Top 6 budget-friendly marketing strategies
The start of the new year is an ideal opportunity to review your existing marketing efforts, and look at the best ways to attract more business, and generate more revenue from new or existing customers. Below we list a few budget-friendly techniques that don't break the bank.
Marketing Strategy # 1: Don't ignore low hanging fruit
Don't undervalue your existing customer list. You have already establised a good working relationship with your customers, and there's a potential for additional revenue to be had there. Maybe you have a new product or service that your customers don't know about. If you're not sending out regular newsletters or correspondance, then your existing customers will have no way of knowing about them.
We have written a more indepth article about this here.
Marketing Strategy # 2: Send out regular newsletters
If you're not already sending monthly newsletters, then following on from point #1 above, this can be an excellent way of staying in touch with your existing customers. It doesn't have to be costly. You can setup a free email marketing service with a company such as Mailchimp.
Mailchimp will allow you to create an audience (your own customer database), and send automated emails in bulk for free! Mailchimp have a paid environment too, but you can load 500 contacts for free. Be sure to set the platform up correctly to make sure emails hit inboxes as opposed to spam folders.
Marketing Strategy # 3: Create engaging content articles or thought-leadership pieces
Why not create some engaging content articles on your website, that can capture the attention of your existing customer base or target audience. You can summarise these content articles within your newsletter, encouraging the user to read more by clicking through.
Content articles can be in the form of whitepapers, news articles, blogs or videos etc. By creating these interesting articles, you're providing both cost-effective and valuable information to your audience. By offering something of value, you're establishing trust, credibility, and a useful source of information that will hopefully keep people coming back for more!
Marketing Strategy # 4: Email prospecting
Email prospecting is a slightly different marketing strategy to sending regular newsletters as mentioned in point #2. We have written an article that best describes our email prospecting as a service here. In summary, this form of outreach means you are contacting either a new or existing customer database in bulk, by sending personalised emails straight to their inbox.
The email would come from you personally, and it would be more conversational and less graphical than that of an email newsletter. This method of marketing can help you to re-engage with your existing customer base. By licencing GDPR compliant data, you can contact a new list of decision makers within your specific audience sector. Licencing new email data can cost from at little as ~£400 per one-thousand records.
Marketing Strategy # 5: Social media marketing
Spend some time familiarising yourself with social media channels. Not all will work, or be a suitable fit for your specific business. Make sure your company LinkedIn profile is up to date. Make sure your own personal LinkedIn profile is also up to date.
Build your following by posting your thought-prevoking or interesting content articles that we highlighted in strategy #3. Comment, like and re-post on other people's content. Reciprocating on likes, comments and shares is a great way to build your own following.
Marketing Strategy # 6: Search engine optimisation (SEO)
SEO is a great way to improve how you appear to your target audience across different search platforms. Have a think about some of the keywords that best and most specifically represent what you offer as a business, and make sure you talk about that on your website.
Writing content articles as we described in strategy #3 is an excellent way of increasing the relevant keywords on your website. Be sure to add some nice optimised images, and make sure the page header information is tagged up correctly. We wrote an article explaining what SEO is here.
We're always here as a useful resource if you need any help and advice. If we can assist with any of the above, then please feel free to contact us and one of the team will get in touch.
Wishing you all the best for 2024!