Where most of the small and medium-sized businesses and brands consider marketing tactics and strategies as business extravagance and expenditure of business budget, what they fail to realize is the importance of a great marketing plan. A great and well-constituted marketing strategy is not just business expenditure, rather it is an investment worth making—an investment sure to provide a business with lucrative outcomes. 

For small and medium-sized businesses, nothing works better than word-of-mouth marketing. Your business won’t make it to the international markets unless you spread a word about it among your potential business prospects. Where many huge and successful businesses and brands hire professional and experienced digital marketers to provide them with high-quality marketing strategies, small and medium-sized businesses work with tight budgets which makes it challenging for them to collaborate with professionals. 

Where marketing itself is a daunting and costly task; it becomes a bit more challenging for the small and medium-sized businesses since they have to stick to their budgets while being effective and innovative with their marketing plans and strategies. To save you from the hassles of going through the challenges of marketing strategy composition, here we’ve compiled a list of everything you need to know to build a cost-effective and impactful marketing strategy for your business: 

• Maximize the use of free publicity: 

There’s no denying that publicity build brand awareness and recognition. The best way to do that is to become an active part of your community. Sponsor a community activity that holds some relevance with your business. Make sure to publish a press release on the launch of new product and recent advancement and innovation. Make sure to get it published on popular newspaper and include your official business website’s link in that press release. Conduct a customer survey, and you could even have a customer appreciation day. Make those surveys a part of your press release since newspaper loves publishing survey and will most probably print your survey results. 

• Leverage social media platforms: 

Whether its posts and status on Facebook or tweets on Twitter, the effectiveness of social media I digital marketing is undeniable. Create a buzz for your offered products and services and provide your potential customers and targeted audience with special offers, deals, and sales. Where Facebook is great for making special announcements, Instagram is great for promoting your products by posting pictures and giving a virtual tour of your brand’s store. 

Where many businesses use social media for branding purposes, Wikipedia works like magic when it comes to online promotion. With that being said, many business organizations and companies hire professional Wikipedia writers and editors to get this job done. 

• Partner up:

For a business with insignificant market presence and minimum recognition, partnering up with a developed and successful brand is the best way to elevate their business stature and market position. If you run a business with a low marketing budget, you could draft out a partnership plan with better companies and make good things happen to your brand.  It not only helps you in increasing your brand visibility; rather, it also works best in drawing the attention of the advertisers and marketers. 

• Outsourcing: 

If you work with limited staff members, then you might not have a comprehensive collection of all the needed expertise and professionalism. In such scenario, it is better to outsource expertise and services rather than experimenting with different things. It might sound quite expensive, but outsourcing expertise and services are much cheaper and cost-effective than hiring freelance professionals and experts. 

Where everyone loves having their own business, the fact of the matter is that making a small business a global brand is no easy task. It requires strong networking, the constitution of an effective marketing plan, proper and timed execution of the marketing strategy, and lots of contacts with people who are already in the business game.