A Marketing Guide with Small Budget Ideas

Recessionary marketing for small businesses doesn't have to be complicated or expensive to achieve effective results. But in order to be successful you must be consistent. If you want to make a living in a small business you must market every month, every week, and yes, every day. Be consistent. Your profits depend upon marketing, but use small budget ideas to maximize those profits.

Marketing with Small Budget Ideas

Most businesses starting out don't have a treasury full of money to market their product or service. They need inexpensive marketing to meet a small budget that is effective in generating business consistently.

First, develop a marketing plan to show you the path to meet your goals. It starts by knowing your audience. There are two audiences, those that are customers and those that are prospects. You need to differentiate these two groups as they have different characteristics, which you need to keep in mind when you are marketing. For instance Joe Customer doesn't need to know you sell widgets but he needs to know when you have widgets on sale or a new kind of widget. Joan Prospect needs to know that you carry widgets and your contact information so she can come see the widgets you carry.

With this in mind the small business needs to remember the needs of customers are different then prospects, who have never been to your website or store, nor seen your organizations products.

Methods of Marketing that are Inexpensive or Free

Email is a very effective way of building your clientele as well as keeping your active customers informed. First produce an email newsletter for members. This is a great marketing tool, because your active customers are already interested and like being kept up to date. Secondly put a button on your website that allows people to register to receive your newsletter. This is an excellent way of increasing your membership. Both of these methods are free.

A website is a great marketing tool, but it doesn't have to look like its been up for 20 years. It is surprisingly easy to create and publish a website. The important thing is to develop relevant content to keep visitors coming back. Give them information they can use.

You can put up and maintain a website yourself for the price of a hosting contract, which is about $5 a month. A small amount of money around $20 per month you can get a service that helps to maintain auto-responders, email list and newsletters. They will give you a button to register guest for your email list.

At Mom's Table in Roswell, Ga. Joanne always ask her customers if she can put them on her email list for specials and gets about 80% to say yes. Over the past two years, that list has grown from around 125 to over 2,500 prospects and customers interested in her discounts and specials. All she does is ask them when they come into her shop.

Another effective marketing tool is a postcard. You can design and print 100 postcards for the price of shipping on the web. This can be used to produce a marketing campaign to interest prospects in joining as a member. Then they can receive emails and the newsletter. The nice thing about postcards is the price of a stamp can get information into the hands of a targeted audience. Joanne in our example gives away postcards with her menu and prices to those homes in the immediate area of her shop as well as those that come into her shop.

Another good idea that is not free but relatively inexpensive is advertising in a local weekly newspaper. This can be a great way to get interest in your product or service by giving just enough information to entice them to call or come by to get the rest. Maybe a discount coupon or a free sample can be used. Then get them to sign up for the email list. Once again Joanne talked to an ad rep that came in one day to her shop and got a discount and a free article about her business, complete with pictures. Believe me the small amount she paid was well worth it as the article kept bringing in people for months.

What It Takes to be Effective at Small Business Marketing

For your small business to be effective at marketing is simple. Once you decide who is your ideal prospect then you can decide how to reach them with your marketing materials. Do they hang out on twitter looking for information or service that you provide? Do they live close to a retail shop that you operate? Are they young or old, male or female, married or single and the list goes on.

Once you decide your target market and have a plan together then it only takes persistence and perseverance. Don't allow yourself to label a campaign a failure just because the first ad or postcard didn't produce any customers. It is often said that it takes 10-20 exposures to an ad, letter or postcard to be effective. Sure that takes time and time is money but that is why at the beginning we said, "Do marketing every day."