Marketing Your Business on a Tight Budget

There's no way around it, marketing your business is essential for its success. In fact, successful marketing can provide your business with a significant return in a very short period of time -- even on a tight budget. In the past the only choice a business had to market their business effectively were outbound marketing tactics such as advertising, direct mailing, cold calling and so on. Outbound marketing can still be a bit expensive, but there are so many over avenues that you can take today that are much more affordable.

The article below discusses some ideas for marketing on a shoestring budget:

1. Start small. Set aside a small budget to begin with. Re-invest some of the dividends from these campaigns into further marketing.
2. Leverage free tools. Social media tools and many free online tools can help you do marketing well. Build a following on free social sites, create profiles on professional business sites. Submit your business to local online business directories.
3. Shop for discounts and coupons. Many marketing tools and programs will offer you a free trial. This can translate to profit before you spend any money. Google Adwords is a good example of this as Google will often give people a $50 or $100 Adwords coupon to start their paid search engine advertising campaign with. (Tip: Do some extensive research about effective Adwords campaign before using your free coupon so you can increase the chances of getting good results with it)
4. Try tier two advertising programs. If you think a search engine marketing advertising campaign sounds too expensive, consider doing an ad campaign on a specific site, instead. Facebook advertising for instance, can be less expensive than many other online marketing campaigns and can provide you with laser targeted focus to geographic areas, age groups, gender, interest levels, and so on.

You can read the rest of the article here.

If you're a small to medium sized business that has yet to implement a successful marketing campaign, it's due time. Both inbound and outbound marketing is a way for you to build relationships with your current or prospective clients and grow your business -- faster than many of your competitors. Today there are many companies that you can hire -- and for a reasonable price -- to manage your marketing campaigns, like Classic Image.

These companies will handle the day-to-day marketing needs of your campaigns while you can focus on what matters most... growing your business. In many cases you can get a reasonable quote to jump start your campaign, ensuring that you don't break your bank.

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B2B Marketing Selling Strategies

B2B marketing is one of the best ways to help your business
flourish.
Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

While economic times are still a bit tighter than we would all like to admit, it’s important for business owners to try their best not to skimp on promotion—especially with b2b marketing or marketing to other businesses. A lot of business owners will simply put up a website and run an occasional ad in an industry trade journal. Sure, this advertisement might bring in some new customers and help in some respects, however, successful B2B marketing needs to provide a steady stream of consistent messages across a wide variety of platforms.

Putting up a well thought out and designed website is a start for reaching other business owners who are also potential customers, but it’s also important that you do not think of your website as a “once and done” type of thing. B2B marketing and social media tactics are extremely important for you to work on because you will receive much better results—results that can make a world of difference in your business.

The article snippet below is from a recent article posted on Business News Daily, about how B2B businesses can market their business—successfully—from day one.

Be engaging

Just having an online presence isn't enough, though. Your B2B customers are still consumers and they need to detect coherence in your overall marketing strategy.
"Start with an Internet strategy that maps your overall business strategy." Rigano said. "How much do you want to grow, what markets will be most important to your growth, and what will constitute success in each of these markets? 

Set up your website to support your achieving these goals, with content that makes your company easy to find online, and helps convert prospects into buyers. Hold your website accountable for sales, and use analytics to continually measure results and refine your strategies. 

Email and social media also are essential and fit into almost any budget, but they require effort and monitoring. 

"I'd suggest tools like e-mail and social networking because not only do they come at little to no cost, but they are often user-friendly and allow you the ability to get very, very targeted who receives your message, when they receive it, how they receive it and why," said Jeremiah Sullivan, co-owner and operator of Woodbridge, N.J.-based Framework Media Strategies, a marketing and public relations firm. "Even better, these tools also allow for consistent and immediate communication between you and the business you've reached out to and also records a written history of everything shared." 

Tracking results

Whatever approach a business owner takes, tracking the results and making adjustments is the key to success. 

"The United States Postal Service's intelligent mail bar code tracking, which makes it possible to receive notifications that let you know when a direct mail piece will reach a recipient," said David Henkel, president of Niles, Ill.-based Johnson & Quin, a provider of integrated marketing services. "An email can then be sent or a call can be made to a prospect informing them that their mail piece is about to come."

It is also important to consider the types of businesses you are trying to reach when determining whether email, direct mail, banner ads or other vehicles are the best way to reach customers.

 You can read the rest of the article here.

For B2B businesses or small to medium sized businesses who would like some tips on successful marketing and social media marketing tactics, please contact us at Classic Image today to see how we can help your business with all of your marketing campaigns from social media marketing to direct marketing. We strongly believe that combining inbound and outbound marketing tactics is a great way to help any business flourish.

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