10 Low Cost Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses in 2022
Find out more about your ideal customer.
Know who your ideal customer is. Build an in-depth profile of their interests, what jobs do they do? Which social media platforms are they on? What content are they engaging with? What content do they like? If you haven’t profiled your audience. You won’t know how to grab their attention. Or, be able to grab their attention.
Do an Environmental Analysis.
This simply means take a look at the broader environment which surrounds your business, brand, and audience. For example: if you were a tour operator trying to sell holidays during a pandemic! People would be affected by the pandemic, and the likelihood of them buying a foreign holiday might be much smaller. So, you would alter your marketing to reflect the broader current environment.
Who are your competitors?
What are your competitors doing? Gain some inspiration from like minded companies successes and failures. This DOES NOT mean copying them!
Social Media.
You don’t need to be on every single social media channel. But, do review frequently your engagement across all channels. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon or latest thing. Your brand’s audience may or maynot be active or engage on some social media channels. Align the channels you engage with, with your audiences engagement, demographics, likes, and habits.
Define your Brands Value Offering.
What are you offering your potential customers that view your posts, website etc? Is not enough to say that someone should follow you just because you are the most popular, knowledgeable or successful in your field . You have to offer some sort of value or entertainment to your posts.
Follow the Sixty Forty Rule.
Have an equal mix of your messaging. Create a balance between hard selling your products/services; and soft selling where you use relative brand content such as info/quotes/ advice relevant to your products/services. Too much of either type of content can become very annoying. So, sixty percent of your content should be soft selling, adding value and entertainment to your audience. The other forty percent can be used for hard selling. Or, creating clear calls to action with info regarding the purchasing and selling of your products/services.
Influencer Marketing.
Have you thought of this? Don’t assume that the bigger the influencer the better for your brand. Not necessarily so. Pick smaller influencers with less than 10,000 followers. Smaller influencers generally have a more engaged audience, with better content. They are also easier and cheaper to work with.
What’s this thing with theme Pages?
Theme pages can be a good alternative to more expensive influencer marketing on Instagram. They are generally pages relating to a specific theme, which colates content from other people’s Instagram pages. They aren’t as expensive. For example: there might be a theme page about ‘Dogs’ or a theme page about ‘Beauty Hacks’.
They need to see it at least 7 times!
The average person needs to view your brand at least seven times before they consider making a purchase or engaging with you. How do you do that apart from consistently posting good value content? Think about the flow – a person might read your social media post – they may go to your website (do you have a website? If you haven’t get one now, you really need to have both a social media presence and a credible online presence). Find out more HERE. Once on your website – you might offer them something in exchange for their email – you might use email automation. Email marketing is still a very valuable tool. Follow up with a welcome email – a week or so later an email providing more info about your brand and services – a week or so later an email with your current great offers etc. That’s five times they have seen your brand. Get the idea? Email marketing isn’t old hat. It could be likened to ‘an induction day at a new job’. You are getting a potential client familiar to your brand.
