Marketing Without A Budget: Try Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What if you are unable to fund a marketing campaign?
Every business, at some point, will make some sort of comment that they do not spend anything on marketing. They hear stories about businesses a lot on marketing without noticeable results or that their marketing budgets are out-of-control, and there is no way to be certain if it helps to grow the business or not. Well, if someone is going to start a business and does not have a marketing budget, then they are going to have an exceptionally long journey toward sustainable growth.
Think of marketing as something that is directly tied to sales. It is meant to bring awareness and potential customers to a business and eventually convert it into a sale. With the dawn of digital marketing, this has been easier to track the right types of tools that help to show if a certain amount of money is spent, it will lead to a certain amount of money being made. These come in different formulas, such as the cost per acquisition (CPA) and average order values (AOV) of those acquisitions.
If no money is spent, it is based purely on organic growth, which can play out differently for various businesses. For example, you may think to yourself you're opening up a restaurant in a busy neighborhood or a big city, and the foot traffic will be enough for people to come in and start earning sales, but in reality, even those locations still need to advertise, promote, and let the potential customers know the restaurant is open. Otherwise, it will take more time.
Consider this scenario. See if a marketing budget upfront monthly will be lower than your operational overhead, such as salaries and rent, and then decide if you can wait the additional months to a year to pay those costs in a physical location versus putting funds into marketing to boost traffic and sales.
The same goes if the business is virtual. You want to be flush with customers because, as everyone in the digital marketing industry knows, it is all about consistency and momentum. So, if you find yourself only selling a few items on your eCommerce shop or only a couple of people a month signing up for your online yoga or coaching course, it could stay that way indefinitely.
I still have no budget allocated to marketing; what can I do?
Well, if you are still set on not spending or investing funds into your own business to help grow it, then you can handle some of the items on your own. You will still need to put funds into building a website and developing content.
That means you will need to write the website content, articles, updated blogs, and so forth so that people will be able to find you via web searches. This can be quite time-consuming, especially if you have never drafted articles before in the past. They need to be written in a way that focuses on keywords and organization. There is also something known as Meta Data that you will need to research and ensure that your website has enough meta keywords and the right meta description. Remember that regardless of this type of marketing, it will still take months to gain meaningful traction.
Then you can work on growing your social media presence, but you will find yourself more on social media than running the business's operations. Growing followers organically not only takes a lot of time but also takes a lot of effort as well. You need to be continually interacting with your community and researching and engaging with other communities related to your industry. This means continually collaborating and finding ways to build partnerships, all with the mindset of growing followers, likes, or subscriptions. It is possible, and with the right amount of effort, you will start to gain that traction around the time your content marketing strategy takes off.
Yet then you will have to start handling the business and sales aspects and growing your company. That does not mean content marketing and social media marketing stop. In fact, as your sales and operations grow, you will also need to expand your marketing channels on your own.
Do a cost-benefit analysis
Honestly check to see if there is no budget. Also, make sure to check if your hourly rate is worth the time, are you spending valuable time building out that content and trying to grow your social media village at the same time? There are plenty of resources and tools out there that will give your social media channels the right kick, as well as having a marketing budget to have all your channels grow.
Without marketing funds, it may not be the best time to operate the business, or it is more important to scale down, free up some marketing funds, and expand everything as sales expansion continues.
When you find those additional funds, a great cost-effective way to grow your social media channels is using Products – Avalonbusiness.org (avalonpublicity.shop). You will be able to set your budget accordingly and see fast results in your social media channel growth. This will not only help you feel comfortable spending money on marketing but will help accelerate your social media presence. Look at Avalon Publicity LLC – Avalonbusiness.org to view options and estimated cost per use.
