Rosana Beechum

To succeed as a small business, it’s necessary to promote it. While this isn’t always what a new business owner wants to hear, the reality is that customers rarely just walk through the door unless you’re a retail store in a central position. If the business is office-based, no one knows about the company until it’s been established for some time unless you’re proactive about promotion.

Here are 4 ways to promote your business on a small budget both online or offline.

1.     In-person Marketing with Classy Promotional Materials

Producing well-designed product brochures, glossy flyers, and eye-catching posters offer a great way to promote your business to new customers. Whether you send out a brochure in the mail or market at a business expo, having exceptional marketing materials provides exposure for your company and shows your financial ability (and hence success) to do so.

An inexpensive graphics designer hired from Upwork.com or Fiverr.com is going to be able to knock out some interesting designs to get you started. Additionally, cheap printing online which you can get by visiting zoeprint.com keeps the quality up while ensuring the printer costs stay even lower than expected. You can also use an online brochure maker for easy design.

2.     Guest Post on Related Websites

Getting your brand mentioned on other websites is an effective way to drive new visitors to your site. Writing a guest post that appeals to another website’s audience and has some overlap with your own is ideal.

Develop genuine business relationships with the owners of the other websites you wish to approach to get a guest post published. Engage with the owner so they know your name when you contact them later with a guest post request.

3.     Sponsor a Local Event

To develop local business, look beyond Google's local search results. There’s an opportunity to get your brand in front of local people by sponsoring an event. Event managers need corporate funding to help cover the cost of running their event so they’re usually happy to place your company’s branding prominently in exchange. When the event is in support of a great cause, that’s even better.

4.     Advertise Selectively Online

Online advertising doesn’t need to be overly expensive. By using Facebook’s advertising platform, it’s possible to target people by location. Additionally, demographics can be selected to narrow down a specific audience to the market target. This makes advertising more affordable because it avoids marketing to larger groups of people, most of whom aren’t suited to your company.

It’s also possible to use the Facebook pixel, which visits your website and lets Facebook identify previous visitors to your website who are also their users. They can then be re-targeted with ads to tempt them back with a special offer. This also makes it possible to show adverts to people who are similar to your existing customers, Facebook finding people in their database with close interests.

Promoting your business doesn’t need to be overly expensive. Whether spreading the word about the brand in the local business community or using online advertising to drive targeted traffic, being strategic about marketing can drive higher growth rates in your business’ early years.

Please note, this article contains affiliate links.