How to Promote Your Brand on a Budget

You’re being tasked with the challenge of promoting your brand on a budget. Although you might have a few ideas, you must keep in mind how to promote your brand while keeping track of what you’re spending on initiatives.

As a small business owner, not only are you faced with the pressure of increasing your brand awareness, but you’re focused on not spending too much company money. With having to manage these two responsibilities, you should focus on cost-effective solutions.

To give you an advantage, check out these tips on how to promote your brand without breaking the bank:

Social Media Strategy

When it comes to promoting your brand, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more cost-effective alternative than social media. Posting on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about your products, services, and events can help increase brand awareness and give your brand personality.

To develop an effective social media strategy, research your audience and pay attention to what channels they spend the most time on. Try using the following:

• Check out your Facebook Insights
• Look at competitors’ following
• Craft a survey to send to your current customers

Once you’ve determined your target audience, start creating and posting consistent content that promotes your brand’s overall message. Brand consistency in regards to topics, imagery, captions, and colors will give customers the confidence to interact with a brand they can trust.

Write Relevant Content

“But what kind of content will pique their interest?”

If you’re asking yourself this question, then fear not! There are plenty of ways to determine how to write relevant content that will relate most to your audience. Start by looking at the data you gathered while developing a social media strategy and focus on keywords that relate to this audience.

From here, you can create a list of keywords that related to:

• The products and services you are selling
• What solutions your customers are looking for
• The words/phrases customers are searching for

Once your keywords are created, start writing content that can be tied in to the words and phrases within your list. This requires some SEO work, so take a look at some of these free SEO tools to help you get started.

Attend Local Events

Next, start making the most of your local events by connecting with customers in-person rather than just online. 

By attending events and getting prospects to notice your brand, you have the chance to connect your brand with their personal needs. Check out networking and marketing events in your area to take advantage of these forums.

To make sure you come prepared, create some branded merchandise (ex: SWAG) to display at your booth. Branded merchandise is a cost-effective way to help your brand standout while sticking to a small budget along the way.

Host Webinars

Similar to attending local events, setting up online events like webinars will help bring people closer to your brand. Take initiative by asking keynote speakers and industry experts to be featured on one of your webinars to gain notoriety amongst your audience.

If you are still growing your own audience, try reaching out to other well-known sites about hosting a webinar. This way, you can take advantage of their traffic and gain some recognition.

By creating a conversation that offers expert knowledge, you will create an experience that customers will not be able to find anyone else. To boot, the cost of a recorded conversation is low and will help you keep to a tight budget.

Using webinars, you will craft a unique experience for your audience and promote your brand at the same time.

Use Direct Mail

Start putting your brand into the mailboxes of customers.

With most brands now relying on email campaigns to reach their audience, inboxes are now becoming overcrowded with content. As a result, direct mail has become an appealing alternative as it provides opportunity for brands to get in touch with customers with less competition.

Furthermore, direct mail provides an assist on brand recognition. When customers see your brand in their inbox, you will have immediate recognition and break through the digital noise crowding their inbox.

By printing materials for direct mail, your brand will have a better chance to stand out and be noticed. With direct mail offering a better ROI for brands that use it, there is good reason to consider the benefits of direct mail for your budget.

There will always be competition when you consider how many brands are trying to increase their own promotion. Incorporate some of these cost-effective ideas into your marketing strategy.

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