3 Tips for Maximizing Small Business Marketing on a Budget
The Gist
- Resourceful tools. Utilize low-cost self-service tools like AudioGo for impactful, affordable advertising across digital, social, audio and video channels.
- Smart partnerships. Collaborate with like-minded businesses to exchange advertising space and pool resources, creating cost-effective marketing opportunities.
- Content value. Focus on high-value owned content to educate consumers, boost organic traffic and establish brand authority without recurring costs.
How much money should a small business marketing team spend on its marketing? Convention dictates that B2B companies should put 2%-to-5% of revenue toward a marketing budget. In reality, it’s over 10% — and the ratio for B2C companies is even higher.
At those stringent rates, many small business marketing teams find themselves short on staff and cash as they try to implement marketing strategies. While it’s common for small business marketers to feel they must choose between marketing well or marketing cheaply, they don’t have to.
There is an abundance of resources available to help small business marketers successfully advertise to their target audiences based on whatever budget they are given at any given moment. Here are three advertising tips to help small business marketers affordably broadcast their goods and services across digital, social, audio and video channels.
3 Tips for Successful Small Business Marketing
1. Take Advantage of Low-Cost Self-Service Tools
The SaaS industry constantly creates new, improved and ever-more affordable ways to advertise across all mediums. On social media, for instance, YouTube and TikTok are trendy, free and low-cost options in the social and video worlds.
Once a business has owned content on a business site (more on that in Tip 3), it can create targeted campaigns through Google Ads, Facebook Ads and similar pay-per-click (PPC) digital advertising channels. These are some of the most popular avenues, but there are other highly effective, lower-cost strategies out there.
Consider the opportunities with audio streaming services — millions are essentially a captive audience on their daily commute. Advertising on these platforms has become more accessible through niche tools like AudioGo. This platform takes the audio advertising concept to the next level through a suite of audio ad creation tools and templates. It can push ads out to top streaming music, radio and podcast networks. With its beginner-friendly interface, users can easily create and schedule ads, target them to the right audience and launch campaigns with budgets as low as $250.
While AudioGo excels at reaching a wide variety of audiences through audio advertising, brands that host their own podcasts could benefit from podcast distribution networks like Audioboom. This platform helps pair advertisers with like-minded podcasters to reach their niche audience. Hosting a podcast costs less than $10 per month, and you could even earn some extra income by monetizing your content.
When a small marketing team has limited funds due to its size, it can still optimize how those funds are invested by looking for tools that help them reach potential or existing customers at an affordable cost. By leveraging both user-friendly creation tools and targeted advertising options, businesses can make the most of their budget in today’s advertising world.
Related Article: Programmatic Advertising for Highly Personalized, Targeted Marketing
2. Form Collaborations With Other Businesses
Advertising doesn’t always have to be a small business against the world. It’s possible to create partnerships and collaborations with similarly-positioned companies. The key here is to differentiate between competitors and collaborators.
For example, a company that delivers bounce houses may consider a party rental company a competitor. However, the two brands aren’t at odds if the latter focuses on things like tent, table and chair delivery. They’re simply serving the same customer base.
Even if two enterprises are in the same line of business, it’s important to make this distinction. A telemarketing company might consider another call center a rival. However, one might work with phone training, in general, and the other with a specific target market.
When marketers discover both local and remote companies with which their company can collaborate, they can create fresh advertising opportunities. They can exchange advertising space with their audiences and amplify their marketing efforts by pooling resources. They can also create bundles and packages that offer discounts when purchased together. The best part is that all of this can come at little-to-no cost.
Related Article: Top Marketing Trends You Should Watch in 2024
3. Create High-Value Content
Finally, small business marketers should never underestimate the value of owned content. Also called owned media (especially when creating audio and visual advertisements, like those listed in Tip 1), the term refers to content a marketer fully controls.
A blog article or how-to video on a company website is owned media. Social posts and PPC advertising are not owned media. Marketers should optimize the promotional media that their company controls.
Every piece of content that a small business marketing team creates has the potential to impact its customer base. It can educate consumers, answer customer pain points and establish the brand as an industry authority. High-value content can also help a brand rank better in search engine results pages, which can boost organic traffic to its website and sales funnels.
The best part? Owned content may require some effort to create, but it belongs to its creator forever. No fees. No paying per click. When done well, quality content is a long-term advertising play that can continue to serve a business for months and even years into the future with minimal upkeep.
Related Article: Are Your Brand Marketing Strategies Outdated?
Gaining Marketing Momentum as a Small Business
Small businesses don’t have to skimp on marketing. Small business marketers can cobble together effective marketing campaigns by marshaling their available resources.
They can do this by taking advantage of low-cost self-service tools. They can also collaborate with other local and related businesses and create high-value content. This maximizes their budgets, attracts new customers and ultimately grows their businesses.
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