Six Frugal Ways to Market your Business and Blog

The following post is by a guest blogger. This post is of interest to bloggers as well as small business owners because success is always in the marketing!

Marketing has become a lot tougher these days. It has become of utmost importance for small business owners to promote their products in a smarter way than before and try to find affordable but effective marketing methods.

Here in this article we will share the six frugal ways that every business owner can use to market his/her own business.

Develop Partnerships – Find other relevant businesses in your niche with complementary skills and develop partnerships with them. Such partnerships act as a great support for your business especially when you are going to enter a new market and will provide you with an easy access to the customer base and resources which other business brings with them.

Affiliate Marketing – The rapid development in technology has made affiliate marketing one of the most cost effective ways for small business owners to market their products. There are hundreds of affiliate networks on web, with thousand of affiliates who are always ready to promote new products. The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to pay anything until you make a sale. As a business owner, you just have to join an affiliate network and encourage affiliates to promote your products. (Here is a Small Biz Tips Facebook Page that lets you network with other small business).

Do Something Unique– Using same methods that your competitors are using for their marketing is the easiest way to waste hard earned cash. If you want to get more by spending less, then be creative and try to do something different so that you can stand out from the rest. To get some inspiration, you can read the post “30 Memorable Marketing Campaigns”.

Social Media Networking– The impact of social media on consumer behavior is not a secret anymore. More than 90% of online customers visit social media websites before buying anything and 50% take decisions under the influence of information they get from these social media websites. One can join Social media websites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for free and start developing relationships with their target audience. Read more on social media marketing.

PPC Campaigns– PPC campaigns also known as pay-per-click campaigns is another affordable way to market your products. Although, it is not completely free but very effective if you need some quick exposure amongst your target audience in a limited budget. As an advertiser, you have to bid for the specific keywords that you want to target and your ad will be shown every time when someone searches for it. And, you will be charged only when somebody clicks on your advertisement.

Giveaways and Contests – Giving free promotional products is one of the easiest ways to get your brand name in your target audience. An ideal promotional product could be anything that is useful for your target audience, reliable and is relevant to your own products and services. Giveaways hosted by blogs can be very successful at offering business/ product exposure and increasing social followings.

Time and again, I see the business owners who think that they need to have huge marketing budgets for doing effective marketing of their businesses which is not true. Effective marketing doesn’t always mean huge marketing budgets. You can accomplish the same results by using frugal marketing techniques too.

I’ve shared six frugal marketing methods with you and I’m sure that this is not a complete list. So help me in expanding this list by sharing your opinions below.

Roger Rae is working for Fortepromo, a promotional products company based in Minnesota.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Entrepreneur, Small Business, WAHM Directory to get a free backlink to your site and Blog Networking Tips.