Best Marketing Strategies for Cash-Strapped Businesses
Today’s business world is global, meaning that the entire globe is one big market. Therefore, companies from all corners of the Earth need to compete with each other, in order to attract more customers.
This is especially hard for smaller businesses, that have a tiny capital, compared to their business giant competitors.
However, cash-strapped companies can find a digital marketing agency that can write SEO optimized content for them, since SEO still matters in 2020.
It is one of the best tools small businesses can use to fight large competitors since it is much cheaper than paid advertising.
Today, we’ll talk about the best marketing strategies for cash-strapped businesses, which should help you expand your business, and reach out to more people.
1. Find Competent Partners
You know what they say if you can’t beat them, join them. As much as it is true in war, it is also true in business.
One of the best ways to beat your business giant competitors is to partner up with other companies, which are, perhaps, even more, experienced than your own.
This should help you to identify common marketing mistakes, and avoid them in time. Your partner might know something that you don’t, so through the sharing, both businesses can benefit.
Now, as for what type of partner to find, it depends on various factors, such as the field of business, their market position, and similar.
It would be best to create a partnership with a company that is similar to yours. This includes having a similar audience, but preferably on a new market, to give you more opportunities to expand.
For example, if you are a software engineering company in Europe, and you want to reach out to the audience in Asia, it would be a good idea to partner with one of the software development companies from there.
In that particular case, you can expand from a local market to a completely new market with a relatively similar audience.
Keep in mind that it is important for both partners to benefit, so you should think about your own values, and create a fair and beneficial offer to the companies you desire to partner with.
2. Think of an Interesting Referral Program
Due to globalization and the internet, consumers have a lot of different choices to choose from. They are no longer limited to the local market.
Services such as Amazon send their products to almost all corners of the world, which makes it both harder and easier to get new customers.
On one side, there are benefits of being able to reach out to potential customers from across the globe. You can get clients from Brazil if you are in Australia, or any part of the world if you offer a good product.
This is exactly what makes it difficult though. People from different areas have different views and need different products.
Therefore, in order to successfully get more customers, you need to offer a diversified product, which is adaptable to different types of people.
A Matter of Trust
It is not easy to convince people that your product is the best. Most of us don’t really trust some unknown company from China or any other country unless someone recommends them to us.
For instance, if you had to choose between AliExpress and Joom, you would probably choose AliExpress, since it is widely known, even though some prices might be lower on Joom.
This is where a well-made referral program may come in handy. People trust their friends and family, so if you create a referral program that is beneficial to everyone, you will attract more potential customers.
When people are offered a reward for recommending your products, they will be more inclined to invest their time into it.
3. Earn Various Types of Business Awards
The human mind often works in a predictable way. When we need to decide whether to buy some product or not, one of the factors that help us decide is how good the brand is.
If you go to the brand’s website, you can usually see certain achievements and awards for the various categories.
When customers see a lot of rewards, they will think “Oh, this brand has so many awards, it must be great”. And then, they will simply buy the product.
In order to spread brand awareness, apart from using SEO and other types of advertising, cash-strapped companies should try to win as many business awards as possible.
However, one thing to keep in mind is that there are, so-called, scam awards. There are people and companies that might offer you an award to display for your customers for a certain amount of money.
Beware that, even though there are genuine awards like this, a lot of them are actually fake, and their only purpose is to take your money.
Therefore, always check the type of award you want to apply for, and its source, to make sure everything is genuine.
4. Advertise via Email
You may think that advertising via email is ancient history in today’s business world, but you would be so wrong.
It is still one of the best ways for companies on a budget to attract more customers, since it is cheap and reliable, which is why it is still used to scale content marketing strategy.
However, sending a bunch of spammy emails won’t do the trick. For email advertising to be successful, you need to do it properly.
Before doing anything else, make sure to know what are your goals, which should help you decide what type of emails you want to use.
For example, whether it is better to use a newsletter, or to recommend a certain product. Once you know that, you can write a proper email template to suit your needs.
Last, but not least, you want to automate the entire process as much as possible. You can set up the email to be sent when someone visits your website, or purchase a product from you. This type of follow-up email re usually sent about 20-30 days since the activity on the website.
After that, you simply need to trach the progress and reap the benefits of email marketing, as well as edit them from time to time.
5. Invest in Making Great Business Cards
Even though the 21st century has transformed a world into a digital playground, there are some business traditions which has stood the test of time.
One of them is, of course, business cards. It is still one of the best ways to attract new customers, even though it may sound weird.
However, over time, people have become needier and just having a regular business card won’t do the trick anymore.
In order to impress a lot of potential customers, you need to make interesting and memorable business cards.
Think of unique shapes and font designs, that will make people want to look at it for more than two seconds.
This way, they may think “Hm, this business card looks so nice. I could check the website and learn more about the company and the products it offers”.
More people will visit your website because of this. And higher traffic means more customers since at least some of them will use your services.
6. Utilize Guerrilla Marketing Tactics
Guerrilla marketing, in a nutshell, is a technique, in which, companies tend to do something new and unconventional, in order to manage to spread their brand awareness.
There aren’t any specific tactics regarding guerrilla marketing. It can be almost everything that is completely innovative. With this strategy, you need to be creative and think outside of the box.
The main goal is to do something totally unexpected, which will impress other people and bring you more potential customers.
Conclusion
There are a lot of different marketing strategies nowadays. We’ve covered some of the most important ones that might be useful to small businesses.