Marketing on a Shoestring Budget (and staff)

If you have millions of dollars to spend on marketing stop reading. You probably don’t need to know how to create a marketing strategy. You can afford to throw money around and hope something works.

But, if you are a small or medium size business with a limited marketing budget and staff to support marketing activities, keep reading!

If you are marketing on a shoestring budget, the greater the need for a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is a written plan that outlines the following: 1) Target Audience, 2) Marketing Tactics and 3) Timeline. The process of creating a marketing plan will force you to think smart and use your marketing dollars wisely.

First, you must determine your target audience. Look at the demographic and psychographic profile of your typical buyer. Create a fictitional person for each target audience group. Name this person. Pick out a stock photo that looks like the target audience. Post the profile on a large piece of chart paper around the office (away from customer eyes). Get to know this person on a personal level. Where does he/she shop? Eat? Live? What does this person(s) do for fun?

Next, decide what marketing tactics you want to use. I highly recommend online marketing tactics because they are DIY (do-it-yourself) friendly, economically feasible AND highly effective. How do you decide what tactics to use? Draw a wagon wheel. Yes, you read that right. Your entire marketing strategy can be mapped out on a wagon wheel. I like to call this Meredith’s Wagon Wheel of Marketing Principle.

Meredith's Wagon Wheel of Marketing

The hub of your wheel and your strategy should be your Website. Whatever marketing dollars are available spend them here. You need the best, most flexible, visually impactful and sales oriented website you can afford. It is the foundation of everything you do and it must be WOW.

The spokes of your wagon wheel are your traffic drivers. Every Website needs traffic drivers. A Website with no marketing is like a billboard in the Everglades. It doesn’t exist. How will your target audience find your Website? You need traffic drivers.

To market on a shoestring budget, I highly recommend a combination of good old fashioned elbow grease traffic drivers (like Leads Groups, Networking & Charity Partnerships) and online traffic drivers (like social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because they are FREE and Email Marketing because it is nearly FREE).

Sample Budget Friendly Strategy

Social media and email marketing are incredibly budget friendly. I encourage you to invest in some up front training or coaching to make sure you start out on the right foot. But once you learn your way around sites like iContact, Constant Contact, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, it is easy to maintain them. The set-up and learning curve is the most time consuming and potentially frustrating. Invest in some help early and it will pay dividends a lot faster.

I realize that time is money. But it seems we are always short on one or the other. When you have plenty of money, it seems you have no time. When you have time on your hands, you rarely have any money. No time and no money is a recipe for disaster! Make the time for marketing and if you can’t afford full service marketing support, your best bet are marketing tactics that require your time and not lots of money.

The more spokes on your wagon wheel the better. And of course more pricey marketing traffic drivers like print advertising, radio, television, signage, search engine optimization and paid search marketing are fantastic ways to drive traffic. But they also require a budget and staff support.

The third portion of the marketing strategy is the timing. This is where you make a commitment to carry out certain marketing tactics by a deadline. I recommend timing your marketing promotions around the seasons of the year. I learned this from fellow sales trainer extraordinaire Kerry Mulcrone of Mulcrone & Associates. You can easily map out four promotions each year that correlate with the seasons. The timing is easy to remember and there are lots of seasonal graphic design email and print templates.  This saves money on custom graphic design (of course custom design always looks more professional but do what you have to do).

How do you get started?

1. Identify and profile your target market.
2. Invest in the best Website (hub) you can afford.
3. Select at least 2 – 3 traffic drivers.
4. Write down the promotions and the timing.
5. Measure and track the first promotion.
6. Adjust where needed.
7. Rinse and repeat!

If you enjoyed this blog, you will enjoy my newest workbook, Click Power- Become the Master of Your Domain, which will be out October 15. We invite you to comment and share how you market on a shoestring budget!

Tags: Blog, blog marketing, Creating Wow, driving web traffic, Home Builder Marketing, home builder sales, improving websites, increase web traffic, increasing web traffic, Meredith Communications, Meredith Oliver, Real Estate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization for home builders, search engine ranking, search engine rankings, SMO, social media optimization, tags in search engines, web traffic marketing, website traffic