Marketing on virtually no budget

[RoyaleGraphics]

I'm hoping someone could help me?

I work for a small print management company and currently we have a very small (ie none) marketing budget.

We rank quite highly on some keywords on Google (postage paid envelopes, self seal mailers) from our website which we edit in house, I also use twitter and facebook and have submitted to some free directories.

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to any free marketing ideas they can think of or use themselves.

Thanks
Colette :)

[GreatSEO]

gumtree
local advertising board
local church parish mag
free ads
vivastreet
forums
articles
contra's
email marketing
marketing to existing client base asking for referals/recommendations
special 1 time only offers
local business centres

Should be a good start for you

Regards

Dave

[marcia9]

spend aat least half an hour a day updating your links and information.

[marcia9]

visit large companies and offer your sevices, find small organizations which you can work with from your community

[telemax]

Pick up the phone and call potentials

[ddudgeon]

Hi - there are several things you can do on a low budget. I've put a presentation about this on slideshare and on my blog, but I don't think I can post a link.

It should come up first if you google this: diy online marketing & pr devoninspiration


Cheers,
Devon

[marcia9]

wow devon, you found a nice and catchy search phrase ;-)

[ddudgeon]

Thanks Marcia! Glad you found it. :)

[deniser]

Also pick up on news stories relevant to your business and comment, blog and tweet them.

I once posted a comment on the BBC news website about postal strikes and the effect on my mail order business and next thing I knew I was on the BBC breakfast news, BBC World news, South East News and local radio as well as in a film about small business made by a local school!

The effect on sales was enormous and I got new customers from all over the world!

I do the same now with local news stories getting involved in things like campaigns against post office closure etc. whatever might be relevant to your business.

And it all costs nothing!

[Postforce]

Hi Colette

All very useful advise above - but specific to print management don't know whether it would help - but have you considered listing 'mailing' on your website as a service along side printing? For clients who are ordering material to be mailed they may see it as a positive if you can handle the whole 'print and mail' package for them! - We are working with printers who in the past have just printed - now they print and offer the mailing service and make a mark up on it! Here to help if I can - trade rates etc etc.

[RoyaleGraphics]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for taking the time to reply and for all the great ideas. I will start putting some of these into practice.

Can I just say this is a great forum to get helpful advice from :)

[findnetworkingevents]

Have you tried attending a few local business networking events?

They are relatively inexpensive but very effective for SMEs if approached the right way.

I appreciate you said you have next to no budget - there are bound to be some free ones in your area and you can often try out some different ones for free or for a reduced charge.

I think for businesses such as yours where it is clear what you are selling and where many businesses have a need for what you sell then it could work really well.

Stuart

[los_design]

I agree entirely.

A very useful resource to any SMB. This forum can be a massive asset once you cut through the link droppers and self promo stuff (which to be fair are pretty self evident.)

In addition to the methods shown above, if your main aim is to market online then blog yourself daily and get updates pushed through twitter/facebook (on their page tool, you can set it so it updates twitter for you...;))

If your market is offline, print off a simple flyer and drop it into your local shops/pubs/libraries/trade fairs (watch out for the security LOL)...

There is indeed a myriad of methods and I do wish you luck with them all.

Regards
Daren

[4little1s]

Hey UKSMF thanks for the vivastreet tip, had not heard of them before,

[Penny Haywood]

Thought your security printing service is a great niche market. And one that is good for generating stories about what happens if you don't use a security printer ...

Stories are great for media articles, blogs etc.

Stories are more memorable than any marketing blurb because we are all hard-wired to remember stories from our evolution around the campfires - we survived on stories for millions of years before radio, TV & Internet!

I've got downloads on free/low cost publicity at phpr.co.uk/downloads.

Free/low cost publicity is always a trade off: time v money. And a mixture of sales, marketing and PR techniques work better when run together than they do individually.

Even if you bring in people to help, real hands-on experience is always useful and you will be gaining invaluable business skills.