As a small business owner or manager, your marketing budget can be a source of frustration. You realize its necessity for growing your business, but simply don't have the resources necessary to invest in major campaigns designed to grow your customer base. Fortunately, you don't have to. If you’re looking to find out how to market your business on a small budget, these inbound marketing options may be the answer.

An Introduction to Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing emerged in the past decade in part because of budgetary concerns. As digital metrics began to give marketers a better idea of the effectiveness of their advertising campaign, many of them realized just how ineffective traditional 'outbound' methods had become.

Traditionally, advertising has been relatively straightforward: a marketer puts out an ad promoting their products, hoping it will bring customers to their business. Communication is linear, from marketer to their audience.

In the 21st century, however, these one-way promotional ads began to lose effectiveness. Audiences became used to having a say thanks in part to social media, and through their actions (or lack thereof) began to demand more inclusive marketing.

Enter inbound marketing, a philosophy that places a company's website at the center of its marketing efforts and uses organic methods like social media, blogging, and SEO to provide relevant content to its audience.

The goal is to be sought out by your audience, who will be more willing to give you their attention if your communication to them is personalized, inclusive, and relevant. And the communication does not stop with the ad; through lead generation and nurturing, you remain in touch with your audience as they slowly make their way toward becoming your customer.

Embracing Inbound Marketing on a Small Budget

At its core, inbound marketing is built to be more affordable than its outbound alternative. Because it focuses on organic content rather than 'push' advertisements, many of the costs associated with expensive-but-ineffective banner ads disappear.

But in reality, it can still come with a significant cost, particularly if your small business does not have the capability to produce your content in-house. In addition, you probably need a 3rd party marketing automation solution to ensure you both capture and nurture your audience as they become leads and turn into customers. For many small businesses, inbound marketing remains simply too expensive. Fortunately, that does not have to be the case! Even with a more modest monthly marketing budget, you can embrace the basic concepts of the inbound marketing philosophy.

Our Inbound Lite solution (which has 3 pricing tiers), sets up your website as an inbound lead-generating machine by helping you both generate and highlight high-quality content that is relevant to your audience. Depending on the level you choose, you will receive content in the form of blog posts, along with promotion on both social media and via organic SEO.

Meanwhile, a landing page and lead nurturing campaign designed specifically for your business and your audience helps you capture leads, and nurture them with targeted email messages. Working with a professional partner ensures help in the conceptualization of campaigns as well as the set up and management of all of these inbound-related methods, ensuring that each of them work together to create a single coherent inbound marketing campaign.

Inbound marketing is not just an industry fad that will give way to another way of reaching your audience in the near future. In today's digital age, it has become an integral part of how businesses of all sizes can effectively reach and interact with their audience. Our solution ensures that you can embrace the philosophy, even on a small budget.

To learn more about Inbound Lite and inbound marketing as a whole, contact us.