Marketing activities can be both cheap and effective, providing that we properly select our tools and get to know our target group well. Currently small businesses that have scarce budget at their disposal are not doomed to failure. How to promote a brand without significant expenditures?
Viral marketing
Viral marketing involves promoting products or services by means of unconventional techniques. A low-budget promotion requires chiefly great engagement, openness and creativity. A good graphical concept, innovative advertising slogan, real time marketing or creative outdoor advertising that users will eagerly share online can generate an immense reach, going viral.
User Experience
User Experience is the entirety of sensations that a recipient experiences when having contact with a given company. Usually a consumer first of all comes across the brand’s website. It should be highly intuitive, friendly and designed bearing user’s needs in mind. In the e-commerce sector consumers are not driven exclusively by a product price, but also by functionality, emotions and customer service. These subjective experiences affect buying decisions, therefore it’s good to take care of website legibility, quick loading, design, effective navigation and high-quality graphics.
Content marketing
Running a company blog is a relatively cheap, but a bit time-consuming task. This is a great tool to promote one’s services or products. Content marketing is not typical advertising. It is aimed at providing readers with knowledge, solving problems, educating recipients and offering them some leisure. Content marketing also involves interesting graphics, infographics or video materials.
Content distribution
It is not enough to have interesting content in the form of articles or graphics. It’s worth considering well where we are going to distribute our content. Social media are obviously the first thought. As it turns out, the social media presence can translate into sales – users eagerly share information regarding their shopping, affecting at the same time buying decisions of their friends. However, that’s not all – brands present in the social media enjoy greater popularity and trust, which also contributes to the brand perception and reach.
Push notifications (web push notification) and email marketing are also extremely important channels of content distribution. They have two basic advantages – they convert well and are relatively cheap tools. Web push notification perfectly complements newsletters. Some brands recognise push notifications as a successor of the latter. They have already gained a permanent place in marketing strategies of modern companies, among others owing to the highest conversion rate compared with other sources. An average CTR from web push notification is over 21%.
Cross promotion
Cross marketing allows to reach new users through enriching the brand with additional values from cooperation with another brand. Undertaking joint marketing activities is a good example of such actions. For instance, a manufacturer of washing machines can cooperate with detergent producers. Complementary sales help companies increase their return on investment by means of better use of marketing resources at their disposal. This is a relatively inexpensive, yet effective technique of reaching new customers.
