Want to advertise your small business but have a tight budget? Here are some low-cost marketing strategies that are both innovative and cost-effective.

First and foremost, master the fundamentals.
Before you get started, make sure you have the fundamentals of small company marketing in place.

Recognize your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is the feature that distinguishes your company from the competition. It might be a unique feature or service that only you provide, or just a different way of working. Here are some examples of unique selling points:

• A carpenter who offers a one-of-a-kind 10-year warranty on their work.
• A web designer who focuses on e-commerce companies.
• A bakery that gets all of its products from organic farmers in the area.
• You can include your USP into everything you do, even your elevator pitch, once you know what it is.

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Make your elevator pitch perfect.
Your elevator pitch is your response to the question, “So, what do you do?” – It’s a succinct, captivating explanation of your business that emphasises your USP and, hopefully, piques attention and leads to further discussion. An elevator pitch may be something like this:

“I run Lovely Cakes, an organic celebration and wedding cake business where all of our products are 100 percent organic and sourced from local farmers at a fair price. Reed farms are a type of farm that you may have heard of. That’s where we get our eggs from.”

Just make sure it doesn’t come out as excessively scripted.

Once you’ve mastered these fundamentals, you’ll be astonished at how many locations your elevator pitch and USP may be used both online and offline. Modified versions may be used for social media accounts, advertising material, and any flyers or business cards you’re making, and they’ll serve as a solid basis for the remainder of your marketing efforts.

Low-cost marketing ideas

1. Create a fantastic social media post. If you don’t have enough time to build a variety of different social accounts or tactics for your company, why not focus on one basic, fantastic thing you can do effectively on social media? This attic conversion firm, for example, has footage of all of their completed work.
2. Get your logo in front of the public. While online awareness is critical, don’t forget to promote your business in the “real” world as well! Print ads, business cards, magazine/newspaper articles, and corporate branding at events are all excellent options that don’t have to be costly. To get your brand out there, try a few low-cost offline guerrilla marketing techniques.
3. Enlist the help of your family and friends to promote your company. Friends and relatives are not only a terrific source of advise, but they can also help you grow your brand for free. Give them business cards, fliers, and any other materials they’ll need to advertise your company to the people they contact on a daily basis. It’s a low-cost approach to broaden your network and present your company to those who would not otherwise be aware of it.
4. Participate in networking events. It’s crucial to use social media and create your digital networks, but don’t forget about classic “face-to-face” networking! You don’t even have to look at expensive, membership-only organisations; there are plenty of smaller, more cheap events to choose from on sites like meetup.com. Bringing a stack of business cards and becoming one with your elevator pitch before going to a networking event may help you expand your reputation, create contacts, and locate new business prospects. Also, get ready ahead of time by reviewing some of our top networking dos and don’ts.
5. Make a refer-a-friend programme. Customer referrals are worth their weight in gold, so why not encourage customers to tell their friends about you? Setting up a specialised referral programme might help you generate more revenue and create a strong buzz around your services in the long term. Just make sure you account for the amount you’ll have to absorb as a result of the reductions and that your company can handle it!

Hope you take some value from some of these examples, and remember that businesses that aren’t known cannot possibly sell let alone survive. The more you tell the more you sell.