3 Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses: Marketing on $500 or Less

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By Andrew Friedenthal

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6 min read

Growth marketing—focusing on the full extent of your sales funnel and the entire customer experience—may be the hot new thing in the marketing world, but it's all just fancy talk if your small or midsize business (SMB) can't afford to launch growth marketing campaigns.

Even if you're forward-thinking enough to have a marketing budget ready for next year, you probably don't have a lot of wiggle room in that budget for expensive campaigns.

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So how do you market for your small business on a tiny budget?

If you trim your unnecessary expenses, focus on creating quality content and developing thought leadership across multiple channels, and join productive partnerships with other organizations, you'll be able to achieve growth marketing success without breaking the bank!

3 inexpensive marketing ideas for your SMB

According to Gartner's 2017-2018 CMO Spend Survey, 33% of all companies are spending 9% or less of their revenue on marketing. "These marketing leaders must address key business challenges despite fewer resources and conservative technology adoption." (Full research available to clients.)

SMBs that are just getting started on marketing may have an even smaller budget than 9% of their company's revenue. That's why we've got three growth marketing strategies SMBs can use to get some ROI from marketing campaigns while spending $500 or less.

Implement these three ideas, and you'll find that a little bit of money can go a long way.

1. Waste not, want not

This first tip is a bit obvious and so crucial that it bears repeating: Don't spend money on things you don't need!

When starting a new business, you don't purchase an entire building to house five employees.

Similarly, as you start out on the path of growth marketing, you don't need to purchase niche marketing software—_such as marketing research management software—_that you won't be ready to use for years.

This applies to both tangible items and intangible resources:

  • Tangibles: Paige Arnof-Fenn, the founder and CEO of Mavens & Moguls, recommends that you avoid “spending money on things like fancy brochures, letterhead, business cards, etc." She explains: “Your story will evolve as you find your market. You need to look professional and have a website to be taken seriously, but embossed paper with watermarks and heavy card stock is not going to accelerate your sales cycle."

  • Intangibles: There's a great deal of marketing software out there, and some of it (basic marketing automation tools, for example) is necessary to your growth marketing plan. There's no need to pay for advanced marketing tools—such as influencer marketing software—until your marketing department and budget are more robust.

Only certain expenditures in your campaigns are truly necessary, and those are the only ones you should be spending money on at the outset of your growth marketing plan.

2. Content is king

Follow the thought leader

Placing ads, sponsoring conferences, and paying for leads data all cost money, but do you know what's free? The power of your own thoughts.

There's a reason that inbound marketing—creating useful, helpful content that customers are drawn to and may even seek out on their own—has been the cornerstone of most marketing in the digital era.

It works.

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This article you're reading is a piece of Capterra's own inbound marketing (Source)

That's why growth marketing doesn't abandon inbound marketing but incorporates it into a broader range of activities focusing on the entire funnel. Early in your growth marketing strategy development, focus on building up a library of quality content that will bring you leads and customers both now and in the future.

As Kayla Tarantino, demand generation manager at DoubleDutch, puts it:

"When working with a small budget there is a lot of sweat equity that needs to be put into creating content that's worth attention in its own right, stripped of high-budget ad campaigns."

Examples of this kind of content, according to Tarantino, include:

  • Webinars

  • Product videos and demonstrations

  • E-books, worksheets, templates

  • Blog posts and other web content

  • Events or experiences

  • Case studies or use cases

  • Reports or studies

This content can be created and posted for free (or close to it) to help build out your brand and turn members of your team into thought leaders within your field. What's more, focusing on SEO (search engine optimization) will help you rank higher on Google and other search engines, making you even more impressive to potential leads/customers.

(Of course, you do need to employ those team members to create all of this content, but our $500 budget presupposes you've already got—or will have—several full-time marketing professionals.)

Spend a little to get a lot

You can also spend a small amount of money to nudge your content toward greater popularity and your team members toward thought leadership status.

According to Austin Miller, head of content marketing at Bookly (the small business accounting wing of KPMG):

Many businesses have small or even sizable followings on social media but you might have noticed one algorithm after another, that less and less of your audience even see your content. Throwing ten to 25 dollars behind a post to the right audience can get you enough clicks and eyes on your content to potentially earn a competitive spot on Google.

And once you've got that high-ranking content, you need to ensure that prospects who come to your site stay engaged with you. Miller recommends that your content “contains some kind of CTA (call to action) that will encourage viewers to make a commitment such as subscribing to a newsletter or making a purchase."

The phrase “content is king" is a bit of a cliche among marketers, but that's because it's true. It's also great advice to follow when you're marketing on a budget.

3. Change the channel

Though $500 may not give you the ability to create a dominant presence in any one marketing channel, by spreading it out you can establish a presence in multiple channels, which you can then build on when you have a bigger budget down the line.

Make sure your marketing plan covers email marketing, social media marketing, blogging, in-person events, and even some traditional print/broadcasting placements. This is something that software can help you with (especially scheduling), but you may want to hold off on that investment until your budget increases.

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A calendar in DivvyHQ showing scheduling across a variety of channels (Source)

As Peacock Alley's senior manager of eCommerce Ryne Higgins warns, though, you need to choose wisely:

You should only be utilizing channels that are relevant for you and your target market. For example, blogging, social media, email newsletters, and in-person events are all excellent options, but they may not all work for you specifically. Many brands don't bother using more than one channel, so this will also help you stand out from your competition.

As you launch and run multiple campaigns, you'll learn which channels work best for your business and brand, and you can spend more money in those areas during future campaigns.

Teamwork makes the dream work

While your SMB may only have $500 to spend on a campaign, that budget restriction doesn't mean you can't work with another organization that has a bit more to spend.

Obviously, you don't want to collaborate with direct competitors. But complementary businesses enter into productive partnerships all the time (think candy companies selling exclusive Halloween variants only at Target).

As Dan Fuoco, social media manager at Suburban Collection, puts it:

When two organizations have stake in the game, they tend to work together toward a common goal. Marketers should provide partners with creative copy and images. Give them everything they need to literally copy and paste your promotion. Less work for them translates to a greater chance they will promote your content.

FullMusculo.com founder David de Ponte Lira adds:

If you collaborate with other blogs, social media accounts, brands, etc., you can reach more people than just the few followers you have. And they can reach a different audience, too. So it's a win-win strategy, and it has worked for us. We have managed to grow our social media to more than 1,000,000 followers with just collaboration and a few bucks invested in Facebook ads.

Just as your marketing plans can only grow when you expand beyond a one-person shop and build a strong, talented team, your marketing strategies can grow when you're willing to work with other businesses!

Next steps

While you're working on enacting your low-cost growth marketing strategies, here're a few zero-cost steps to fold into your plan:

  • Research software: Learn more about the types of software that will make your growth marketing tasks easier, from content marketing tools to email marketing and social media marketing software.

  • Learn more about marketing budgets: Read our guide to creating a marketing budget, which includes a free template to download and use!

  • Ask for advice from your peers: Comment below with your own best tips or questions about low-cost growth marketing strategies, and get involved with the conversation your fellow marketers are having!



Note: The information contained in this article has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. The applications selected are examples to show a feature in context, and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations.


Looking for Marketing Automation software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Marketing Automation software solutions.

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