Four Free & Innovative Marketing Techniques for Your Small Business

When it comes to business marketing costs, I'm a firm believer in watching the bottom dollar. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars a year in paid advertising and four-color brochures for my property management business, I rely instead on networking and old fashioned referral marketing.

Referral marketing (or word-of-mouth marketing) is just another way of describing a free type of promotion in which a happy customer refers your business to a group of his friends. This type of marketing is the best kind of advertising there is, especially for small businesses who don't have the budget for an aggressive advertising campaign.

While distributing business cards is one of the more popular ways to start a word-of-mouth campaign, it's also the least effective. To sell your business, you've got to get out, meet people, and let them get to know you. Here are four of the ways that I market my business for free:

Join the neighborhood association. Whether working out of the house or renting a building, we are somebody's neighbor. I discovered that joining the neighborhood association (and actively participating in clean-up days and other events) helped residents put a face to my name while showing my commitment to being a good neighbor.

Use outside maintenance tasks to promote your business. One way I keep down my property management costs is by doing my own landscaping and maintenance tasks. Glamorous it's not, but it puts me face-to-face with inquiring neighbors and potential customers on a far less intimidating level than if I were behind a desk.

Show and tell. People are naturally curious and like to watch others at work. I tapped into this side of human nature by inviting people to view my rentals while they were under construction. This free marketing strategy led to 100% occupancy before the units were even finished.

Vegetable marketing. What do vegetables have to do with free marketing? I always grow much more food than our family can eat and often share extra produce with my renters. Using home grown vegetables as a way to cultivate a solid landlord/tenant relationship means that new renters find me instead of the other way around.

It's relationships like these that help build a solid referral network. For small time business owners, word-of-mouth marketing is one free strategy that works.

More by this contributor:
Where to find customers for your new business.
Where is it illegal to post advertising handbills?.
Cold calls and getting that front door opened.