Cost Effective Ways to Market your Business

When a company becomes insolvent or near to collapse, the first thing directors tend to do is cut costs. This is done for numerous reasons:

• So debts do not rise
• So money earnt can be retained (and used to pay any debts)
• To protect the firms’ image – if a company was on the verge of collapse and was seen to be putting no measures in place to try and help its future viability, or was seen to just continually spend unnecessarily, would it be worth a rescue? Would investors want to help with saving it? Is this not on the borderline of wrongful trading?
• In hope of saving itself 

One area which takes up a high proportion of business cost is in marketing. Companies invest extraordinary time, effort and money on creating a brand, attracting customers and a place in the market. Of course, this is necessary and beneficial, if successful and it builds brand awareness. However, particularly in today’s digitalized world, there are simpler, more efficient and cost-effective ways to do this – especially beneficial for financially-distressed businesses looking to save costs. 

1. Social Media

Every business should use social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, it is the way of the world today. Having these accounts allow companies to interact with customers directly; posting images, videos, events, sharing news, responding to enquiries etc. Businesses can grow virally from this simple tactic. They are free to set up and manage. There are so many courses online too, helping those new to the ‘social’ world in using them. Consumers are active on social media already, so why not take a step to get closer to them and highlight your presence. 

You can chose the platform that best suits you and your business – analyse each wisely. 

2. Create a website

This is crucial to do, especially with today’s high dominance of online businesses, establishing your own place is essential. Once it has been set up, this is a cheap method of generating customer awareness and sales. Take the current environment – how useful has it been that retailers have been online, when we are unable to go and visit shops in person? Being online is a way of staying with trend but also benefits you in the long-run. It enables you to continue trading and reach a wider audience – even go global if you wish. 

Be sure to have a clear, relevant and engaging design. Your website should look professional and represent your company – be user friendly and get your message across. 

3. Get a local business listing

Ensure that you have a place online and list on your local business listings. GoogleMyBusiness is a site for this. Creating a profile is simple, just fill in the required details and hey presto! Once done, it enables users to find your business when searching for those of your type – what an easy, effortless way to draw attention to your company and market yourself?  

4. Email marketing 

Email campaigns can be used to keep interested individuals (who opt in to receiving company updates) aware of events, news and latest information in a business. Sending emails is free and so this is a cost-effective way to make your business visible to interested parties. The tip here is to make emails engaging; use infographics and other types of compelling content rather than just blocks of text and also make emails personalised. Creating mailing lists and group consumers by tastes, interests and purchasing habits.

5. Search engine optimisation

SEO is a useful tool to help create traffic which eventually turns to revenue. Nowadays people google everything – so why not take action to ensure you can appear on search rankings when people search for related keywords. The stronger SEO strategy implemented and successful, the better associated your site will become when keywords are used in searches.  This can take time and often needs a plan, but it is worthwhile. All you need is relevant content, useful keywords and to think in the minds of the searching customers and you can do it. Plenty of tools exist which offer advice on how to get up in the rankings and how to improve your search ranking.

6. Blog 

Take time to create blogs and have them published on key article sites for your sector. There are many about. Blogging is free, creative and limitless. There are no boundaries. So, get going, write some content and most importantly create a bio to accompany the blog, which includes the company name. By getting your name about, you are creating links and presence. It is recommended that you try to write about subjects similar to the field of your business and so stay on topic, though of course, write what you feel, just remember the company name will be attributed.

So, these are just five of the most effective ways to market your business for little cost, there is of course many other ways out there. Do some research. But in the meantime, why not follow these suggestions and cut costs? See if it works? It is guaranteed to improve your market presence in one way or another. Give it a try.

Rebecca Dunne, the author, is a University of Hertfordshire Management Undergraduate and the writer for KSA Group, who are Licensed Insolvency Practitioners in the UK, established in 2000.  KSA Group run www.companyrescue.co.uk which contains over 2000 pages of useful information for struggling businesses. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-dunne-3a6920166/