5 Ways To Expand Your Marketing Budget
It doesn’t matter if you sell widgets or window cleaning, radishes or real estate: if people don’t know you exist, how can they buy from you? Marketing is essential to your success, but it’s hard to promote your business when you have a limited marketing budget. With ever-expanding options like email marketing, social media management, or collecting more online reviews, you need as much budget as you can get. For that reason, I put together 5 ways to expand your marketing budget.
1. Free Mentoring with SCORE
Chances are there’s a SCORE chapter near you. SCORE is a premier source of free business mentoring and education, helping more than 11 million entrepreneurs since 1964. Working with a SCORE mentor is easy:
Visit www.SCORE.org
Search for a mentor via zip code or keyword
Schedule a time to via email, video chat or face-to-face
I’ve had tons of experience in working alongside SCORE mentors, and I’ve seen how they help small business owners firsthand. From advice and strategy regarding your operations, financials, or marketing, SCORE mentors are a great free resource to help you expand your marketing budget.
2. Monitor your credit card processing fees
Want more revenue? Stop paying your credit card processor high fees and bogus charges. Credit processors can overcharge, create bogus fees and take your hard earned money if you're not looking. Services like Swipe stop them in their tracks by securing you the lowest rates possible and then they closely monitor your monthly fees for free to earn you the refunds you deserve. We’ve found this to be an easier way to save than changing credit card processors.
To be a savvy business owner, you need to know where every penny is spent. Unfortunately, most small business owners don't know how to read a credit card processing statement. That's why credit card processors get away with adding fees to your bill without you even knowing it. Every card you swipe could mean money is being taken out of your pocket... literally.
With no upfront costs, Swipe is a great risk-free way of expanding your marketing budget.
3. Attend Free Workshops
One of the best ways to gain practical marketing advice is by attending marketing workshops and webinars. Think about it, you have a subject matter expert sharing their knowledge and ready to field your burning marketing questions. This is free marketing advice at its best!
In fact, I have a number of free marketing workshops coming up in the near future. In these workshops, I cover topics like Google My Business, how Google search works, online reviews, email marketing and more. You can also check out Constant Contact’s Event Calendar for more helpful workshops and webinars in your area.
If you’ve attended my events, I suggest checking out your local chamber of commerce or SCORE chapter for events. These organizations exist to help you grow your business and are always hosting marketing workshops for their members (and non-members.)
4. Learn (and Use) YouTube
YouTube is the second-most visited website on the planet and provides a treasure trove of useful video content to help you grow your business. Equally important, YouTube offers your business a free channel to demonstrate your products and services through video. If you haven’t jumped into video yet, there’s still plenty of time. According to Cisco, video will represent 82% of all IP traffic in 2021, which means it will be the way you connect with leads and prospects.
Check out these great channels that both educate and empower small business owners:
Bigger Better Biz: Digital Marketing
Viewership: YouTube
Constant Contact: Email Marketing
Matt Ward: Word of Mouth Referrals
Neil Patel: Website SEO
In addition to watching videos on YouTube, consider leveraging YouTube as a marketing channel for your business. With just a smartphone, you can produce and publish videos to attract, engage, and convert your prospects on a budget.
5. Take Advantage of Free Tools
My grandfather used to say as he grabbed a fistful of free mints at the restaurant, “You gotta get your money’s worth.” Listen, don’t be bashful - free tools are out there, and they can definitely help. In fact, there are some tools that will give you a great baseline for developing and implementing your marketing plan.
Test Your Website Speed: Check your mobile site speed and get insights to decrease your load time. Test My Site also lets you test and get recommended fixes for up to 5 individual pages on your site. See how it works
Check out Shopping Insights: Understand what shoppers want. With daily search data for 55,000+ products, 45,000+ brands, and nearly 5,000 categories across the U.S., you can explore what shoppers are looking for, compare competing products in your category, and discover local demand for your brands and products.
Find relevant keywords with UberSuggest: Neil Patel developed an amazing free tool to help you find relevant keywords for your website, products and services. This tool will show you how many people are searching for specific keywords and provide you with ideas for brand new keywords.
Connect with Google My Business: Who needs Yellow Pages when you can show up right on Google in the moments that matter most? Google My Business allows you to add your business information, upload photos and videos, and create posts to attract and engage your customers.
Putting it all together
There are plenty of free resources out there to help you grow your business (and maximize your revenue.) The above are just a few options to help you expand your marketing budget. Have any more ideas? Let us know in the comments.