Low-cost Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses

It has been a year since COVID-19 hits. Cities are lockdown, businesses are moving online and people are quarantined inside their houses. With the new strain of COVID-19 appearing in England in the past month, the day everything comes back to normal is still very far away. As a result, the pandemic has completely changed the way we do marketing. Everyone is tightening their budget right now due to the financial crisis caused by the pandemic. Businesses can no longer spend a great amount of money on marketing and advertising anymore. In this article today, we introduce to you several low-cost marketing strategies for your businesses to cut costs and keep customers remember you at the same time. 

Revisit Your Past Performance Analysis

Since your business is operating with limited money and resources, all the COVID-19 marketing efforts should be planned and calculated to bring revenue and profit to the company. The first step you should take before initiating any new campaign is to revisit what types of marketing initiatives have worked in the past. You can look at different data points to understand your audience, including: 

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• Facebook Analytics (if your store have a Facebook page)
• Google Ads or other relevant platforms to your situation

Be sure to review different metrics in each marketing platform to discover what your customers are looking for and how they are engaging with your campaigns. This information is essential to ensure you don’t spend your time or money on paid advertising, search ads, or email that don’t convert. 

Retailers should find patterns in the data and start developing an overview of their customers based on their preferences. Once you see what types of content, which platform performs the best, direct your budget and attention to those places to achieve better results.  

Focus On Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best low-cost marketing strategies during COVID-19. Since your budget is very limited, you should focus on marketing tips that reach qualified customers. The best option is those people who already purchase at your store and you already have a relationship with. 

Emails allow you to speak directly to a large number of customers free of charge or at a low cost.  If businesses already engaged with customers on their email list before, it is very easy to offer particular deals or discounts. 

Here is some content you should include in your email marketing during this pandemic: 

• Showing empathy in your emails to position your business as a trusted partner
• Segment your email list based on the products, services, and past engagement
• After segmenting your email list, you should create unique content and offer specials to upsell past customers

Email marketing is one of the tools retailers should put the most emphasis on. However, business owners should also keep in mind to personalize email messages as much as possible, and create value with everything you send by offering solutions. 

Enforce SEO Marketing 

SEO marketing is another low-cost marketing idea to stay ahead in the competition because SEO can increase organic traffic to your site and build your online presence. Unlike other forms of marketing, it is free to appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs), which makes this a great marketing tool for you to consider. 

SEO marketing works hand-in-hand with content marketing because you can build content around specific keywords that customers use to search for your products and services. As you develop content that addresses the needs of customers, you will be able to rank higher on Google, which leads to more leads and sales. 

However, when focusing on SEO marketing, retailers should remember that SEO is a long-term strategy that will not result in immediate sales. If you are looking for an on-the-spot result, then SEO marketing is not a great deal although, in the end, this is still a great tool to help you stay relevant during the pandemic. 

Use Reviews & Testimonials In Everything 

During this unprecedented time, customers are filled with uncertainty and boiled with anxiety. Therefore, many people who were willing to purchase from you are now more considerate about spending money. 

No matter what industry you belong to, this new customer behavior means slashed sales and reduced revenue. The only way to drive sales right now is to build trust with your customers. Your audience needs to know that you are offering the best solutions to their needs, and they are not wasting money on you.

Hence, you should use reviews and testimonials in all of your marketing initiatives to put people at ease when they purchase from you.

Here are some low budget marketing ideas when using reviews and testimonials during the pandemic: 

• Gather as many reviews as possible from past and current customers. You can reach out to past customers for review on platforms such as Google, Facebook, or Yelp
• Find a pattern in what your customers want and develop new marketing strategies based on this
• Place these testimonials on your website, social media, or emails. Your marketing strategy during COVID-19 should be around building trust and confidence for your customers when buying from you. 

Getting reviews and testimonials is easy and free of charge! Retailers should use this opportunity to engage with past and current customers to drive more sales and continue to build a customer relationship. 

Wrapping up

Through this article, we have brought you low-cost marketing strategies for your business during the pandemic. We still have a long way to go in dealing with the pandemic. Let’s all try our best and overcome this together. We will always be by your side. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions!