Working With A Minimum Marketing Budget
3. REFRESH YOUR BRAND
If you have had your logo for more than five years your brand is probably looking a little tired. Let’s face it, how fashionable are your clothes from five years ago? A modern redesign or upgrade of your logo can virtually re-launch your business to the marketplace.
A new look gives you and your sales team a reason to revisit all customers, old and new, to re-introduce your business and its exciting new brand.
A $5,000 budget should buy you the services of a top rate designer to work with to recreate your brand and then carry the new design across all your stationery, signage and basic marketing materials.
Take time to review your business name; if it’s long then consider using the initials as the new brand (like QANTAS instead of Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services). Don’t forget to add a positioning statement; the one-liner that will set your business apart from its competitors, like FedEx’s ‘absolutely, positively overnight,’ or Saab’s ‘move your mind’. Your positioning statement should offer a benefit and give the customer a reason to buy from you and not your competitor.
4. TARGETED PRINT ADVERTISING
Most major media publications charge a premium for advertising because of their high circulation. That’s fine if you’re marketing a product to a broad audience and you have the budget to support it. Your primary target on the other hand probably accounts for only a small proportion of these readers so advertising in a large, mainstream publication would not be the best value and on a limited budget may only give you a small ad that’s easily lost.
Instead, find a trade magazine or publication that directly targets your industry or market, like Dynamic Business for example, and book a full page ad or a series of half pages.
For new advertisers, larger adverts deliver higher impact and may also give you some bargaining power to receive some complimentary editorial within the publication. A $5,000 budget is going to go a lot further in a publication with a smaller, more targeted readership. Ideally you will be able to afford more than one advert as repetition builds awareness. Just think of a For Sale sign on a busy road that’s there for just one day, would you really expect to sell the house from that?
5. HIGHER IMPACT SIGNAGE
So last, but really not least, is to take a look at your building, your shop or your van if that is your place of work. Your business signage is like free advertising, promoting your products and services to passing traffic and potential trade every day (and, if illuminated, at night as well). Like that house for sale again with no For Sale sign out the front, poor signage can cost your business severely.
Is your main logo displayed on your building professionally, preferably in 3D, full colour and illuminated at night? Consider window displays printed on banner mesh or one-way vinyl that allows you to see out but display full colour graphics from the outside. Are your company cars and vans sign written or at least display magnetic decals on them promoting your brand and website?
Then there’s informational signage; do customers know where to park, opening hours of your business, which products you sell or what services you offer? Signage plays a very important role in marketing; it gives the first impression of your business to potential customers, promotes and educates the consumer about what you have to offer and shows people exactly where you are and how to find you.
- Tony Eades is creative director of www.designshop.com.au
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hi, i have found this information so helpfull, as i have just reinvented a product for all people who have not been able to wear a ring. It has been a struggle to get it out there.
There is a fierce competition out there for getting customers through the doors. Many consumers do tend to research services or products before actually entering a store.
With our portal, Businesses can advertise their services on their own profile page, upload logos & add their discount vouchers.
I think if you’re starting business, postal advertising is the way to go. It is more personal and more sincere than the mass marketing approach. One hint I have learned is to include a guarantee and make your advertising in a personal letter approach.
It really works I sent out 50 letters last Sunday, today I have received $50000 dollars worth of work and a client who is ecstatic that she received a letter of what she was looking for, she cried she was so happy that my letter is going to give her business a solution that she was really looking for but couldn’t find anywhere.
She is passing on my letter to her associates, so one letter is going to grow my business exponentially. I think it is what you are offering and how you can word it
I agree totally with Anthony Thompson (first comment); have always found letters the way to go.
Keep ‘em down to a single page, cross-refer reader to my website for more info, offer a free communications manual and a comprehensive folio on CD.
I used to run ads in trade magazines and, though I got a lot of response, most of it consisted of tyre-kickers and other non-serious respondents.
I send out letters, about a hundred a batch, using only industry directories and the Yellow pages website.
The level of dead letters, even from the quite poorly updated Yellow Pages website is seldom over 5% and useful responses, on average about 5-10%, rather better than the DM industry average.
This is largely due to the fact that each letter is 100% targeted to the prospect by job title; found almost zero difference when I addressed the letters by name…just a lot more effort with no noticeable extra response.
Obviously the letters talk one way to agencies, another way to graphic designers, another to website designers, another to direct clients and so on. Simple, direct, copy; clear benefits, crisply expressed, respecting the reader’s time..
Have found my website far more useful as a support medium, rather than a primary business seeker, although the occasional enquirer finds it; fits in perfectly with the way I prospect for clients.
Letters…good enough for Reader’s Digest (masters of targeting), good enough for me!
Try it and see! If your letters are correctly targeted and properly written, they are a very cost-effective way to go.
Another suggestion I would make is to ensure you’ve maximised all available sales channels.
One option available to consultants and professional service providers that you may not be aware of is expertmagnet.com.
Register free on this site, then whenever an organisation posts a request that matches your expertise, you’ll be notified and can pitch for the work.
While it doesn’t replace the proactive approach, it does provide another sales channel at a very low cost.
Regards,
Mark
http://www.expertmagnet.com
Another time-tested and relatively inexpensive approach is to go back through your customer database and refresh your contacts. In this economic downturn some former customers may have turned elsewhere looking for bargains or are hesitant to approach your company looking for a discount. Something as quick and as cheap as a simple phone call, ‘to update the client contact info’ can easily be turned into a friendly inquiry into the former client’s future plans. Handled in a friendly manner, the business relationship can be re-kindled, and not always to the tune of a bargain. Perhaps the client has a project coming up but hadn’t yet thought ahead to including your service. Getting in on the ground floor of your clients future plans means you are also part of the initial budget stages, instead of an afterthought.
Besides, keeping your contact info up to date and your relationships fresh and friendly is a good idea, no matter the economic climate.
Postal marketing is a surprisingly inexpensive method of spreading your marketing message far and wide, but also has dismal ROI. This is why it is so important to make sure your mailings are eye-catching and very specific in message, as most of your mailings will be seen for seconds, maybe even less, by consumers rifling through their mail. One method I favor is (if a little more expensive) sending a refrigerator magnet with your brand, message and call to action. It\’s something almost everyone will use, will continue to make impressions day after day, and (perhaps most importantly) adds heft and solidity to your mailing envelope, increasing chances the consumer will open it.
Re the direct marketing offer, I found a study recently which discovered that people take action only if there’s a deadline. 31% of respondents used a gift voucher when it had only three weeks to go, while only 6% used it when it had two months to go. See http://gifts-by-the-stars-online.com/2009/10/11/recipients-more-likely-to-use-gift-cards-with-short-expiry-dates/
For the same reason, don’t be generous with your expiry dates as people just don’t get around to using your special offer!
Thanks Tony, Some great suggestions. I have recently started my business, with less than $5000 capital! I decided to spend $2500 on my brand/logo. The design I developed looked good, especially if I was running a nightclub! So I have had a designer polish my work, and they have come up with some brilliant designs.
I’ve also been developing a social media presence, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These sites are all FREE to use, and I have full control over content. I’ve found WordPress (blog site) to be a really easy to use medium, and so far I have had a good number of hits since the first blog (yesterday!).
I am waiting on my business finances to be made available, however in the mean time I am working on slowly building some awareness. Early days yet.
Great to see DM being promoted as a marketing tool once again.
As a graphic designer who has met more than her fair share of start-ups with limited budgets. I recently decided to come up with some affordable solutions to help small businesses start the marketing of their business on the right foot. First up we’ve created a logo store that sells professional logos for a very small price, next up we are working on creating simple cms websites for under $2,000 that can at least help them get started online. We have also written an article to help people come up with effective business names. Hopefully these things and the other things that we have in the pipeline will help those with limited marketing budgets to get started in a professional manner.
[...] Working with a minimum marketing budget by Tony Eades (www.dynamicbusiness.com.au) [...]
Thanks for the interesting input for novices like myself….your comments have provided valuable insight that usually only comes with many years experience – so once again thanks
Your online business take on a similar approach to face to face except that the relationship and loyalty is built online. Equally your online business will require a more sophisticated approach to the steps and ordering guide. Online will also benefit from an ongoing SEO campaign and web site maintenance.
i agree with the web shop presence being important as we recently discovered. we have changed over to a web store with full cms functions that give us the flexibility to do most things ourselves and it only cost $750.00 a year from a great company called my work australia.
Interesting article. However I disagree that you have spend that much on a website. I’m in the services industry and other sole practitioners don’t spend that much on a website! I went through three budget designers, three websites with horrible CMS and finally bought a wordpress theme off an US developer. My site looks smashing, I get compliments and more business than with the horrible professionally designed sites…best of all, it cost less than 10% of the price I paid for the professionally designed sites.
Wow finaly someone who understand what a real website is actually supposed to do. It is a very common mistakes that a lot of start up, small and even some medium sized business don’t even know how their website is performing or what its function as an online entity is meant to be. It is this mentality that “hey I can get a website for $500.00 why are you charging me $2000.00″ that is making my job of delivering an effective, online marketing and sales tool which is exactly what a website is supposed to be!!! VERY VERY Painfull.
thanks for your help- Id love to find out how to promote my blog so that i can get more followers? is there ways to do this and to get it out there? i am not much of a social media person, but I have heard I must do it for the business?
If you are going to go online with your business, you need to develop an online strategy, what do you want your site to offer people and what types of services do you want to deliver online. You also need to think about content, how much do you want to start with and how do you add more of it later eg blog. Remembering that content is king.
Visit sites that you like and list the functionality that you would like to replicate.
I think alot of people are forgetting about some basics. Sometimes the best thing to do to promote your small business is simply print a business card with a strong call to action on the back or flier and go hand it out to your target market. Some times it is just about getting back to basics.
-Larry
Kzoomarketing.com