How To Market Your Business Successfully on a Tight Budget

I myself have seen a lot of business success and as most people that "go solo" in terms of employment, there will be some form of struggle in the beginning, that's just inevitable but what you can change, is your vision, your mindset and your motivation levels.

As the saying goes "Rome wasn't built in a day" and similarly, your business cannot be built in a day, it's just unrealistic and no widely recognisable or successful company started like that. You will have good days and bad days in your businesses infancy and throughout. Let me tell you how you can maximise your success and see your vision through to the end.

Preparation

Ask yourself these questions: What kind of business am I starting? How much will all of my inventory and tools cost? What's my budget? Can I afford to borrow money to begin? How long will it take to receive everything I need? Is this something I'm truly passionate about and can see myself doing 10 years down the line? How can I minimise expenses and maximise profit?

Promote, promote, promote!

In the beginning, your new business needs to bloom and in order to do that, it needs the right attention. Create an instagram page for your business, Instagram's 'shop' feature or 'instagram for businesses' and the setting to change your profile to a business profile should absolutely be taken advantage of and used to it's maximum capacity. Use your product or service yourself, in the beginning, even give people free samples or trials to try and if they like it, who knows? Maybe they'll be one of your first customers or clients!

You can also pay other people to promote your business which offer their services for very cheap. Sites like SEO Clerk or Fiverr have a large group of self-employed professionals offering promotional services such as business ads or promotion for a set amount per gig. This is well worth it as you never know the potential amount of people you could reach this way. SEO Clerk specifically allows for large promotion, for little money, Clickbank is worth checking too for business promotion.

Handing out fliers or holding a convention if it is that type of business and then charging a commission fee (or not) which could then go back into funding your business is a clever idea.

When all has been done and success is but to no avail, advertise on facebook groups with titles similar to 'promote your business', join whatsapp, instagram, facebook or telegram groups where you can also advertise your business for free.

Here are some websites that gladly offer free advertising:

https://www.freeads.co.uk/

https://loot.com/

https://gumtree.com/

https://www.ukclassifieds.co.uk/

yell.business.com

Collaborate

If there is someone you know or would like to get to know on a professional level, propose a collaboration with this businessperson or CEO, if you work in a similar field of business, you could both promote your own business and cross promote each others if both parties are happy to do so. Also a great way to reduce promotion and marketing costs.

If you work in beauty of cosmetics for example, you could give away a few free samples to each other for that particular individual to promote on their social media, as you do the same. If one or both of you has a significant social media following or a large social circle, it could bring in serious business for you and/or the other person.

Chances are, if you sell lashes and someone else sells lip gloss and similar products, you both have similar types of customers, making it more likely for those same customers to check out the other persons business.

If you are an estate agent who owns a small company or you're having a hard time closing deals, you could team up with another professional in the same shoes as you and work together to possibly merge your companies together to achieve a common goal. Providing that you both get paid equally for your efforts, as opposed to simply 'giving away' your company.

If you work for a company like Utility Warehouse, you could team up with an estate agent and you could both work together, they close deals on houses and are then responsible for sorting out the persons energy providers, that's where you come into the picture.

If you are a tobacco company, you could team up with a vaping company, to make vape e-liquid flavours similar to that of your tobacco brand and you will both have a very similar type of market.

If you are a new alcohol brand, you could team up with a supermarket that 'exclusively' sells your brand or pitch your business to local bars and pubs arranging some sort of deal where both parties are satisfied and get something out of it.

Collaboration helps business owners and entrepreneurs achieve a common goal, while both parties are helping each other and getting paid at the same time. It really doesn't get any better than that!

Think Smart

Whilst most companies will lose money, which in most instances is unavoidable and a common theme amongst most new companies for the first 1-3 years of their business, think of ways you can save money. Import from overseas, is there a cheaper way you could be operating your business, maybe moving offices overseas or sourcing your products or services locally depending on what it may be.

If you run a commercial business like hair & beauty, you could buy products in bulk from a wholesaler, making the prices cheaper because once you sell at retail price, you're immediately making profit.

Some good wholesale companies for those in the UK are sites like clearanceking.co.uk and also searching for wholesalers on eBay by searching for what you need, but 'in bulk'.

If something costs £30 to buy in the UK, but costs only £5 if you buy it from overseas, then go with buying it from overseas. Just be willing to pay the price of slow shipping and getting something which is sometimes of lower quality because of the price.

What kinds of people can you work with to maximise profit whilst spending less? Make a list.

Don't Give Up

Giving up is the first thing we think of after months of hard work, dedication and deep thought, but it's not the right way to go about something you really really believe in. Every single businessperson you look up to struggled at one point, but more importantly each and every time they got knocked down, they got right back up again and again and again. Even when people laughed at them told them they couldn't do it or that they were never going to achieve that specific goal, people that know they have an influence over you will 90% of the time try and talk you out of things that they specifically think are "pointless". If you listen to them, you will never reach your potential.

It can be hard when there is so much fierce competition in every industry, but the sheep will be weeded out, the bad ones will be revealed and the genuine people will be seen. People are also skeptical of new businesses, so if you keep at it for years, people will take you seriously and start to respect your hustle and in turn, invest in your business in one way or another.

You need to literally see yourself viewing 6 figures in your bank account, you need to see yourself going to the post office with your hands full of orders you have to ship off to paying customers, you have to feel exactly how it will feel when your office is full of employees, you have to imagine how it will feel when people are wearing your product, when people are buying your homes, drinking or eating your branded products, when people are using your website or your app. You have to see these things in your minds eye as if it were real. Think of everything, the smell, taste, appearance, feel and sound of success.

Once you can do that, then your dream career and lifestyle is already yours, you just have to go and grab it!

Keep track

It can be easy to lose track of spending when you pay for things by card, be it in stores or online. I recommend hiring a bookkeeper or, to save money, keep a large diary of all your incoming and outgoing expenses.

Start budgeting

How much do you earn in a month or a week depending on how frequently you get paid? How much do you need to spend on your business both weekly and monthly? Make notes of exactly how much you earn, even count the pence/cents, calculate the amount of money you're going to give yourself, don't be too generous because most of this needs to be funnelled back into your business, especially at the beginning of your entrepreneurship.

The most important things are: your incoming income, outgoing expenses like rent and other bills and any leftover money, finally you need to know how much it costs to restock/renovate or whatever you may need to spend money on for business purposes.