How do you balance a limited marketing budget while still attracting new customers? Is this even possible?
Ideally, you’d crack the code and be able to put a $1 into your marketing machine and get more than that dollar out in profit from sales.
However, when you’re just getting started and haven’t quite figured out that magic formula, you can still attract new customers even on a limited budget.
Manual Work
Customer acquisition doesn’t have to be paid acquisition.
You can do many things to get new customers without advertising.
Try one of these tactics that will only require your time and hard work:
- Interact with potential customers in online forums to be viewed as the expert
- Respond to public tweets or Facebook comments with helpful advice, answers, or comments so people will like and trust you as the go-to source in your niche.
- Write guest posts on other websites in your industry to prove your expertise and draw people to your site.
- Know who your potential customers are? Reach out to them. Yes, it may be a cold call or email to get your foot in the door to make a sale.
- Parter with others in your industry to cross promote your products. You get exposure to their audience and vice versa.
- Build up your website to be an authority and source of trusted information in your niche. Do this through solid and helpful articles, videos, podcasts, etc.
Embrace Constraints
When you have a limited marketing budget, you need to do the best you can within those constraints.
Set your daily budget and stick to it.
Measure everything. Gone are the days of getting a Yellow Pages ad and hoping for the best.
Measure!
When your budget is limited, you must track every marketing source so you can see what is working and what isn’t.
If a particular source isn’t converting to paid customers, stop that advertising. Test different methods to see what works.
With a limited budget, you need to focus your efforts on direct response marketing. You want potential customers to see your marketing or advertisement and take action. You’ll get paid and know how they found you.
Focus
Generic and branding types of advertisements are great for building awareness of your services but don’t drive immediate customers. When cash is short, first focus on reaching those customers with the most urgent need for your services.
These ideal customers are those that are already looking for your solution to their problem. Put yourself where they are looking.
That could be on Angie’s List for a home repair company.
It could be via Google Adwords advertising to catch customers that go to Google looking for a problem.
Talk to your current customers and ask them how they began their search that ultimately lead to you. You’ll see commonalities across your customers and can then focus your marketing on those locations.
What methods have you found useful in acquiring new customers with a limited budget? Leave a comment and share what’s worked for you.