Marketing can be very costly, but is necessary in order to promote your business and generate sales. Since you have already come a long way to start your company in the first place, it’s important that you find creative ways to market your business without breaking the bank.
Here are some useful ideas to get you started:
- Donate your product: identify some charitable events in your community and offer to donate your product or service. By doing this you are supporting a good cause while you put your company’s name out there. These events are a great opportunity to network and meet potential new clients.
- Create a referral program: reward your clients by offering a discount on their next purchase when they refer somebody to your business. They will feel motivated to talk about your business to their friends and clients.
- Partner with social media influencers: identify a few social media influencers in your community, send them your product or invite them to try your services. If they enjoy and find them to be worthwhile, they might be willing to mention your company in one of their posts.
- Join forces with other startups: you can find other startups that offer products or services that complement yours. You can co-host a seminar or a special sales event that brings your customers and their customers together. For example if you have a dog fashion line, you could partner with a new local pet grooming store and host a dog training event, thus introducing your customers to each others product lines.
- Offer a free trial: this one can be very useful if you are selling a service or a subscription program. Invite some of your friends – and friend of your friends- to try your product for free. They will love getting something for free and if they enjoy it they are more likely to subscribe or actually pay, once they actually know what it is.
- Create short videos for Facebook: take advantage of the hours people spend watching videos in Facebook and try to capture your customers’ attention by creating short (1 min max) how-to videos. A good reference for these type of videos are the Tasty videos, which have been very successful – reaching almost 70 million followers on their Facebook page. Learn more about how to follow their “recipe” by reading this article.
These are just a few inexpensive ideas to get you started. Your goal is be creative to get the work out about your new company so that potential customers are talking about you, trying your product, buying your product, and recommending your to their friends and followers.
