5 Cost Effective Marketing Ideas
Here are 5 cost effective marketing ideas you can use to grow your sales and business.
- Look like the business you want to be with branding
Your brand is the face of your business. Customers feel more comfortable buying from companies they perceive to be professional and legitimate. Effective branding can achieve this perception and provide a sense of tangibility to the services you offer.
You don’t have to have a huge budget to achieve this. Repetition and consistency is the key if you want your customers to easily identify and recognise your brand. All your correspondence (fax, letters, email), marketing collateral, signage, business stationary and websites should have the same look and feel and use the same colours, fonts and logos. It may take some time to achieve this but the effort is worth it.
- Retain customers with newsletters
If you are a small business, it’s often hard to maintain face to face contact with customers. Newsletters (either by mail or email) are an excellent way to keep you in touch with your customers. Make sure you resist the temptation to use ‘features’ based headlines. People want to know how your products and services will benefit them.
Encourage customer response through special offers. The offers don’t need to be financially huge or cost a lot just relevant and of benefit to your target customers.
- Upsize your prospect base through partnerships
Find businesses that compliment your business and proactively seek ways to work together. Hand out each others’ marketing material to customers and look at ways to package your products together such as a link to each others web sites or recommend each other. For example, a health insurance broker could cross promote with a local health, fitness or pilates centre In many cases, this approach will help reduce marketing costs while giving you access to a larger customer/prospect base.
- Cut through the mail clutter with postcards
Print your latest offer (remember lead with benefits, don’t sell features) on a postcard and mail it to key targets. Postcards are inexpensive, easy to use and only 50 cents to send. Many people will read a brief ad or offer when it's delivered to them on a postcard.
- Gain new customers through your natural network
If you are a new business, develop a contact list of all your friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances (this is what I call your natural network). Contact your natural network to say that you have just started a new business and you’d like to tell them what you are up to. Very few people will say that they aren’t interested giving you the opportunity to tell them about your business, see if your products and services are of interest to them and to ask them for referrals. Make sure you ask your contacts if you can keep in touch on a regular basis and get their email address (email is a low cost way to keep in touch).
You can still use the same approach if an existing business but use a new product or service as your lead in or state that you are developing some new business ideas or products or services and would really appreciate their advice and feedback. People love being asked for help and very few people will say no to you. |
