of the most important marketing strategies for finding new customers. The most widespread way to direct traffic to your website is through Google & Bing searches.
First thing first, you need to add and verify your website on Google and Bing so the two biggest search engines can start indexing your pages.
Add and verify your website with the following tools:
Once this is done, don’t forget to submit your sitemaps so every time you add a new page to your site, Google and Bing will automatically crawl and index them if they’re deemed worthy.
You need to keep your page keywords optimized if you want to rank high on searches related to your niche. Your goal is to show up on the first page of Google and Bing search results related to search queries of your niche to increase your chances for prospective customers to click on your link and visit your website.
Enhancing SEO for different languages will also help you find customers in new markets. Creating multilingual SEO will help search engines understand what languages your pages are written in and which ones should be served to locally target people. To keep your multilingual SEO optimized, you can use Weglot translated URLs feature.
Start a Blog that is hosted on your website:
Blogging helps you generate organic traffic, can establish credibility in your niche, and position you as a thought leader.
When you start blogging, you need to publish fresh, informative, entertaining, and valuable content regularly on your website. Don’t use 3rd party services such as Medium.com.
Even though the platform might help you reach a larger audience, in the end, they own your content. And you don’t want that. You want to own your content and your distribution channel. That’s why you want all your original content to be hosted on your website.
There is no secret to blogging. Quality and consistency are key to driving organic traffic through search engines. You can also start a video blog via a YouTube channel and display all your videos on your website.
You want to add a call-to-action to your posts for readers or viewers to subscribe to your blog or channel and receive emails. This is how you can start collecting leads and offering prospects the opportunity to get more information from you if they aren't ready to buy yet.
Capture prospective customers’ information:
Most people who visit your website will not buy from you right away. Capturing contact information for future direct marketing campaigns is crucial.
Email marketing remains a favorite channel for nurturing leads and turning them into actual customers. Don’t miss out on parceling your website with email forms when and where appropriate.
3. Get Listed on Google My Business.
If you run a local business targeting local customers, Google My Business is one of the most powerful marketing strategies available to you at no cost to give your business credibility and visibility.
When people in your area search on Google for a product or service similar to the one you offer, your business profile will appear in the top searches. If it has rave reviews, your business will gain rapid credibility and people will be more willing to buy from you.
Ranking your Google My Business listing is a powerful tactic for your business. It simply requires you to optimize your profile and collect reviews. For example, if someone searches for a “brand strategy consulting in ruse”, this is what they see:
ThinkBastien Google My Business listing
What you are seeing here is my Google My Business listing at the top right end side of the Google organic search results page which helps me generate a good number of qualified leads without spending money on ads.
4. Run an advertising campaign on Google Adwords.
Remember, people search for products and services on Google, a lot!
One of your top priorities is for people to easily find you when they search on Google for the things you offer.
By using Google AdWords, you can greatly increase your odds for your brand name to be seen in search results and therefore for your business to grow.
Google AdWords is more expensive than other marketing strategies listed in this post. Depending on your niche, you might well be spending around $1 per click which can add up very quickly.
If you know what you are doing with on-page SEO, it should be considered as it is a powerful online marketing channel that can move the needle now and scale as far as your budget stretches.
5. Get Social — Promote your brand on social media.
Social media can be a powerful tool for small businesses. But it can also be a resource sunk.
The question to ask yourself is what social media channel(s) you need to set up and how much you are willing to invest in growing your social media audiences.
Set up social media channels that are relevant to you.
Sorry to break it to you but you should know that it is very difficult to grow an active community on social media. It requires constant engagement and flow of communication. By that, I mean it is two-way communication. You must create engaging content and conversations and respond to your engaged audience daily.
This is why I recommend setting up only a few social media channels that are relevant to you to start with. Focus only on the social channels where your audience is and those channels you are comfortable with. And by that, I mean the social platforms that you use and understand.
For some businesses, it makes sense to invest heavily in social media growth. For others, it might not.
Unless your brand is for kids, teenagers, or creators, I would not recommend spending time or money on Snap and TikTok. Don’t communicate on social platforms you are not comfortable with or do not speak the ‘language’ of the community. Otherwise, you will get excluded and labeled as an outsider and you don’t want that to happen in the social media world.
The key is identifying where your ideal customers hang out and how they communicate and interact with each other and other brands in your niche. If they’re on social media, then it’s the right channel for your business.
But first, you would need to develop a social media strategy that ladders up to your overarching brand strategy to guide your content creation and distribution.
Run paid advertising on the social platforms your ideal customers use the most.
One way to reach a large target buyer group quickly is running paid advertising on social platforms.
If you have a small advertising budget, it might still be enough to run some Facebook and/or Instagram ads. Facebook advertising costs, on average, $0.97 per click and $7.19 per 1000 impressions across all industries (says Google).
If you have a decent to a large advertising budget, then you may want to run advertising on LinkedIn. On average, the cost of LinkedIn ads is $5.26 per click, $6.59 per 1000 impressions, and $0.80 per send (says Google).
Setting up advertising on these platforms is relatively easy and affordable. Depending on your budget allocation, targeting, and creative assets –– video format works well on Facebook and Instagram, It is a viable way for businesses to reach their potential customers, drive awareness of their brand and generate sales in the short term.
6. Put efforts to make content marketing work.
Unlike paid advertising, content marketing is about the long-term game of building a brand by creating and publishing informative, entertaining, helpful, and valuable content your audience wants to consume and share.
To make your content look good and professional, Canva Pro* is the ALL-in One design tool you need to help market your business to the world.
Content Marketing is still king but it takes efforts and promotion.
Content marketing is your opportunity to tell your brand story and share your knowledge, skills, and experience that would benefit others in authentic and compelling ways such as blog posts, videos, Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, podcasts, e-books, online courses, resources, and best practices.
It can also be as simple as joining Facebook groups and being active in those groups. Most importantly, it is about being you and bringing your brand ethos and values to life.
When done correctly, content marketing can drive significant traffic to your website, generate leads, retain your audience and drive action such as sign-ups, follows, and clicks to purchase.
For your content marketing strategy to work, you must allocate resources and you should know that content creation without promotion won’t be enough. You may have the ‘best’ content in the world but if nobody sees it, it is a waste of time and money.
You have to set up a benchmark of quality content based on topics that are relevant to your audience and optimized for your readers. You also must take into consideration how and where people will consume your content.
7. Nurture leads with email marketing.
As mentioned earlier, email marketing is still a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Email remains one of the highest converting channels for interacting with leads, engaging and growing your audience.
But people don't give away their email addresses that easily. To incentivize prospects to do so, set up a “lead magnet” at the top of your email marketing funnel.
Offer your website visitors something compelling in exchange for their email addresses, such as a free digital download, a free product or service trial, a discount, etc.
There are many benefits to using email as a marketing strategy:
It is very affordable;
It is easy to set up and operate;
It can be segmented and automated;
It provides instantaneous communication;
It can reach a large number of potential customers at once;
It is easy to track (open & click-through rates), test (subject lines, headlines, content), and optimize.
Once email addresses are added to an email list, it is important to nurture your prospect and customer base by regularly providing interesting, valuable, and relevant content to their inbox so your emails get opened.
Average email benchmarks for all industries for 2020 (says Campaign Monitor)
Average open rate: 18.0%
Average click-through rate: 2.6%
Average click-to-open rate: 14.1%
Average unsubscribe rate: 0.1%
Email marketing is also a great distribution system that pushes your content and valuable information out to those who expressed interest in your brand.
8. Sample your products — Get people thinking about you.
This one is a no-brainer but often underutilized. It should be included in your marketing mix. I encourage you to hand out product samples (assuming it makes sense for your company, of course).
Product sampling is the most effective way to drive awareness of your brand and let people try your product for free. If you’ve provided a good experience, you’ve given them a reason to do business with you and perhaps to even recommend your product to their family and friends.
9. Promote free professional consultation.
This strategy is not for every business, but if you offer consulting or high-priced services because you are positioned as an expert in your field, promoting a free 30 minutes to one-hour consultation is a great way to generate leads and talk to the type of people who want access to quality and who are willing to pay the price for it.
The secret lies in your ability to provide value in a short time frame without giving away free advice and without a potential client leaving your consultation thinking they now know enough that they no longer need your services.
If you manage to do that, they will believe hiring you is the right thing to do.
This can be promoted on your website as a banner ad or announcement bar and social media channels as a post.
10. Speak at popular events or seminars in your space.
To build your brand and establish yourself as an authority, you may want to consider being a speaker at popular events in your space. These events can be both online and in-person. In the post COVID world we live in, most popular events are now being hosted online.
Unless you are a top influencer or a born talented speaker, start small and work your way into larger events that require invitations. You can find interesting and local events by browsing Facebook Local, Eventbrite.com, and Meetup.com. Or you can simply join business networking groups or specific interest clubs (branding, design, marketing, etc.)
Use this as a marketing channel so be prepared to deliver your best pitch at every event you participate in.
11. Set up a referral program for staff and customers.
People are more likely to buy a new product or service or to buy into a brand if their friends or family recommend it.
Referrals are one of the most efficient ways to find new customers. To obtain referrals, use the help of your existing customers and current staff. You simply need to motivate them to promote your business.
Incentivize them to refer other customers with referral fees or other meaningful rewards. It doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary; incentives can come in many forms like a free product, free month of service, vouchers, etc.
Remember, word-of-mouth is incredibly valuable for your business to find new customers so referrals should be seriously considered as a growth marketing strategy.
12. Get your swag on swag with promotional merchandise.
Swag (Stuff We All Get) is an effective marketing tool because it is easy to make at a relatively low cost – you put your logo and tagline on something, then you give it away.
Try to be creative with your swag. Make promotional merchandise that is useful like mugs, water bottles, phone cases, grocery bags, or even classic swag items like branded pens, t-shirts, and caps. The trick here is to make it stand out and original so that people may want to show it off.
Adding promotional merchandise to your marketing mix adds a personal touch to your brand. People love free stuff. And when it’s original, they love it even more.
Swag is a great marketing tactic for lead generation because it reminds people of your brand. Give your swag to potential customers, offer it to your employees as prizes, or leave it on a counter somewhere.
13. Make stickers, give some away, and put one on your car.
Why do you think Apple gives away stickers with their products? Because they know people will stick them somewhere and that it will create free advertising.
Ok. I’m not Apple you may say. But you can still think like Apple.
Stickers are generally not expensive to make. Take your logo, add a tagline, and get it made.
Stick it on your car and there you go, you have your brand awareness campaign on wheels, spreading the word all around town. Even better, give stickers to friends, customers, and prospects, and they may even spread the word for you.
14. Collaborate with complementary brands or businesses.
Joining forces with a complementary brand or another business can help you do things you could not have achieved on your own.
This can be done online with a podcast or webcast or in real life via an event or a promotional giveaway or a limited edition collaboration.
You want to formulate a proposal that provides mutual benefits for both parties.
The key is to identify overlap in your audience and a non-competitor’s audience and then find a way to tap into that overlap in a mutually beneficial way.
Doing interesting collaborations with complementary brands can be a powerful marketing tactic to reach a whole new audience and get noticed.
15. Support a local cause.
Another route to take is supporting a local cause by giving away products or swag, donating money, and investing personal and staff time. You can consider getting involved in your favorite cause by volunteering.
You can even take a provocative stand on global issues and the pressures of modern life that affect your industry.
Remember this: doing good leads to doing well in business.
16. Network, network, network.
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional networking platform. Be active on LinkedIn! This is a great way to create connections with professionals in your industry. Join groups for getting advice, sharing your knowledge, or receiving event invites.
You should consider subscribing to LinkedIn Sales Navigator which has great sales tools to help you find the right prospects and drive more leads. When you have qualified leads, invite them to a face-to-face video chat. Making things personal is a powerful way to build deeper relationships and land bigger deals.
You can even consider hosting events or online meet-ups.
17. Reach, engage and grow your audience with online events.
You can get personal by recording and sharing video messaging for your business that can be hosted on your website or sent to your list via emails. You can create your own events or online courses.
Think of all the possibilities that are available at your fingertips with things such as meetups, conferences, live shows, and paid workshops, that are relevant to your business.
This online video marketing strategy will help you generate more qualified leads and build stronger business relationships.
Conclusion & Summary:
Be You — Do You.
The best way to uniquely represent your business and to stand out from the competition is to be you and to do you.
As Oscar Wilde once said: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
By being you, you will attract people like you. Remember, you don’t need to attract everyone. It is more important to attract and retain a handful of happy customers than to have thousands of unhappy customers.
Hone in on what works for you.
There are many ways for small businesses to increase visibility and drive sales. It is easy to get lost and overwhelmed. The best you can do is to try out different marketing strategies and see what works for you and your business — and hone in on what drives the best outcome.
I recommend running small tests with each strategy to evaluate what performs and what fails at delivering results to land on the right marketing strategy that works for you and your business.
Here is a summary of all 17 affordable but highly effective marketing strategies for small business:
Start with a brand strategy
Create a website that reflects your brand story and values
Get Listed on Google My Business for free
Run an advertising campaign on Google Adwords
Get Social — Promote your brand on social media
Put efforts to make Content Marketing work
Nurture leads with email marketing
Sample your products — Get people thinking about you
Promote free professional consultation
Speak at popular events or seminars in your space
Set up a referral program for staff and customers
Get your swag on swag with promotional merchandise
Make stickers, give some away, and put one on your car
Collaborate with complementary brands or businesses
Support a local cause
Network, network, network
Reach, engage, and grow your audience with online events
Like I said at the beginning of the article, not all these marketing strategies will work for your business. And I am not recommending you try them all at once. Start small, and slowly work your way up.
To prioritize what marketing strategies you should do first, evaluate the criteria we touched on at the beginning of this article regarding your target customer:
Who are these people?
Where do they live?
What are their interests?
How do they think about certain issues?
What do they value?
Where do they hang out online and in real life?
How do they look for products and services in your niche?
Who do they listen to when making purchase decisions?
There is no secret sauce. Marketing is about research, analysis, testing, optimizing, and doing it all over again to refine and perfect your strategy. It is also about making moves, taking calculated risks, and taking a stand.
I ask the right questions, dig deep, and use my 15 years of experience and passion to craft effective marketing strategies for small businesses. Give me a call or shoot me an email. I’d love to be of service!
Bastien Frediani
LinkedIn: in/creativebrandstrategist
Email: strategy@thinkbastien.com
Bastien Frediani is the founder and strategist of ThinkBastien, a strategy consultancy helping businesses achieve significant growth with brand and digital marketing.