by Jen Edwards

Created on: July 15, 2008   Last Updated: July 16, 2008

LOW-COST MARKETING SECRETS

One of largest expenses of running your business is promotion and advertising, especially for a new or small business. Making your business known in a community at the lowest possible cost can be tricky and time consuming.

However, there are many ways a business can market your business for llittle or no cost. A pet breeder in a large city was struggling for several years-until he came up with a novel idea. He started giving away customized "birth certificates" for the pets he sold. Almost immediately, his sales rose more than 10 percent. Now you even see specialty stuffed animal stores offering "birth certificates" with the purchase of a lovable critter!

The owner of a new home cleaning service was trying to attract clients. She couldn't afford much advertising, so she began offering "home cleaning seminars" to civic groups. After two months of seminars, she was swamped with inquiries and clients. So what may have looked as though the seminar would detract from her business because of 'teaching others to do what she was doing", it did just the opposite!

Promotion often makes the critical difference between business success and failure. Customers or clients always want to know about a business or product line before they'll buy and they must have a reason or justify their emotional reaction to buy.

If you are trying to market your business with low cost, you can move in one of two directions: 1) You can take the conventional route to promotion and mount an elaborate media campaign, spending a considerable amount of money or 2) You can let your creative juices flow and mount a low-cost promotion effort, using a potpourri of attention-getting gimmicks to bring your message to the buying public.

Please remember, conventional advertising is valuable. If your business is large enough or if you're selling a large product line, you may find that a full-fledged media campaign is the most efficient and cost effective way to promote your business.

However, if money is tight or you're not sure you can afford the hefty cost of a media campaign over a period of time, here is a list of low-cost marketing techniques you can try. (Caution: Do Not try to do them all...some are not appropriate for all types of businesses and it would be too costly to do them all. Find the ones that you think will work the best for you and give them a try.)

1. GIVEAWAYS: People love to receive "free" items, especially items they can use to gain knowledge or improve their lives.

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