Promoting your business is no mean feat, but it is an essential part of turning your company into a success. The more people who know who you are and what you do, the more potential customers you are opening yourself up to.
One of the perceived biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to marketing is the cost involved. Many entrepreneurs see promotion as something that will cut into their profits or as an expense which they can ill-afford – but it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are several means and ways in which your business can afford the marketing strategy it needs to grow and thrive. Here are some to consider.
Online listings
You can submit your business to various search engine’s online listings. By signing up for services such as Google My Business, you’ll be ensuring that your company appears in maps and in local listings for whenever somebody carries out a search for the services you offer in the location that you operate.
Google My Business is free to use, as is Bing Places. Yahoo Localworks, on the other hand, charges a monthly fee, although for this you do get a whole range of listings in many different places including Yelp, WhitePages and on Yahoo itself. The greater your visibility when people carry out searches, the more likely you are to be found and pick up customers.
Finance a traditional marketing campaign
For all the talk about social media and new media, you can’t beat one of the oldest advertising mediums for its sheer audience size – we’re talking radio. According to a 2018 study by Nielsen, radio reaches 93 percent of American adults on a weekly basis. That’s a huge number of potential clients for you to market your company directly into the ears of.
When you’re looking at numbers that big, then suddenly finding the money to afford an advertising campaign makes sense. If you can’t fund a campaign from your businesses profits, then it may be worth looking at personal loans to help finance it. With such a massive reach, expenditure on an effective radio campaign will almost certainly pay for itself in the long run.
Host or sponsor an event
Hosting or sponsoring an event is a pretty inexpensive way of not only publicizing your business but also building up a lot of goodwill among local people which can prove invaluable. It doesn’t cost much to put your business’ name to a local charity or community day – some will be happy to have a small financial contribution or even just a facility to host an event which you can offer at no cost to yourself – and you’ll be forging links with the community that can help to influence potential customers into using your company in the future.
Marketing events are another great way to meet a whole host of people and they too are relatively cheap to put on. You could set up a workshop in which you share your expertise or host a conference for local businesses as part of a wider networking strategy. The more companies that you can forge links within your town, city or state the more doors you can potentially open in terms of picking up the trade.
