8 ways to promote your business on a budget
Here are proven storylines you can benefit from, to create content for your business on a budget. Good content starts with the right idea that fits your brand. It takes time, and creativity and if done right, you can engage your audience without spending millions on advertising.
1. Turn your product or service into an attraction
Turning your product or service into an attraction can be a great way to promote your business and there are many avenues to do so.
Makers and Artisans often promote by giving potential customers a behind-the-scenes look at their work or by taking it a step further with a workshop, teaching the customer skill, and allowing them to take the product home. The product and especially the process of making it, are the attraction that sells in this case.
The Build-a-Bear workshops use an interactive process in which the stuffed animal of choice is assembled and tailored to the customer’s own preferences during their visit to the store, creating excitement around the product.
2. Give something away for free
Everyone loves free stuff and gifting can be a good way to promote your business if done right.
Whether you organize a giveaway or give your product or service for free to influencers or well-known people, be strategic. If they are in your target it doesn’t necessarily mean their audience is as well. Sending your product or inviting a local businesswoman, well-known in the area, might get you more traction than an influencer, whose following doesn’t fit.
3. Create content based on a transformation
Transformation attracts and fascinates, making it an excellent tool to promote creative content. Think about transformation as it relates to your business and frame it into a story.
Cosmetic brands use makeovers to showcase the transformative powers of their products and a similar can be said for the before and after images often used in the beauty industry.
The transformation could also be a much longer process. Adult beginner piano is a Youtube video about a woman learning to play the piano as an adult over a period of seven months. The video has reached over a million views.
Every transformation from makeovers, to learning the piano, to the one you can tell about your business reveals at its heart a story.
4. Do the impossible
Doing a triathlon, entering the Guinness Book of Records, and doing the impossible or seemingly impossible, will certainly attract an audience.
So what might be the impossible that you can use to create content that attracts your audience?
From baking the UK’s largest cupcake to breaking a world record connected to your business or location, you don’t have to necessarily succeed in your impossible task to get people engaged.
5. Do the unexpected
People love the surprise and the unexpected, and the guy giving away free hugs in the street to be seen by millions on YouTube is just one of the many examples.
The unexpected goes against the boring everyday stuff, and as such is a powerful tool to make your business stand out.
Breaking the norm works best if you evaluate the expectations that come with a certain location or scenario and you need to think of a creative way to shatter them. Recently a video about a hopscotch game on the street did exactly that, promoting data services by measuring how many people walking by, would play and start jumping.
6. Do something fast
Vogue’s 73 questions are a popular example of content based on virtuosity. Filmed in a single shot, celebrities are challenged to answer 73 rapid-fire questions.
From product to service, your business is likely based on one or many skills. Think of something specific and build a challenge around it, could be something you do every day that can be done fast. A bit like regular dating and speed dating….
7. Think like a customer – what comes before and after you
What comes before and after you? Think like your customers.
Where do they go and what do they buy before and after you? Are there products and services complementary to yours?
Are you around the corner from a gym?
Are there local businesses around you that your customers frequent?
Are you in the shop next to the hospital?
Are you an e-commerce shop using affiliates to link to your website?
Trust me, there is something for everyone.
8. Share your content based on geo-localization
Geo-localization is a great way to share your content with a local audience. Searching by locations in your area, you can find easily find popular Instagram users that might promote if you share your exciting content with them. On Instagram numbers are not everything, someone local with a smaller following can be much more relevant to your business, than someone asking for a lot of money.