12 Low-Budget Marketing Ideas To Boost Your Business

by Emily Huling

As the year winds down, most businesses look for creative ways to give year-end sales a final push. If you’ve already spent the marketing budget on expensive trade shows, promotions, and advertising, there are still dozens of free or low-cost methods to generate new leads and keep your name in front of your customers. Let’s look at some of them:

1. Send press releases. Announce new employees, employee promotions, professional designations earned, new product lines, and other items of note. Newspapers and business journals will publish these for free in their 'What’s New' sections.
2. Teach a class. Community colleges and trade schools often seek professionals to talk about the real world to their students. You’ll practice your presentation skills and meet interesting people.
3. Send ‘How Are You Getting Along without Us?’ letters. Review your lost business over the past year. Who do you want to do business with again? The number one reason that customers don’t return is that they’re never asked! Send them a letter, or better yet, make a call to resolicit their business.
4. Write a column in the local paper. What current event topics interest you? Do you have an interesting point to make or some insight into an issue? Local papers love to feature intelligent, well-written opinion.
5. Speak at local Rotary, Kiwanis, or Jaycees meetings. These diverse civic organizations seek interesting topics for their members. What business expertise do you have to offer them?
6. Have a ‘Drive-By Sighting’ contest for employees. Here’s a great way to bring new leads in the door. For a two-week period, have all employees compete for the number of leads they can generate while driving around town. The leads must include a business name, address, and phone number. The employee who generates the most leads gets a half-day off.
7. Present a ‘Client of the Month’ award. Find a reason for your business to show client appreciation. Decide what criteria would be appropriate: largest volume, nicest to work with, and so forth.
8. Offer ‘Reminders of the Month.’ Create a list of product or service reminders that your customers can offer their customers. Every time an employee speaks with a customer, have them offer the reminder tip. For example, remind hardware stores to suggest replacing batteries in smoke detectors or suggest that landscapers provide gardening recommendations.
9. Develop creative fax cover sheets. Make your fax cover sheet a promotional tool to announce new products, new employees, or other developments.
10. Use voice mail marketing. Make brief business announcements that callers will hear when they get your voice mail.
11. Send hot prospects interesting articles. Go through business magazines and industry trade journals to find articles that would be of interest to your customers. Write a personal note and mail the articles. You can also download relevant articles from the Web and e-mail them to customers with a cover note.
12. Visit local trade shows. Effective marketing can take place without renting costly exhibit space. Attend a trade show and work the floor. Introduce yourself to exhibitors and keep your eyes open for attendees to meet and greet. Set a goal to get leads and ideas.

To make the most of these suggestions, pass this list around. Have each person select three ideas that they’d like to implement. Ask for weekly feedback on how these marketing efforts are working.

Getting all employees focused and involved in low-budget marketing will improve morale — and increase sales!