Marketing Your Business When Money is Tight

Marketing your business is one of the most important aspects creating a large and varied consumer base.

It can be difficult to reach a wide enough audience without a large marketing budget at your disposal. This is especially true if you run a small business or are a sole proprietor.

With that in mind, here are five of the best ways that you can market your business on a tight budget.

Create a Press Release

Press releases are fairly simple to create.

If you have a bit of writing experience you can craft it yourself for a free piece of publicity. Use this press release to announce something exciting that is happening within your company. If you have won an industry award or are introducing a new product for your customers you can create a press release that someone in the media might be interested in running.

Editors and columnists are always looking for fresh material to run, so send them something exciting about your business that can create a free marketing opportunity as a byproduct.

Use Social Media

Creating a social media presence can be one of the best marketing moves you can make.

With the prevalence of Facebook and Twitter use throughout almost every demographic creating a profile for your business can be a great marketing move to connect with customers.

The best thing about it is that it can be absolutely free. If you are a small business you can easily manage your business's Facebook page and Twitter profile. Larger companies can hire social media experts to manage their marketing campaign for very reasonable salaries.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail marketing is another avenue that you can take for a bit of free advertising.

Ask your current customers whether they would like to receive a monthly update with new deals and news about your company in order to create a mailing list. You can then send out relevant information that your customers will find useful in order to help retain customers over time.

Partner with a Local Charity

Partnering with a local charity can not only get you some free publicity among the people who work with it.

By choosing carefully you are able to easily create a positive impression of your business among a group of potential customers. You can offer to work with a charity in order to set up an event involving your business.

For every customer who makes a purchase during a certain time period and references the charity you will contribute a set percentage of the price to that charity. This is a great way to increase the amount of sales over a short period of time and create some positive press through the charity.

Run a Competition

You can run a competition within your community in order to create some easy word-of-mouth marketing.

Offering a prize that you would normally sell for a minimal price in day-to-day business operations provides a low cost incentive for people to check out your business. This can create excitement in the community which will act as a positive marketing campaign for your company.

Marketing your business doesn't have to be expensive to create a positive effect on potential customers.

You can utilize some or all of these techniques to market your business when money is tight and create positive press for your company.