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Bootstrap-marketing-techniques for your Small Business

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Just because you’re not a marketing guru, doesn’t mean your company’s public image has to suffer.  We understand when a marketing budget is so tight that you can’t bring in a specialist. Nowadays, it’s not surprising for small and medium-sized businesses to do without hiring a dedicated marketing professional and instead share the marketing responsibilities between current employees. The good news is that marketing is among the most flexible yet high-potential areas where you can utilize a bootstrap budget. There are plenty of ways for you to get the message out about your business without breaking the bank. Here are some marketing techniques that you could incorporate into your marketing plan.

Use the Power of Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media is a low-cost, yet very powerful marketing tool. You can link your website pages as well as email newsletters to leading social media platforms to engage your customers and target audience on these platforms. Engage them with content that is relevant to their needs and take the opportunity to mention your products, services, and brand.

Take PR into Your Own Hands

Public relations are one of the most effective ways to get massive exposure with minimal investment. You could start with easy and affordable initiatives like reaching out to your local radio stations or newspapers. Additionally, try to look for blogs that cover your local area and try to get these media sources to feature you. You could also look for any local events that you can participate in to promote your products or services. The best thing about being your own PR manager is that reporters and blog owners are more likely to pay attention to a company owner than a public relations representative.

Conduct Market Research Yourself

As a business owner, you need to find ways to differentiate your offerings from competitors’ offerings in order to stay ahead of market trends that could impact your business. The best way to achieve this is to conduct market research with the aim of keeping track of your competitors, what people have to say about them, and what the competitors are saying about themselves. You can make use of various specialized tools to achieve this and ensure you are always in the know when it comes to the market conditions you’re operating in.

Look to Print Media for Advertising

One of the most affordable channels for advertising is print media. Although more businesses are opting for digital advertising, print media like newspapers, posters, video brochures, magazines, and industry publications can be as effective as digital media when it comes to advertising. When it comes to advertising your products in physical locations, poster printing can be very affordable and impactful. You can place posters with messages about your business in numerous locations in the area in which you are operating your business and the reach can be as massive as some digital platforms, but much less expensive.

Develop Your Own Email List

Email can be a very powerful tool for direct marketing. When you develop an email list, the good thing about developing your own email list is that it remains to be yours until you decide to discard it. Although it may take some time to create one, the list will certainly help you when it comes to establishing strong customer relations with your subscribers. Once you’ve developed a comprehensive list, try to take some time to learn a few basics about email marketing and incorporate the strategies when executing your plan. Email marketing is not only cheap but also highly impactful when used correctly for outreach, as well as engaging customers and prospects.

But before everything, you also need to have a website or niche that is ADA & WCAG 2.1 compliant, and has the prescribed web accessibility features. Especially, for the physically challenged and visually impaired users. This is where a company like “Accessibility Spark” can help, by checking whether your site has ADA compliant features, and if not, get them incorporated in a jiffy for saving you from lawsuit files.

In a nutshell, you don’t need a six-figure budget and a dedicated marketing expert to execute an effective marketing strategy for your business. But as with all marketing techniques, take the time to develop a marketing plan and craft a strategy to boost your chances of success.