Business Dilemma: Marketing with a Tight Budget

Getting your business off the ground requires great effort and dollars. It is believed that “in order for you to make money, you must spend some money too”; that’s the value of investing.

However, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to create effective campaigns for your business. There are different marketing strategies that can work even with tight budgets; all you have to do is plan properly, be creative and know how to spend your money appropriately.

If you are planning to penetrate the World Wide Web, there are lots of ways to promote your business without spending a dime. Here are several ways that can work with any business size and budget:

1. Introduce your business using social networks. There are lots of social networking site that you can use for free to promote your business, get in touch with your customers and to grow your clientele. All you have to do is spend and dedicate your time and be active in sharing your knowledge and opinions. Popular social networking sites that you can use are Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and Bebo.
2. Create your own local press release. You are the only person who knows everything about your business, so you might as well right your own press release. The great thing about this is that it’s free; you don’t have to pay somebody to write for you. If you are clueless about PR writing, you can find free tutorial and advices online; PR Log is one helpful site plus they also offer distribution services for free. You could also contact online bloggers, local media and other suppliers to help you distribute your PR.
3. Partner with other related business for joint promotion. This is a traditional strategy, although it has been main streamed to suit today’s businesses. How does it work? Through joint promotion you are allowed to communicate with your partner’s contacts and customers. You could also exchange banners, ads and product promotions and post it through his website and vice versa.
4. Join Google local business free listings. Google give local business a chance to list their business contact number and address for quite some times. Your business information will be available in Google local listings every time someone searches for particular keywords like “LA electrician”.
5. If you already have your website you can use links, marketing articles, reward program, free courses, tips and “how to’s” to generate traffic and promote your business site.
6. Other methods you can use to promote and market your business are surveys, event registrations, email marketing and search engine optimization. These methods may cost some bucks but are effective and the results are mostly positive.

Furthermore, for these methods to work you must design your marketing plan according to your business type, target audience and projected budget. To see results, you must quantify and summarize everything; how many actual leads you get and how many people have you reached. And finally be smarter and enthusiastic; know your competition and highlights your company’s distinctiveness to gain advantage and generate more leads.