COVID-19 has everyone except for big tech companies and manufacturers of toilet paper on a tight budget. It’s even harder if you’re a local business or small business. Funds are limited and you’re not sure what you can do.
Here are 10 simple strategies that you can use when you’re working with little or no budget. You may have to alter them a bit based on your business, but the overall principles should be pretty universal.
- Post on social media often – and engage with every interaction. Social media is called “social” for a reason. The posting is fine, and may help people see you, but the engagement is really what draws people in. Every person that interacts with your post – interact back with them.
- Comment on 10 other social media posts, per platform, per day. Find posts that are related to your target market by using hashtags and make relevant comments. It doesn’t take long to do a handful per day, but engagement can create an increased following/awareness, which you can then market to. But, please be genuine – people can smell “marketing” over genuine engagement any day.
- Write really good content that answers questions people are asking. Writing good content with good information (typically about 1,000 words) is a great way to get your site showing in search results. And if you need some blog post ideas, here’s a good resource for generating some topics: How to Generate Blog Post Ideas
- Include a hand written note with every product sale. This may not be practical for everyone, but do something that has a personal touch and makes your customers take notice. Surprise and delight, and create repeat customers (and customer ambassadors).
- Create short engaging videos. You can just use your phone for these, post them to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. You won’t have much of a following at first, and it’s going to take some time to build. But, if you use this in conjunction with other strategies, like commenting on other social media posts, it builds over time. Consistency is key.
- Build a customer list and send regular emails. Stay top of mind. Send out promotions. Give new product/service updates. Be friendly. You can get a free account at Mailchimp and be ready to start sending emails in an hour or two. Use your existing list, and build one through a subscription on your site (tip – offer a discount to anyone that subscribes to build a quick following).
- Start a referral program. Give someone a site credit for every person they refer to your business. If you have a product you’re selling online, you can use a service like ShareASale to create an affiliate program to reach an even bigger audience.
- Join and attend networking events and associations. The cost for most of these is minimal. You do get what you put into them though. Joining the local small business association, but never communicating or attending a meeting will produce minimal results. Joint and go to meetings, talk to members, and network well. Connections like this often produce referrals.
- Build partnerships. Before I started Wormann Consulting, I spent a year networking and building relationships with other agencies. Now, approximately 70% of our income comes from partnerships that we’ve built with multiple other agencies (at any given time, we’re working with and partnering with about 6 different agencies). These partnerships have helped both parties to grow, and everyone has benefited. Getting to know others costs little but pays huge dividends.
- Create every free listing you can and make them good. Go and claim your Yelp page, Google My Business listing, Healthgrades (if you’re a physician), etc. These do help in local search results, people may find you there, and reviews can help affirm to potential customers that you’re a reputable business.
There are a ton of other things you can do too, but that list should be sufficient to get yourself started, and begin building up in the midst of a downturn. Have any other thoughts or suggestions? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
