As soon as you say “marketing” you think “expense”. It’s true that spending money on marketing produces results, but when you are just starting out you might not have the money in the bank to spend. Or you may already have a good marketing budget, but there’s twice as much that you could be doing that would cost little or anything to implement apart from a bit of your time.
“Here are The Design Mechanics” top 10 tips for marketing your business on a shoe string:
1. Team up!
Building up good relationships with other companies who offer a complimentary service to you is a great way to generate new business. Write down a list of what someone buying your product or service would also be likely to be in the market for. For example if you are an IT company think about what other services your clients are currently buying – could you team up with a commercial cleaning company to generate referrals between each other? You could even produce a joint leaflet (paying half each for the design and print) that you could hand out to each other’s clients, one side offering a spring clean of your office and the other a spring clean of your IT!
Other examples could be a plumber creating a referral network of other tradespeople, a photographer with a florist, a business consultant with an accountant etc.
2. Create a voucher
If you sell a service rather than a product, where your only real cost of sale is the time you put into it, then you should consider offering vouchers to promote people to try your service. For example 30% off your first carpet clean; buy one session of consulting and get the second follow-up session free; get your fifth driving lesson free when you book four together.
Ask local shops and businesses if you can leave these vouchers on their counters, give them to all your friends and families to pass on, and also don’t forget your current clients – if they are happy clients they will be happy to recommend you on, and having something physical to pass on may just prompt them to do so.
3. Talk to your current clients
It’s far easier to get work from people who already use you than to find new clients. If you are a small business it’s simple to regularly review your client list and make personal contact with people who you haven’t spoken to for a while. A quick “how’s business” phone call or a personal keeping in touch email can stop clients slipping away and make sure you stay their first option.
A good trick to make a keeping in touch email seem really personal is go find the last email that person sent to you, and reply to this with your keeping in touch message rather than starting a new one. Then they know you’re actually thinking about them, not just sending a mass email out to your client base.
