31 Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Business

by Janet Attard

Starting a business on a shoestring? Looking for ways to stretch yoursmall business marketing budget? Here are 31 low-cost, high-impact methods to advertise and promote your business.

What's the best way to promote your business? How can you advertise your business and get your name in front of potential prospects when money is tight or you're just starting up? How can you get the word out about your business in the most affordable way? Promoting a business is an ongoing challenge for small businesses. Whether you're just starting out or have been in business for years, these provenmarketing strategies will help your business find new customers without spending a fortune.

1. Plan your attack. Define who your best prospects are, and then determine the best way to reach them. Be as specific as possible. Is the decision maker the CTO of the company, the director of human resources, or a 37-year-old working mom? Will you find them on Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest or Facebook? What about in-person networking at local business meetings? Will they be searching for your type of product on Google or Bing? Do you want to start promoting your business to them at the start of their buying cycle, or when they're about ready to pull out their credit card and make the purchase.  Write your answers down, and refer to them before you start any new marketing tactic.
2. If you don't have a website, get one set up. If you can't afford to have someone custom-design your website, put your site up using one of the companies like SiteSell.com or HomeStead.com that provide templates and tools that make it easy to create a basic website.
3. Set up a free listing for your business in search engine local directories. You can do this at http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/local/, https://www.bingplaces.com/, andhttp://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/local-listings/. Be sure to include your website link and business description. 

4. Set your business profile or page up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter. Be sure your business profile includes a good description, keywords and a link to your website. Look for groups or conversations that talk about your type of products or services and participate in the conversations, but don't spam them with constant promosfor what you sell.
5. If you're just starting out and don't have a business card and business stationery, have them made up -- immediately. Your business card, letterhead and envelope tell prospective customers you are a professional who takes your business seriously. Be sure to list your website address on your business card and, letterhead and any handouts you create.
6. Get your business cards into the hand of anyone who can help you in your search for new clients. Call your friends and relatives and tell them you have started a business. Visit them and leave a small stack of business cards to hand out to their friends.
7. Talk to all the vendors from whom you buy products or services. Give them your business card, and ask if they can use your products or service, or if they know anyone who can. If they have bulletin boards where business cards are displayed (printers often do, and so do some supermarkets, hairdressers, etc.), ask if yours can be added to the board.
8. Attend meetings of professional groups, and groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, or civic associations. Have business cards in a pocket where they are easily reachable. Don't forget to ask what the people you speak with do, and to really listen to them. They'll be flattered by your interest, and better remember you because of it.
9. Pay for membership in those groups that attract your target customers.If the group has a website and publishes a list members on the site, make sure your name and website link get added. Once it is added double check to be sure your contact information is correct and your website link isn't broken.
10. Become actively involved in 2 or 3 of these groups. That will give you more opportunity to meet possible prospects. But remember: opportunists are quickly spotted for what they are, and get little business. While you won't want to become involved in many organizations that require a lot of your time in, you can --and should-- make real contributions to all of them by offering useful ideas and helping with projects when possible.
11. Look for something unusual about what you do, and publicize it. Send out press releases to local newspapers, radio stations, cable TV stations, magazines whose audiences are likely to be interested in buying what you sell. Be sure to post the press releases on one or more online press release services, too, being sure to include links to your website. To increase your chance of having the material published, send along a photo (but not to radio stations) with your press release. Editors of printed publications are often in need of "art" (drawings or photos) to fill space and break up the gray look of a page of text.
12. Write an article that demonstrates your expertise in your field. Send it to noncompeting newspapers, magazines, and websites in your field that accept submissions from experts. Be sure your name, business name, phone number, and a reference to your product or service is included at the end of the article. If the editor can use the article you get your name in print, and possibly get your contact information printed for free, too.
13. Publicize your publicity. Whenever you do get publicity, get permission from the publisher to reprint the article containing the publicity. Make photocopies and mail the copies out with sales letters or any other literature you use to market your product or service. The publicity clips lend credibility to the claims you make for your products or services.
14. Ask for work or leads. Contact nonprofit organizations, schools and colleges, and even other businesses that have customers who may need your services.
15. Network with others who are doing the same type of work you are. Let them know you are available to handle their work overloads. (But don't try to steal their customers. Word will get out, and will ruin your business reputation.)
16. Offer to be a speaker. Industry conferences, volunteer organizations, libraries, and local business groups often need speakers for meetings. You'll benefit from the name recognition, contacts and publicity.
17. If your product or service is appropriate, give demonstrations of it to whatever groups or individuals might be interested. Or, teach others how to use some tool you use in your work.
18. Put videos of your product or service on YouTube and other video-sharing and slide-sharing sites.
19. Find out what federal, state, and local government programs are in existence to help you get started in business. Most offer free counseling, and some can put you in touch with government agencies and large corporations that buy from small and woman-owned businesses
20. If you are a woman-owned or minority-owned business look into getting certifiedby private, state or federal organizations. Many purchasing agents have quotas or guide for the amount of goods and services they need to buy from minority- and woman-owned businesses.
21. Send out sales letters to everyone you think might be able to use what you sell.Be sure to describe your business in terms of how it can help the prospect. Learn to drop a business card in every letter you send out. Follow up periodically with postcard mailings.
22. If you use a car or truck in your business have your business name and contact information professionally painted on the side of the vehicle. That way your means of transportation becomes a vehicle for advertising your business. If you don't want the business name painted on the vehicle, consider using magnetic signs.
23. Get on the telephone and make "cold calls." These are calls to people who you would like to do business with. Briefly describe what you do and ask for an appointment to talk to them about ways you can help them meet a need or solve a problem.
24. Get samples of your product or your work into as many hands as possible.
25. Offer a free, no obligation consultation to people you think could use your services. During such consultations offer some practical suggestions or ideas--and before you leave ask for an "order" to implement the ideas.
26. Learn to ask for referrals. Ask existing customers, prospects and casual acquaintances. When you get them, follow up on the leads.
27. Use other people to sell your product or service. Instead of (or in addition to) selling your products yourself, look for affiliates, resellers or people who will generate leads for you in return for a commission on sales. Be sure your pricing structure allows for the fees or commissions you will have to pay on any sales that are made.
28. Get together with businesses who serve the same market, but sell different products and services. Make arrangements to pass leads back and forth, or share mailings.
29. Have sales letters, flyers and other pertinent information printed and ready to go.Ask prospects who seem reluctant to buy from you: "Would you like me to send information?" Follow up promptly with a note and a letter that says, "Here is the information you asked me to send
30. Run a contest. Make the prize something desirable and related to your business -- it could be a free gift basket of your products, for instance, or free services.
31. Test buying Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising on the search engines. If you are not yet advertising on search engines search for offers that give you $50 or $75 in free advertising to start. Read the directions for the service you plan to use, and very carefully watch what you spend on a daily or more frequent basis until you are comfortable using PPC ads and see you are getting a return on your investment. 

http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/24waysto.htm 

How to Price Your Small Business’ Products and Services

By Caron_Beesley, Contributor

Published: November 19, 2012Updated: November 28, 2012

The goal of business is to make a profit. Many small businesses fail at this because they don’t know how to price their products or services, but pricing is the critical element to achieving a profit, a factor that all firms can control.

If you’re a startup or are revisiting your pricing strategy, here are some suggestions from industry experts and small business owners to help you get the price right. 

1) Understand service costs and their impact on pricing

Every service has different costs. Many small service firms fail to analyze their services' total cost and thus fail to price them profitably. By analyzing the cost of each service, prices can be set to maximize profits and eliminate unprofitable services.

The Iowa Small Business Development Center offers a useful cheat sheet on How To Price Your Products and Services, which includes tips for analyzing your total costs. Components to understand and analyze are:

• Material costs
• Labor costs, including, but salaries plus benefits
• Overhead costs. Any cost not readily identifiable with a particular product is overhead. Taxes, rent, insurance, marketing and transportation are all overhead. Part of the overhead costs must be allocated to each service performed or product produced and must be adjusted annually.

Tip: To help you calculate your gross margin and understand its impact on pricing, readUnderstanding Gross Margin and how it Can Make or Break your Start-Up.

2) What are your competitors charging?

Pricing isn’t just about making a profit and covering your operating expenses, it’s also about where you want to position yourself in the marketplace, explains Scott Gerber, host of Inc.com’s Ask Gerber.  Where do you want your brand to be in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps you want to be the high-end competitor to someone who’s at the low-end of the market, or the reverse. The key, as Gerber suggests, is figuring out what’s going to get you the best penetration in the market as fast as possible, and broadening your client base according to what your competitors are not doing with their pricing models.

Useful Tools: Check out SBA’s SizeUp tool to help you assess how your business stacks up against the competition.

Tip: Do not try to compete with a large store's prices. They buy in larger volumes and their cost per unit is less. Instead, highlight other factors, like customer service.

3) Take advantage of front-end, back-end and/or tiered pricing

This is a common tactic for structuring your pricing model. Gerber suggests thinking of a car dealership. A sales rep knows he has multiple options for generating revenue from every customer who walks onto the lot. So the rep has the advantage of not only locking the customer down on a price for a car (the front-end pricing), but can also be pretty sure that the customer is going to pay more on top of that price for financing options and other add-ons – whether they anticipated this or not. Consider this the back-end pricing option. Bundled together, they equate what is also known as tiered pricing.

Tip: Think of ways you can tier your small business’ pricing structure to sell people early on the notion of a price, and then add options that ultimately will help you increase your bottom line.

4) Understand your conversions and metrics

Make sure you know how much you’re actually making on a particular product or service so you can figure out if that’s the right fit for that product. As an example, Gerber explains, if you’re selling only one out of 10 customers on a certain product, maybe that’s a sign that you’re pricing it too high. Consider the merits of dropping it by maybe 10-20 percent; you could increase the conversion rate by three or four times. The money you make on aggregate sales would be more than you’re making now on that one product. The bottom line is never assume things are okay as they are and can’t be done differently and perhaps more profitably.

5) Price higher than you think you would

An owner of a local fencing and decking contractor recently surprised me by admitting: “I always unwittingly underprice my services.” This wasn’t sales speak; he was simply recognizing that although he’s the best at what he does and has plenty of business, he doesn’t make enough money on the jobs he quotes.

Not charging enough is a common problem for small businesses simply because they often don’t have the operational efficiencies of larger companies and frequently find that, whatever they sell, their costs are higher than they anticipated. Small businesses do have one advantage, though, and it’s one that justifies charging a higher price – service! Here are two blogs that offer tips for leveraging service as a value proposition and revenue generator:

• How to Avoid Falling into a Price War by Focusing on Value
• 6 Tips for Creating a Customer Experience that Embodies your Unique Business Value

Tip: Other differentiators can help you justify higher prices or selling above your competition. including:

• Satisfaction in handling customer complaints
• Knowledge of product or service
• Helpful and friendly employees
• A convenient or exclusive location
• Exclusive merchandise

6) Pricing below the competition

If you decide you want to adopt a low-end competitive pricing strategy, remember that your profit margin per sale is going to be less so you’ll need to focus on reducing your costs. The Iowa SBDC recommends several best practices for this approach:

Obtain the best prices possible for the merchandise

• Locate the business in an inexpensive location
• Closely control inventory
• Limit product lines to fast-moving items
• Design advertising to concentrate on "price specials"
• Offer no or limited services

Tip: While some businesses can be successful with this strategy – think online retailers who can take advantage of cost-cutting like drop-shipping – it can be difficult to maintain this approach. Why? Because every cost component must be constantly monitored and adjusted. It also exposes a business to pricing wars. Competitors can match the lower price, leaving both sides out in the cold. 

What pricing strategies have worked for your small business? Leave a comment below or discuss them on the SBA Community Discussion Board.

https://www.sba.gov/blogs/how-price-your-small-business-products-and-services

So I got my Marketing Plan back from my instructor and one of the things I need to work on is Branding. This is what I have found on Branding...wish me luck!!!

Defining Your Brand: The First Step In Your Marketing Strategy

Truly defining your business is a critical first step in developing your marketing plan. Through a continuing series of stories, we've been examining how to build a compelling brand experience that will drive customer loyalty -- highlighting the principles of big brand marketing so that small business owners can replicate those kinds of successes. But before you can start building your brand's experience for customers, you need to take some fundamental first steps to define the kind of brand you want to be.

To guide our marketing plan, we need a very well-crafted statement of the type of business we are in, the type of customers we serve and how we serve them. We have to define what we stand for and the types of products and services that our customers can expect from us. This truly is the first step in the branding process.

At first glance, defining your brand may seem easy, but it takes some soul searching, decision making and data gathering.

Take, for example, someone going into business as a lawyer. It's pretty easy to define that brand -- a person who practices law, right? But to build a brand around his practice, a lawyer needs to determine specifically what kind of law he focuses on and what kind of client he is targeting before any marketing can begin. That means thinking through what regions of the world, categories of law, style of service and other offerings he brings to the table.

When defining your brand, put as much clarity as possible into how the brand and business is described, so that you can build a specific brand experience to match it. Here are three key steps to help you get there:

1. Make an inventory of your skills. List out what you are especially good at and what you want your customers to think of when your brand comes to mind. Your unique set of skills will form the basis of your brand definition.

2. What are your customers' needs? From your list of skills, identify those that your customers particularly need. Think through the kinds of things you do that your customers will come to you for. You should define your brand based on your ability to fulfill such demands.

3. Focus on what differentiates. It's important for your brand to be different than other similar options available to customers. Of course your brand experience will ultimately differentiate you, but being unique starts with deciding what attributes set you apart from others. Your goal is to be different and better than your competition.

Let's revisit our lawyer example. A well-defined lawyer wouldn't just say he "practices law." He would be much more definitive and specific about his focus if he wants customers to see his business as a brand. So instead of calling himself a "practicing lawyer," he may define his brand as a "compassionate attorney specializing in family law in the state of California, servicing women who need help getting through the tough times in their lives."

Notice the clarity in the brand definition?

While it's important to be as specific as possible, you also want to be careful not to box your business in with a tightly constrained brand definition. For example, if a hair salon only defined itself as providing "women's short haircuts," it would close itself off from business that could come from customers seeking other hair styles, salon services like coloring or straightening and other demographics like children or men.

If it makes sense to be super specific because you have identified a strong niche market, just be sure to do this consciously. I've seen many salons that specialize in just curly hair or blowouts. If the business is large enough, those could be very well-defined, successful brands. Just be careful not to define the brand too strictly, which would close out future business-building activities.

The trick is to balance specificity, focus and differentiation with the ability to expand. When defining your brand, make sure to describe the type of business in a way that allows for growth over time.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226603