Businesses thrive on marketing regardless of their size. The more money you can dedicate to your marketing efforts, the more customers you’ll be able to reach. While huge companies may have million-dollar marketing budgets, you can still follow their lead without spending quite as much.
Every major marketing campaign has a few important elements. Large companies may spend a lot to incorporate them into their marketing, but you can do the same thing with a much smaller budget.
The reason for this is that the power of these elements aren’t tied to the amount spent on them. The following are a few of the most useful.
Branding
Every major business spends a significant amount of money on their branding. The brand is what builds equity, it’s what people associate with the promises made in the marketing. Apple, Microsoft, and Verizon are all easily recognizable brands that play a major part in the company’s marketing.
Your business may be no bigger than a simple website, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have a brand. A good brand helps people identify with your business and what it does. The more recognizable your brand is, the easier your marketing becomes. Pick something catchy and relevant, create a logo, and include it in all your marketing material.
Packaging
Everyone knows you’ve bought something from Tiffany’s, because it comes in a distinctive blue box. Apple products come in futuristic white boxes. Verizon products tend to come in black packages. Every company has a distinctive look to their packaging and this generally carries over to their retail locations as well as promotional materials.
You’ll get more out of your marketing efforts if you keep a cohesive and consistent design for everything you do. Your website should match your book covers, which should match the banner ads, which should also match your business cards. When everything has a distinctive look, people will have no trouble recognizing you.
Personalization
Plenty of major businesses have relied on a mascot or spokesperson of some sort. Geico has their gecko, McDonald’s has Ronald, and MetLife has Snoopy. This works because it helps personalize an otherwise complex and abstract corporation. People won’t typically identify with an insurance company but they respond well to a computer-animated lizard.
The cheapest way to do this is to become your own spokesperson. Make sure people identify you with your brand and business. When you show up in a video or on a podcast, they will instantly know who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. This is one of the main goals of marketing, so you can see how valuable it can be.