Forbes Reveals 5 Low-Budget Marketing Activities for Small Businesses
If you’re willing to invest in some minimal equipment, you can efficiently market your business.
Being a solopreneur or the pioneer of a startup can, at least in the beginning, seem daunting: how are you going to share your message?
Thankfully, with today’s ease-of-use technologies, for the determined trailblazer who’s willing to use a few channels, sharing your message can be done with relatively little money.
Recently, Entrepreneur.com published an article listing 5 ways you can share your message.
The good thing is that, most of these 5 are time-tested, and while you may wish to consider the newer arrivals in these 5 areas (such as TikTok), these 5 are, generally, well-established.
These 5 are:
Podcasts
Partnerships
Blogs
Livestreaming
Social Media
With podcasting, you may have to invest in a good microphone. Yeti is a good brand, but even a more affordable microphone might be fine.
You may also need podcasting software and some type of solution to get your podcast onto the big podcast platforms, such as Apple’s.
Partnerships have so many possibilities–more than I can list here.
I think that, for a start-up, if you can find someone or a company that’s willing to exchange it’s resources for something you have to offer, you can save a lot of time.
Another type of relationship, while perhaps not a partnership, can be a mentor-mentee one. If you’re willing to learn from someone who’s experienced in business, even if they haven’t done what you want to do, you have a lot to gain in terms of life perspective and wisdom.
Having your own blog, guest blogging, and syndicating your content to other blogs, are all well-established ways of sharing your message. (Of course, as with the other methods, you have to ensure that you can reach the people who want to hear your message. That may be a challenge in and of itself, but if you share your message in the right places, you should begin to attract an audience.)
For blogging, there are free solutions, but eventually, you may want to invest in a self-hosted platform, hosting, and a logo.
The great thing about livestreaming is that you can have live events, and also, depending on the streaming service you use, you can recorde the event. Livestreaming can be great for product announcements, reveals, interviews…so many things.
Most of the cameras on today’s newer phones have a high enough resolution that they’ll record videos that look good. You may need some good lighting.
With social media, there are many possibilities.
Why not create a FB group dedicated to a subject that you speak to?
Are you an artist or do something visually-oriented?
Why not create a Pinterest board showing off your art?
You’re a musician?
Why not share your music on YouTube?
Do you deliver fresh, locally-grown food to health-conscious families?
Great! Start a FB group, talk about the importance of supporting your local economy. Create a video series that shows the care and dedication that farms put into their crop and selecting the best foods for you to bring home.
The great news is that there are always time-tested marketing pathways that will always be newsworthy, and stand the test of time.