By Darren Gilbert

A shoestring budget may be small, but it doesn’t mean that your marketing efforts will be inadequate. Instead, you need to tailor your efforts; you need to be smarter about getting word out.

Create an effective elevator pitch

“You should be marketing all the time — wherever you are,” writes Susan Solovic, an award-winning entrepreneur and author. With that in mind, it’s important to create an elevator pitch. And not just any old one; it needs to be one that generates sales and interest.

If you’re unsure about how to form an effective one, there is a surefire way of doing that. It comes down to answering three simple questions: What do you do? What do you do to help? How are you different from someone else? As Solovic writes in her piece, research has found that attention spans are about six to eight seconds.

So long as the answers to these three questions are simple and straight-forward, you shouldn’t have a problem piquing anyone’s interest. And then there is the effect: a good elevator pitch prompts questions.

Collaborate

If you don’t have the money to do something, the obvious thing to do would be go to someone who can help you. The same can be applied to your business when you don’t have a big budget. Only then will you understand that collaboration is a powerful tool.

Laura Briere, CEO of Vision Advertising agrees. She writes, “Joint partnerships are a great way to cut marketing costs by ‘sharing’ marketing opportunities between companies. Think about your goals, products, services and customers – are there any other local businesses that you could join forces with to better serve your target audience?”

Collaboration is a key strategy for any small business looking to grow and move forward. In doing this, you are not only putting your name out but you’re also showing that you’re willing to team up with others. This is crucial in today’s world where transparency is viewed as a strong business characteristic.

Create shareable content

“By writing good content and giving it away for free, not only will you get a ton of traffic, but you’ll also get a lot of links,” writes KISSmetrics co-founder, Neil Patel. One only needs to have a look at SEOmoz who have written guides to SEO to see that it works.

On the local front, Cerebra is doing a great job in creating eBooks and allowing you to download them off their website. Not only does this allow them to spread information but it also keeps them top of mind when a subject that they focus on comes up. In turn, that will lead others to approach them for their expertise.

The key to this, though, is sharing the information that you have. In a world where we can simple ‘google’ the information that we need, it’s important that you find a way to link your company to the most valuable content.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any other suggestions for finding marketing success when the budget is small? Tell us below.