10 most effective small business advertising ideas for a tight budget

Small businesses often have a hard time when it comes to promoting their activities and gaining wider exposure to their target audiences, mostly due to the lower marketing budget. At the same time, they aren’t able to survive or grow without carrying out extensive advertising campaigns, as when it comes to small businesses and start-ups, the word of mouth is too quiet and slow to ensure a strong customer base growth and boost the revenue.

When there’re only a few dollars to spare and a lot of advertisement opportunities to explore, you need to choose the most cost-effective ones. That means finding a satisfactory balance between the customer reach and the required expenses. This list consists of the most far-reaching small business advertisement ideas that will easily fit into a tight budget. Your creativity and dedication will fuel them up and turn into promotion monsters.

Ways to advertise your small business on a tight budget

1. Become an active social networker

Concentrate your attention on your corporate social media profiles (don’t tell me you don’t have those yet!) and turn them into powerful marketing tools. Follow people from your target audience using your corporate profile to get noticed. Improve your company’s image, engage your potential customers and reach out to your possible partners by posting quality content that may provide a solution to a customer problem, updating your achievements, posting pictures from the recent events you’ve participated in, sharing info graphics and dispersing your formal, business-oriented content with entertaining pieces to make your profile more personal.

2 .Participate in charitable events

Charitable activities improve entrepreneurs’ reputability and provide more exposure to local customers as a side kick. So, give back to your community, and your community will equip you with the most marketing-effective mentions and reviews.

3 .Launch customer referral programs

Remember how we were talking about that quiet word of mouth that’s not able to do much for a new, small business? Well, that’s until you make it louder. Encourage your existing customers to spread beneficial information about your company in social media and in real life by offering alluring benefits that are difficult to deny.

If you own a commercial cleaning company, provide a small discount is your client mentions your services and includes a backlink to your website in one of his posts on his corporate Twitter/Facebook profile. 50% off the next month of services may be available for bribing a friend, who signs a contract. You may feel like you’re sacrificing your income, but you need to look past that feeling and understand that these referral programs and discounts are your long-term investments into a wider client base.

4. Apply for business awards

This step might not cause an immediate reaction and boost your business’s positions right away, but award signs and badges sound quite loudly and attract customers’ attention. Become the fastest growing business in the neighborhood, the most locally-engaged one, the most-customer friendly company, and the most innovative service provider.

5. Join contractor referral platforms

Choose contractor referral platforms that include businesses operating in your sphere (HomeAdvisor for home improvement companies and freelancers, StyleSeat for beauty services, HireRush and ThumTrack – universal tools) to get leads and improve your online positions at the same time. Encourage customers, who hire you through such websites, to leave reviews and rate your business. Even if a few negative comments pop up, the fact that your business is present and reviewed on different platforms apart from your social media will make your business look more reliable, as well as add to your SEO score.

6. Start cold calling

A lot of business owners despise cold calling for multiple reasons. Some marketing experts argue that cold calling is an outdated marketing tool that shouldn’t be applied anymore. However, it has evolved into a much more intricate art that still shows impressive marketing results.

Yes, it’s quite frustrating. Yes, you have to be made of steel to be able to pull it off successfully. But the direct connection with a customer, which allows to determine his attitude, adjust to the situation and impose more sufficient influence, is what cold calling is valued for. You get to deliver the message, explain the details more clearly and understand the outcome of each call pretty much right away. No other cost-effective marketing tool is able to offer the same effect.

7. Send out e-mail newsletters

Develop a standard form of your business newsletters, update them from time to time and set up the distribution. Make your newsletters short, straight to the point and visually appealing. Include timely content and offers that may make people, unaware of your business,

8. Practice cross-advertising

There plenty of ‘marketing-thirsty’ small business owners in each community. Reach out to those, who operate in related spheres, combine your marketing resources and launch collective marketing campaigns. If your budget is too tight even for that, use your own marketing tools (social media, traditional business-to-customer marketing) to endorse each other’s businesses and refer customers to each other.

Warning: be quite selective about companies to cooperate with. Conduct a background check before you even suggest a cross-advertising proposal to make sure that the entrepreneur you will be associated with doesn’t have a shady past.

9. Register on business directories

Register your company on local business directories so that the customers, looking for the services you provide, have greater chances to find you on the web.

10. Join professional/sectoral business associations

Business organizations may charge a participation fee. But in return, they provide an awesome networking platforms and inexpensive advertising programs that reach out right to the target audience and score great credibility.