Five Cost-Effective Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses.

Are you looking to step up your marketing efforts but don't have thousands to spend? That's not a problem. Below is a list of Marketing Ideas that are not only low-budget, they are also very effective. Let's stretch those pound coins and not blow your whole marketing budget in one hit. Here are five marketing ideas for small businesses looking to step up their marketing efforts within their financial constraints.

1. Content Marketing - Content Marketing is great, it lets you build your online reputation, display your expertise and promote any new services or products that you have. It is also very cost-effective, all you need is a bit of time to invest in it and focus on the message you want to portray. Show your target audience your knowledge, skills and kick-ass products/services and they will trust you, explain your vision, your aim and build an emotional connection, do this and you will create cost-effective marketing that gets results for your business.

2. Video - Video is one of the most effective forms of marketing and it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. How often do you go onto social media and click on a trending or viral video? Videos receive much higher engagement rates from your target audience when compared to written content or images. Video lets you create powerful and eye-catching messages which you can then send directly to your target audience for an instant connection, getting you engagements and results. There are plenty of cost-effective tools out there that let you create instructional and high-quality videos for low costs. Gone are the days where you had to spend thousands on a promotional video for your company.

3. Infographics – Infographics are stupidly powerful marketing tools. Millennials love to read and share information, especially if they are easy on the eye and simple to read. That's where infographics are top dog, you can share lots of useful and interesting information in a visual montage, that is easy for someone else to digest. Infographics are much more visually pleasing that reading a paragraph or line of text and therefore they get you much more attention, likes and shares, resulting in more people being referred to your social media channels and website. Again, there are plenty of tools to create infographics out there that are cheap and in some cases free, alternatively, you can pay someone to create some for you, which shouldn't be too pricey, depending on which company you go with.

4. Social Media – Social Media is great for small businesses. It is cheap, easy to use and you can target thousands if not millions of people. You can interact quickly and effectively with your target audience and build up your online presence and reputation. With several platforms available such as Facebook, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn and Instagram, you have multiple channels in which you can promote your business and its services/products. The key to social media is being very specific with who you target, the more specific you are the better the results will be. It is essential that you use multiple social media channels in order to maximise your reach and increase the opportunity of gaining more business. If you are a B2B business provider like ourselves, we have found LinkedIn to be most effective for us. The effectiveness of each social media channel will vary depending on your specific target audience.

5. Enter Awards – Awards are marketing gold. An award gives you multiple opportunities, if you win an award let's say for best product or outstanding service, it gives you something that all/most of your competitors won't have. Bragging rights, you've been telling everyone how great your product or service is, but you have to say that as it's your business, now a group of independent adjudicators have backed up what you have said and given your claims credibility, which will make people stand up and take notice. You can plaster this award everywhere, Social Media, Email Marketing Campaigns, a Blog on your Website, you could even put it in a press release in a local or industry newspaper/magazine if you wanted to. The beauty of this is, it is free marketing, most awards you don't have to pay to enter, and therefore all you need to do is put a little bit of time into writing the award entry. Then if you win you've raised the profile, reputation and credibility of your business for free, which is guaranteed to drive new business to your door.

So there you have it, five cost-effective marketing ideas for small businesses. Start increasing your marketing results at affordable prices today.

Equinox Marketing is a specialist marketing, copywriting and website creation company for small businesses. The sole ambition of Equinox is to help companies increase their marketing and sales results at affordable and realistic prices.

If you don't have the time to focus on marketing, but would like to push your business forward with some of the ideas above, Equinox can provide cost-effective solutions to help you.