Tag Archives: marketing goals

Marketing your business with little to no budget

When you run your own small business, there is often little money left for a marketing budget, which can make marketing a bit of a challenge. But there are many ways that you can market your business to your target market without spending any money.

Having read a lot recently on social media about small businesses really feeling the pinch at the moment, I thought I’d have a look around to see what free marketing ideas there are out there.

I hope that these help you…

  • Create a free Google Business Profile. This is free to set up and you can add photos and updates with links to your blog posts or social media pages. It’s more of a local tool, so helps your business get found locally pinpointing you on Google Maps, as well as allowing a link to your website.  Your customers can also add reviews to your Google Business Profile.
  • Social media – Most of us have business accounts on Facebook and Instagram, and some of your will also have TikTok accounts, LinkedIn, Pinterest, X or one of the many other sites. Facebook still seems to be the most popular go-to place for people to search businesses. This is a great way to showcase your products and services, engage with your target market and find new communities to join and network with.
    Post regularly and consistently (it doesn’t have to be every day, so long as you are consistent). Share your human side, articles of interest, inspirational quotes, hobbies etc and as always my advice is the 80/20 rule. Share 80% entertaining, engaging, educational or inspirational posts and 20% selling.
  • Use hashtags – yes, these still work, so long as you don’t overdo it. The recommended number of hashtags used to be 30 per post, but these days it is advised to use around five. Use your own personal hashtag is you have one (or set one up) and use a variety of local and more general hashtags. Don’t go for hashtags that have millions of followers, or you won’t be seen – choose a variety between low and high figures. I personally wouldn’t recommend using those with over a million followers.
  • LinkedIn – this is one we often overlook and I’m just as guilty as the next person, but something I am going to try and do more of for the rest of this year. LinkedIn is a huge social media site – most use it to just add network connections, but you can share your blog posts and offers, talk about your business, have a conversation with the connections you make and join relevant forums and contribute to them – and you can share other businesses’ content.
  • Email marketing – this is a great way to get customers and potential customers engaged with your business. It’s a great place to build and maintain relationships. It’s not a new thing, but it is still one of THE MOST reliable ways to achieve new customers and maintain existing ones.
    There are free plans out there on hosting sites, but most want a small monthly subscription, but it is worth it if you use it correctly. When someone signs up to your email, give them an incentive, such as a money off voucher or a free checklist, e-Book etc. It’s a good idea to ensure that your email has an offer that encourages your readers to take the next step – that might be with a special offer you are running, a new product or service you’re promoting or perhaps a webinar or podcast you’re hosting. Your email is your direct link to your customers and potential customers, so ensure that the content is worth reading and that you show them the real value of your business and that you care about them. 
  • Ask your existing customers to refer you to their friends and family – you could also offer an incentive, such as ‘for every three customers that they refer who buy something from you, they will receive a 10% discount off their next order’.
  • Survey your customers – this is a great way to find out more about how your customers feel about the products or services they have bought from you. Ask them what they like best, what they like least etc. This gains you valuable information for future products or services. You can also ask for permission to publish their comments on your website or social media. 
  • Case studies – Use a real example of a problem you’ve solved for a customer, with a quote from them about how wonderful you and your service are. Turn this into a blog post, add it to your email marketing or post about it on your social media pages.
  • Have a website – this is a great place for you to give more details about you and your business. You can add an online shop, a blog, and a sign-up opt-in to your newsletter. Ensure your website is clear and easy to navigate, loads quickly (so keep image sizes small) and that it is engaging and gives plenty of useful information. Ensure that each page has a link to another page on your website to encourage visitors to stay a bit longer – this helps your ranking figures.
  • Write a blog – If you have a website, it’s a no brainer to have a blog. The reason? When you publish your latest blog post on social media, you point people to your blog post (and therefore your website0 where they may be tempted to have a browse. As with any other piece of content, a blog needs to be relevant to your audience and engaging. The good thing about a blog is that you can also repurpose the content to make other pieces of content for social media, email, podcast, webinar, YouTube video – the possibilities are endless!  
  • Free directories – as well as directories that you pay for, there are loads of free directories out there. Search for ones in your local area – this helps you get found more easily.
  • Attend networking events – if there is a regular networking event near you, they are well worth paying the small fee to join. You’ll meet other like-minded businesses and often pick up customers from those businesses over time once they get to know you. You can also join online networking events, which mostly don’t cost anything. If there isn’t a physical local networking event, why not think about starting one at a local café – coffee and networking always goes down well!  
  • Enter a business award competition – there’s nothing better than being able to say that you’ve won an award or a competition. Even if you don’t win but are shortlisted it’s still something to shout about. And either way, you can shout about it on your social media, website, in your newsletter etc.

I hope that this article has given you ideas on how you can promote your small business with little to no money. If you have any other ideas, put them in the comments – I’d love to hear from you!

If you need any help with any of the ideas above, you can always contact me for free 30-minute call.

What does it mean to be goal oriented?

If you are goal oriented as a person, it means you are focused on achieving a specific objective or to accomplishing a given task.

It can also refer to your business or marketing plan…or even a project plan – you can make your targets goal oriented, which means they are designed to achieve the results you want.

As Albert Einstein once said, “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”  I agree with this to a certain extent, but I do also think that people, such as family also contribute to helping you live a happy life, but I get where he was coming from!

You can apply goal setting to all parts of your life, not just to your business objectives. It just means that you set yourself targets and objectives that will help you make progress. For example, if you join a gym, you can’t expect to be lifting the heavy weights or running for 20km, the minute you step into the gym. You have to build up to that in small steps…or goals. The same could be applied to losing weight… you might have to lose 52lbs, but that isn’t going to come off in a couple of weeks, you need to have a plan with set goals (or little milestones) to get you there. Your first goal might be to lose 7lbs in one month – that’s easier to achieve as it’s realistic and specific. No matter what your goals are for, whether for you in your general life, for your health or for your business, your goals should be SMART goals.

For the purpose of this article, I am going to focus on being goal oriented for your business.

Habits determine whether you will achieve your goals

Many of us ponder the question, “How can I be more successful?” What we don’t realise is that we all hold the tools to become successful inside us, we just need to bring them out. Successful people are where they are because of the habits they adopt. Habits determine our behaviour. If you create good habits and adopt positive behaviour, you will have the ability to be successful.    

A goal driven person will work much harder whenever there are deadlines to be met. If you have a goal in your sights, plan how you are going to achieve it – have a clear idea of all the steps needed to get to that goal, breaking it all down into manageable chunks. You may not achieve parts of your goal first time around, but it’s about being focused on that end result and recognising all the steps in between.

What can you do to motivate yourself to achieve?

One of the key things that will help you achieve your goals is motivation. How do you stay motivated to achieve your goals? This is not always easy.

  • Make sure that the goals you want to achieve are really YOUR goals. You have to absolutely want that goal to be able to achieve it, so don’t look at what other people do and want out of life, look into yourself and what it is that you want – what is important to you?

    We sometimes think we want something, just because one of our friends or business colleagues talks about it. For me, a good example is Instagram and getting a good following. I’m still in the early stages of this, but at the very beginning, I was really hung up on how many followers I had, compared to others. So I did all the wrong things to get followers – one in particular, was the ‘follow for follow’ mentality, (or on Facebook, the ‘like for like’ mentality). For a start, after you have done the initial follow or like, several people will unlike or unfollow you and this is depressing when you see your follows going down instead of up. It’s because these followers aren’t the right people for your business. You need followers to follow you because they GENUINELY like your content, or are genuinely interested in your business. The same applies the other way around – only follow or like the businesses that you absolutely feel a connection with or are genuinely interested in their products or services. The follow for follow people will never become your customers.  
  • Money… Lots of people feel that money alone will be enough to motivate them…and maybe for some it does, often to the detriment of everything else. Obviously all of us who are in business for ourselves have money in our minds…we need to pay bills, we want to buy nice things and to do that, you need money. But it’s not a good idea to let it control your every move and fill your every waking thought. You still need some downtime to pursue a hobby or to be with your family and friends. It’s important to still have a life outside of work and making money.
  • Motivation also comes from the people around you. It’s important to be able to bounce ideas off like-minded people, so it’s good to surround yourself with positive thinkers who emanate positive vibes. We’re human and most humans give and receive energy and inspiration, so make sure you are receiving as much as you are giving away.
  • Self-awareness. Some of your goals may need you to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are in order for you to achieve the end result. You may need to learn new skills or get someone who has those skills to help you. 
  • Be organised! It’s very easy when you’re focusing on a particular goal to let your thoughts and ideas run away with you. Sometimes your energy and motivation can be seriously damaged by over-stimulation or a cluttered mind, because you just have so much going on in there!

    Instead of trying to keep it all in and wing it, sit down and take time to put all your ideas onto paper (or on a word doc) and make a list. Talk it through with someone who understands where you’re coming from and talk out your ideas – they might suggest some solutions. Put your ideas into specific tasks and allocate a time period. You will feel so much better for it.

    Whilst on the subject of being organised, it’s also crucial to work in an uncluttered and organised space. If your desk space or work area is cluttered and untidy, it will affect the way you work.
  • Keep your eye on the bigger picture. When you’re working on some of the more menial tasks in order to reach a particular goal, you might be tempted to cut corners or not bother with some elements. But if you keep that end result in mind, it will help you stay on track.
  • Time management is also crucial to achieving your goals. Each goal, or each part of a goal should have a clear deadline so you are accountable for making progress.  
  • Sometimes things will go wrong – it’s inevitable that it won’t all be plain sailing. To keep yourself motivated during these moments, it’s important to remember that things do go wrong and sometimes it’s completely out of your control. Take the Covid-19 virus for example. None of us could predict that a virus that would affect the whole world…just come out of nowhere and stop many businesses in their tracks. But it did, and it is still affecting many businesses, including mine. But we have to keep believing that it will pass and things will slowly get back to normal. It might be a different kind of normal, but we will get there. And we have all adapted and thought of other ways to get our business moving and still try and achieve our goals.
  • Finally, try and be consistent. If you want to get to that goal, you have to do something towards it every day. Some days you might not feel like doing anything…and you should have at least one day off a week, when you can switch off and be with your friends or family and relax. But, on your work days, if you’re feeling a bit lethargic, just do something small towards your goal – speak to your positive friend; write a social media post; make a new list with smaller, more achievable chunks.

It’s also good to be process oriented

Being goal oriented is nothing new. Whether you realise it or not, you are set goals from the minute you’re born. Your parents or guardians encourage you to take a bottle, to crawl, to walk, to talk, to use cutlery…the list is endless. But these are all goals that you are encouraged to achieve and you are rewarded if you achieve them.

I remember my Mum taking me to a birthday party and she put me in knickers instead of a nappy for the first time out of our own house. All the way there, she reminded me to ask if I needed to use the bathroom and what a good girl I was, and how clever I was. And, if I managed to do this all afternoon, she would take me to the toy shop and I could have a new dolly….and there you have it…I had a goal to work for. The goal was getting the dolly….the process was that I asked to use the bathroom and didn’t pee my knickers!  Needless to say, I got the dolly and I was so proud that I’d achieved my goal!

So, setting your goals is good but achieving them is also about the processes you go through to get there.  

If you’re setting goals, then you need to have an action plan in place to describe the process you will go through to get the end result. And you need to make sure it is the right process.

Make the process enjoyable and rewarding

None of us can do something we don’t like doing for very long. For example, if you have decided you will follow a particular fad diet for the next six months, it is unlikely you will get to the six month point. Fad diets tend to include things we don’t like eating, or don’t like doing, so it makes it harder to stick to, than a sensible eating diet where nothing is forbidden, it’s just that certain foods are limited.

You need to wake up every morning, looking forward to going to work so you can start work on the next part of your process to achieve your goals. If the process you have chosen is unworkable, you won’t stick with it. Both the goals you want to achieve AND the process must both be rewarding. If the processes you choose are ones you like, they become part of the goal in that they lead you there. And if there is a process you don’t yet understand, take the time to learn about it and always be on the look out to learn new skills.

I love writing, so any goal I set for my business always includes a large element of writing, as that is what I enjoy and it makes my goal feel closer. When you can find the right process for you, you’ll love working on them and you’ll most likely not only achieve your goals, but surpass them!

Conclusion

It’s good to set goals for your business, so you are working towards making your business a success. However, don’t let your goals rule your life or ruin your life! Make sure you strike the right balance and still live a little, spend time with your family and enjoy some rest and relaxation. Work is not the be all and end all for a happy life!

Ensure your goals have a process to get you there that you will enjoy. It will of course, involve hard work and dedication, but if you can make the process rewarding by incorporating things you like to do, you’ll enjoy the journey and it won’t be so stressful.  

If you have any comments or more ideas, please feel free to comment below.