As a business owner, you may want to tighten your marketing budget, but still get the same revenue-generating results. Businesses may want to cut costs for a variety of reasons. But the impact of COVID-19 has sent many companies on a cost-cutting venture. This will likely impact their marketing budgets. Cost-cutting your marketing budget during an economic downturn can have a negative impact on businesses. Due to this, it’s recommended that companies try to maintain their marketing efforts during recessions. But there are many ways you can effectively market your business without a massive budget!
In this article, I’m going to cover a few cost-effective marketing options that any business can use while on a budget.
#1 Social media
This one is a no-brainer. Social media is quite possibly the most valuable marketing option, mainly because you can reach many people for free!
Posting valuable content to your social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more) is cheap and effective — helping you give your audience a chance to engage with your business.
But also taking advantage of social media ads is another cost-effective way to advertise your business. You can run effective social media marketing campaigns for as little as a few dollars per day and still get a decent reach to customers. Another reason why social media ads are awesome is that you can target specific groups of people who would be more relevant to your business — based on demographics and detailed psychographics.
#2 Email marketing
Email marketing is also a very cheap marketing option that gets great results. Many email marketing service providers offer cost-effective packages, as well as free trial periods.
If you haven’t already built your email list, here’s a simple tutorial on creating one.
It would be best if you took the time to properly optimize the copy in your marketing emails to ensure they’re engaging and give readers the opportunity to do business with you.
#3 Review sites
It’s essential to set up accounts on Trustpilot, Yell, Yelp, Facebook review, Google reviews, and all other review websites relevant to your business.
Reviews and testimonials are free advertising for you and your business. As most people check review sites before doing business with companies, it’s important to encourage your customers to leave reviews of your business.
You can then share positive reviews across your social media channels.
#4 Blog content
Writing your own blogs is both cheap and effective — as long as the blogs you’re creating are high-quality and valuable.
If you’re struggling for content ideas, look at what businesses in your industry are doing. You can also use tools like Answer The Public — which lets you search keywords relevant to your business and shows potential blog titles you can write content to.
One important thing to note is that you should make sure your blog content is optimized for search engine results pages. You can use tools like Yoast SEO and SEO browser extensions, which will help guide you on creating SEO-optimized content that ranks in search engines.
#5 DIY content creation tools
Free tools like Canva help you to create professional images and graphics, either advertise your business or just for general social media content. Free is always a good cost-cutting measure.
Canva has a wide range of tools and templates which enable you to make great content in a few minutes. While you can pay for a premium subscription, Canva’s free plan is enough to create great content for your social media channels — images, GIFs, animated graphics, and more!
Should You Cut Your Marketing Budget?
Suppose you’re asking yourself, “is cost-cutting my marketing budget right for me?” because of the economic impact of COVID-19. In that case, I suggest that you look at how businesses have previously dealt with marketing through recessions.
It’s vital that you find ways to continuously market your business no matter the economic climate or your business’s budget.
All of the suggestions in this article are either low-cost or free, but they’re all effective and easy to implement. If you’re looking for more marketing ideas for your business, check out the Intentionally Inspirational blog‘s latest posts.
Written by Lewis James