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10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Written by: Gourab Nanda

Article Overview: Great low-investment techniques to market your small business online and offline Small and emerging businesses are constantly striving to meet their bottom lines and increase profits while struggling with a stringent marketing budget. This article contains ten proven techniques to market your business with very little investment. The only thing that can hold you back in implementing these for your business is your imagination.

10 Affordable PR and Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Small and emerging businesses are constantly striving to meet their bottom lines and increase profits while struggling with a stringent marketing budget. The budget that is spent almost entirely on building a website, printing business cards, getting listed in yellow pages, and other such bare necessities; leaving very little for real marketing activities. This article contains ten proven techniques to market your business with very little investment. The only thing that can hold you back in implementing these for your business is your imagination.

#1 – Building a culture of ongoing content generation

Write whenever you get time; encourage your staff to write one article every week, on any topic related to your service or latest social issues. So if your company is into Financial Accounting Business, you and your team can generate content related to managing finances, tricks that businesses can follow to keep their accounts clean, budgeting and planning, latest federal laws and their impact, and so on. If you are not comfortable with writing; record your thoughts as podcasts. How will this help you? You can use the same content for growing your website, posting articles on the net, offering tips to your clients through newsletters/podcasts, exhibiting your knowledge to your prospects, offering RSS feeds, and overall growing a team that thinks. B2B solutions providers must generate informative content to educate their prospects and customers. All you would need to invest is time, energy, and knowledge.

#2 – Getting local

Marketing to national or international audiences might be tough for an emerging small business as the competition is intense. In such a scenario the best solution is to target the local market and channel your communication to the place from where you get maximum business. Your website should be keyword optimized for your locality and the preferences of that market. Major portion of the content that your company generates should be localized. You may advertise or exchange links with related companies in the same localities. You or your staff can become members and participate in local business communities. Do your best to spread the word locally online and offline.

#3 – Posting articles

Apart from posting self-generated articles on your website, you must also give them out everywhere possible. The first step is to post them on at least 20 popular article websites. Some of the good ones are: www.ezinearticles.com, www.isnare.com, www.amazines.com. You can also find websites that only take articles related to specific businesses. Do some research and create a list that suits your requirements the best and make sure that the websites that you select have high Google Page Rank. You may also take printouts of innovative point-of-view articles and hand them out strategically during events. E-merchants or companies using internet to market their products must utilize this tactic to increase web traffic to their sites.

#4 – Communicating with the media

Any new thing that your company does can be newsworthy if written in the right way. Opening new offices, partnering with other businesses, hiring new key personnel, adding new services to your existing portfolio, new ideas and innovations related to your business, acquiring new clients, and more – all can be transformed into interesting news articles. Write a press release for any news: make it available on your corporate website, post it on popular global PR websites (www.PRNewswire.com, www.PRWeb.com), publish it on your local PR websites, and finally send it to all your media contacts or conduct a press conference if the news is big enough. You may also write feature articles for magazines and newspapers in your domain. If your articles are interesting, publishers would be more than happy to add them. For instance, if your company offers residential and commercial painting services, you can write articles on how to select the right color, different types of colors, etc., and get them published in interior decoration magazines, architecture magazines, home-owners magazines, and their websites.

#5 – Marketing directly and through e-mails

Capture the email IDs and mailing addresses of all the customers and prospects you touch and ask them for permission to send marketing and promotional messages. Do not send messages to people who have not asked for it to avoid tarnishing your brand image. Send immediate follow-up mails to prospects, send service reminders to existing customers, conduct customer satisfaction survey and ask for feedback, send periodic newsletters with quality information, offer seasonal discounts to loyal customers, ask for referrals, send printable coupons, send free samples, and such. Let your prospects know that they can opt-out from receiving mails from you anytime they like and make the opting out process simple.

#6 – Offering live support

You may offer live chat support on your website to help your visitors get the information they are looking for. You can maximize chances of conversion, ensure that no visitor leaves the website without getting sufficient info, get visitor feedback, analyze visitor behavior, and above all project an image of being responsive. You may offer online support to your customers to help them utilize your service in a better way. Use online webinar tools like www.GoToMeeting.com or www.Webex.com for greater interactivity.

#7 – Being an active member of discussion forums

Identify local, national or international forums that are related to your business offerings and become an active participant. Visit these forums as often as possible and post answers to people’s queries, participate in live threads, and start your own topics for discussions. Encourage your staff members to join too. Do not try to sell your service here; just offer radical advice. How will this actually help you? Participating in such forums will establish you as a thought leader among the people of the same fraternity as well as the people looking for solutions in that domain. The corporate website link in all your signatures will also increase your web traffic.

#8 – Blogging for corporate purpose

Blogging has proved its worth in the corporate arena too. Even big businesses are motivating their senior managers to write blogs on various topics related to their vertical expertise. Apart from bringing in more leads for your business, blog also helps in establishing your identity as an individual. By writing useful tips and articles, you can show your knowledge and expertise. Make it mandatory for your team to post comments and articles regularly on corporate blogs.

#9 – Networking on social B2B websites

Join online business networks like www.GoBigNetwork.com, www.Ryze.com, www.Konnects.com, etc.; identify your B2B prospects and offer your advice and services to them. Active participation would definitely build your network and get you referrals too.

#10 – Getting listed

Get your company listed in local web directories like Yahoo! Local, CitySearch, AskCity, AOL’s City Guide, Craiglist, MerchantCircle, Local.com, Froogle Local, Yellopages.com, and such. Some are free while some charge a nominal fee for yearly or lifetime listings. Having your details listed at such places will increase the probability of your prospects finding you when they need your service.


You don’t need a huge budget to implement these tactics; all you need is a bit of dedication and a systematic process to ensure apt execution. With the right display of knowledge your small business can appear like a big professional organization and help it soar. All the best!

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Article Tags: b2b solutions, bare necessities, best solution, bottom lines, content generation, financial accounting, informative content, international audiences, local market, local marketing, locality, managing finances, marketing budget, maximum business, podcasts, printing business cards, real marketing, record your thoughts, social issues, time energy



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