Frugality may be the order of the day, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get similar results in business to those who spend thousands on major campaigns. While money makes money, doing things on a budget can also result in a huge return on investment (ROI) and achieve business and marketing objectives that you have set out. These range from using PR stunts to get people talking, sales promotions to entice customers to your brand, and direct marketing.

PR Stunts

Most PR stunts are relatively cheap to achieve. British fast food bakery Greggs are experts at PR stunts that cost next to nothing yet achieve a great deal of advertising value equivalency (AVE), which can be turned into ROI. The brand rolled out a Valentine’s Day special in 2018 that offered couples a candlelit meal in one of their ‘restaurants’, they swapped the baby Jesus for a sausage roll in the manger at Christmas 2017, and most recently Greggs unveiled a vegan version of their sausage roll, which took the newspapers by storm on the merit of those who scoffed at it (despite the huge surge in sales). Most of these required a simple press release or even a micro-influencer targeted campaign on social media. Think of a way in which your business could get your name out there by doing a simple and cheap stunt that will increase brand awareness while showcasing your brand identity. Social media makes it incredibly easy to have something go viral – if you create something worthy of going viral in the first place.

Sales Promotions

The best way to attract people to your brand or company is to give them something as an incentive for using you. If you think you enjoy frugality, then why would the customer be any different. For example, DW Fitness First, Xercise4Less, and Anytime Fitness all offer days-long free trials before committing you to a gym membership. Online casino provider Betway offers a welcome bonus of £30 in free bets for those who choose their services. Netflix and Spotify both offer free periods before signing up. All of the sales promotions work to entice customers to a brand so that the free offer will allow them to stay long enough for the brand to convince them of what they have to offer and then convert them into a fully-fledged customer. You can do the same in your business by finding some way in which you could entice customers with a sales promotion – whether it’s a special sale or a discount code or even a welcome offer. Most businesses can take advantage of sales promotions, and offering something generous could be the difference between your customer becoming loyal to your brand or not.

Direct Marketing

Another way in which you can promote your business online is by using a more traditional approach: direct marketing. Depending on who your customers are will dictate which mode of direct marketing would be more effective, such as online and social media means or a direct mail campaign. If you have had a strong blog following, you’ll likely have a series of email addresses, which will make perfect fodder for an email marketing campaign touting some news about your brand (GDPR-friendly, of course). Direct marketing revolves around building relationships with customers or customer types that might find what you are saying and doing useful and what you have to sell beneficial. Tapping into the benefits and showing these through direct marketing can be a time-consuming yet budget-friendly way of improving your business standing and making a name for your brand. Some people even benefit from the tried and tested personal mailout through their letterbox – it just depends who your customer is likely to be and how best to target that customer.

There are dozens of ways to promote your business for little to no money. All you need to do is to get creative with it and you’ll be able to tap into the ways that work for you. Social media and the connectivity and communication of the internet means that there are countless ways to speak to customers and to attract those who will help make your business a success while also being benefitted along the way.