You always hear about businesses going bust, in fact you only have to walk into town on your lunch break where you will be sure to see a few closed shops on the High Street.
Business can be a cruel tough world, especially for new start-ups. Competition is fierce, with a lot of the pulling power and money muscle flexing done by the big boys in the market, so it really can be tough for the small independents out there.
So how can you make sure that your business is not putting up a closing down sale sign anytime soon?
Well you certainly won’t need us to tell you that you will need to keep a hawk eye on those figures… What money is coming in and certainly what money is coming out.
Marketing your business is imperative for you to reach new customers and make sure your existing ones keep coming back. But how much should your business be spending on marketing? Can it be done effectively on a shoestring?
Yes it can. And here’s how…
To start with you need to figure out how much you can effectively spend on marketing without putting your business in any jeopardy… So think about the worst case scenario, how much can you afford to lose on marketing without getting anything back?
For this example we are going to say £500. Less or more? Adjust our example accordingly.
Social media is free
Take full advantage of this by posting daily in all your social media accounts, making sure your customers follow or like your page and try to engage with them on a personal level.
Run competitions where you give away free products or services – to enter the competition all they have to do is like your page and share the competition post or tweet.
Then select one of your posts on Facebook to promote – boost the post to either potential customers or existing. Spend £50
Google Adwords
Now this can be a bit of a minefield. However, we all search on Google so making sure you are visible when a potential customer is on the lookout is important.
Try setting a budget of £150 a month and see how you get on.
Mobile marketing
Now this is the one. 98% of all text messages get read so you know your message will not get drowned out by cat videos, emails or other Google ads and will be actually read by your customer.
Sign up here – it’s free. And with our fantastic double credits offer you can get 20,000 messages for £300!!
Write your message or offer with a link to your website or number to call you, decide what time you are going to send it and to the number of people… Messages don’t expire so you can save some for the following month, or our prices are so incredibly low you can send the full 20 thousand and buy some more the following month.
Word of mouth
We all know word of mouth is one of the best ways to spread the name of your business particularly in a local area, so make sure your customer service and product is tip top and your name should spread like wildfire – tips on how to improve your customer service
Now what is very important is that you check the results of each individual method and see what worked best and got you the best results – but as you can see we have reached a lot of customers, 20 thousand with mobile marketing, roughly around 5 thousand with Facebook and whoever types it in on Google… All for £500.
As you start to see what works, slowly increase your spend and your return should slowly increase with it… Don’t be afraid of trying new things, new opening lines in your messages, different offers, different times or days of sending – it’s all about seeing what works best for your business and customer.
