Marketing (part 3) Ten Top Tips to Low/Zero Cost Marketing

Marketing (part 3) Ten Top Tips to Low/Zero Cost Marketing

Bookmark

By Lindsey Collumbell

The secret to creating a high-impact marketing plan is to optimize your limited budget. A one-time radio ad blitz, adverts, glossy brochure, or flash-enabled website will quickly erode your budget and derail your marketing plans. Use low-budget marketing to get your message out to your customers on a regular basis, and watch sales revenue grow.

There are several reasons why a low-budget marketing plan is a must for small business in today's advertising bloated society:

Placing a single or series of adverts does not necessarily translate to increased exposure and sales. Adverts are often expensive and it is difficult to measure their effectiveness. Every marketing pound spent should produce a good return in sales.
Your target customers need to hear your marketing messages at least 7 times to influence a buying decision. Using marketing & sales strategies outside your budget, does not allow you to repeat your message often enough to make an impact.
Marketing impact can be greatly improved by using multiple marketing channels. Prospects will likely become buyers if they: read about your company in the newspaper, attend a seminar, take home a brochure, and visit your small business website. The further you can "stretch your marketing pounds" to reach your target market in multiple channels, the higher the impact of your marketing message.

Ten Top Tips

1. Testimonials – If you have happy customers, shout about it! Third party endorsements in the form of customer
comments are worth their weight in gold.

2. Case Studies – Case studies are the next step up from testimonials. They are a great way to portray the work you have done. Case studies give you the flexibility to show what problem you were asked to solve, how you solved it and detail the quality of the work you did. Testimonials are usually text only, whereas case studies tend to include photographs.

3. Get Recognised – Receiving official accreditation from schemes relevant to your industry will make you stand above from your competitors. Schemes that accept companies just because they have applied mean little. On the other hand, schemes that only accept a company after successful references and recommendations add credibility to your standing within the industry.

4. Become an expert– writing articles, and getting them published, on your particular sector of the industry reinforces your expertise and will add credibility to you, your company and your skills. Having these articles available online means they can be picked up by the search engines and will help to build your online status.

5. A picture tells a thousand words – it is much easier to get a journalist to publish a news release or article from you if they have an image to illustrate the piece. If these images are high resolution (that is 300dpi for print publications) and stored online, they are easily available for journalists to pick-up.

6. Know where your market is– you will be far more successful at reaching your target audience if you are in the places that they are. If they read particular publications then aim your publicity at these titles. If they go to particular places or do particular things then make sure you are there. If they search the internet then build up your online presence.

7. What is your USP? – What is different about you? What makes someone buy from you and not your competitors? Your USP (or Unique Selling Proposition) is what makes you stand out from the crowd. It may be that you charge a project price rather than the daily rate that your competitors charge. Or you may have industry accreditations / memberships that your competitors don’t have.

8. Sell the sizzle not the sausage– Always highlight the benefits of what you do and not just say what you do. If you build conservatories tell your customers that they can bring the outside in and sit in their garden all year round with one of your conservatories. Or if you build loft conversions say that you can create the home of your dreams without needing to move.

9. Offer a free consultation – Do you offer a free quote/estimate, or do you go one step further and offer a free consultation? There may be little difference to you but a free consultation sounds more substantial. When you meet a potential customer, do you just give them a price on what they have asked you for, or do you give them ideas of other things they can do as well?

10. Search Engines – if you already have a website then how do you direct traffic to it? The more links you have to your website the more search engines will find it. It is even better to have links from a relevant site that has lots of traffic as these visitors will, in effect, be pre-qualified.

Keep up to date with the latest ProjectBook articles and blogs with our RSS feeds and subscribe to our newsletter.