There are a lot of ways to approach your marketing strategy. You can lean hard on online marketing. You can advertise on television, on the radio, in magazines or newspapers. But all of these methods can be expensive. So how can you market your business when your budget is tight? Here are some effective—and low-cost—marketing strategies that you can use to get the word out about your business.

Work on your Public Relations
If you can make the news, it can be a powerful way to promote your business without making a big impact on your budget. A news story can help raise your profile in the public eye, and a news story feels more authoritative than an advertisement.

How can you get started? Consider a press release. Even if you only distribute the release to local news outlets, a press release is a good way to spread the word about big news at your business. From new locations to new products, there are a lot of pieces of news that could help you connect to the press. And, if you’re looking to make a splash…

Give Back
Giving back to the community is a great way to create a positive reputation for your business and to make the news. Sponsoring an event like a cancer walk, having a collection jar for the local food shelf at your storefront, or even taking some time as a business to volunteer for a good cause can be a good way to give back and to generate goodwill with customers and prospects.

Use What You Already Have
One of the best ways to save money in your marketing strategy is by using what you already have—and you might have more than you think! When you creatively use your existing resources, you can build a strong foundation for your marketing strategy and make your budget even more effective.

If you have a storefront, you have many promotional possibilities before you. Your storefront’s windows are a place to showcase samples or banners to advertise special offers. Your door and windows are a great place to display your logo and store hours. The sidewalk out front is an opportunity for A-frame signs to bring in walk-in traffic.

Talk to Your Suppliers!
One important thing you already have is your suppliers. From free sales kits and samples to digital resources like catalogs and flyers, your supplier might already offer a variety of pieces you can use in your marketing strategy. Navitor does—and we create new flyers every month!

Use Your Budget for What’s Important
No matter what your budget, saving money by using the previous tips can give you more wiggle room in your budget for more expensive marketing options. For example, using supplier sales tools might allow you to invest the time and money you would have otherwise spent in designing your own flyers in advertisement in a local publication instead.

How do you save money on your marketing budget? We’d love to see your tips and tricks in the comments below.

Whether it’s icy roads or a sudden snowfall keeping people indoors, doing business with customers in the winter can be a real challenge. And, when you’re faced with inclement weather, it can be a challenge to market to your customers as well. Here are just a few marketing strategies that you can employ even if your customers—or you—can’t make it to your storefront in person.

“Start Early!”
If your customers order print for a business that has seasonal services, this is the time to remind them that their marketing should start early. For example, if you work with customers in the lawn care industry, they should be laying the groundwork for new customer relationships before the first blades of grass peek through the snow. Talking to these customers about the necessity of starting early is a good way to boost your business and theirs.

Step Up Your Social Media Game
We talked a lot about your social media strategy last month, and there’s a reason for that. Social media is a great way to reach out to more customers—and it works especially well when inclement weather limits your marketing options. Check out our posts on social media strategy and social media don’ts for more information.

Give Your Customers a Call
Your telephone is a great tool, too! If things have slowed down at your business due to the cold weather, consider giving a call to your top customers or to customers you haven’t heard from in some time.

Make Sure Your Emails are Polished
When your customers are snowed in, email might be the primary way that they reach out to you. Polishing up your email format will help ensure that your communications are a professional alternative to seeing your customers face to face. Consider updating your email signature to include your photo or company logo and using fonts that work well with your branding to add style to your everyday emails. You should also work to ensure that any promotional emails like newsletters look good, too—use photographs and be sure to show the best of what your business has to offer.

And speaking of digital promotions…

Online Options
One of the best ways to market to your customers is to give them a way to browse your product offering without having to brave the snow. One in-depth way to do this is to create a website that allows your customer to order online, but there are small ways to give them online options, too. PDFs of product flyers or customized digital catalogs can both be sent through email and ensure that information about your product offering is only a click away.

Want to get started on these simple online options? You’re in luck—Navitor offers free online flyers and digital catalogs. Visit Zoomcatalog to get started on personalizing your copy of the Navitor catalog or check out our free digital flyers for more information.

How do you promote your business when you’re snowed in? We’d love to see your winning winter marketing strategies in the comments below.

Last week we talked about having a social media style guide, and this week we want to share the other side of building a social media strategy: what not to do. Whether the tactics are outdated or simply misinformed, you might have a few strategies that are holding you back. Here are the social media tactics you should leave behind in 2019.

1. Following to Gain Followers
This used to be a very common tactic for making new business connections—just follow prospective customers and they might follow you back—but follows that come out of the blue simply don’t work in today’s social media landscape. Not only will it clutter your feed with posts that might not be relevant to your business, but

2. Relying on Studies More Than Experience
There are a lot of studies out there that will tell you when, what, and how much to post, and they can be a great starting point. However, those studies are primarily based on averages, which doesn’t necessarily reflect your audience as well as it could. Once you’ve taken the time to get to know when your audience is most likely to see your posts and how often they like to see you post, you can leave the studies behind and work to speak to your customers more directly.

And speaking of your customers…

3. Posting Only What You Want
Don’t get me wrong—you are the person who choses what you want to post on your social media, and that shouldn’t change. However, it’s important to remember that you aren’t your primary audience. Your customer is. When you’re considering what to put on social media, you want to make sure that you are posting what would be relevant to your customers.

4. Only Relying on Canned Responses
Social media sites are increasingly used for customer service interactions, which makes quick responses essential. However, if you’re relying primarily on pre-written, “canned” responses you aren’t making the most of these customer service opportunities! Pre-written responses are useful when it comes to common customer questions, but it’s important to adjust them to suit each customer’s situation and to make them more personal.

For example, if you need to move a customer service interaction offline, it can be useful to have a prewritten message like “Thank you for your feedback; we would like to give you a call to discuss this issue further.” However, changing this message to include the customer’s name can make the response feel more personal.

5. Posting All The Time
One of the most challenging things about creating a social media for your business is considering how often to post. Some might advise frequent posts to keep your company in the public eye, but posting too much could drive away the people you’re hoping to connect with. You’re better off posting a few times a day rather than posting hourly during business hours, for example, because it makes each post more impactful.

What social media strategies would you recommend leaving behind? We’d love to see you join the conversation in the comments below.