Advertising is one of the hardest, yet essential, aspects of running any local business. Depending on the industry, marketing and advertising strategies can take up huge chunks of a company's revenue. In fact, some startups spend 50% of their sales on marketing in the first year alone. Happily, there are numerous methods that can make any marketing budget go further.

Never Hesitate To Outsource

Far too many companies, both new and seasoned, spend their marketing budget on endeavors they can only hope will work. Along the way, they often spend exorbitant amounts of time getting their tactic off the ground.

This time can be better spent improving the company. This is why budding entrepreneurs should never be afraid to outsource some of their marketing and advertising tasks.

Never Get Rid Of Old Content

If you are building superb content, you will find that followers on social media get the word out for you by sharing and retweeting. One costly mistake that some organizations make, though, is thinking that they need all new content, on a regular basis.

While it is a fact that new content that provides value is crucial, don't simply forget older content that did well. If a post happened to go viral, take note of that fact and wait ninety days. After the excitement has died down, repost the blog, video, infographic or whatever the content was. Recycling old content is a great way to get value without spending extra income.

Seek Out Local Company Awards

Almost every city has yearly awards that grant distinction to the “best of the best” in the local corporate environment. As a local business owner, you can apply to be considered for these awards. A win would likely increase brand visibility, but even being nominated can go quite a distance in getting local attention for free.

Any small business would be hard-pressed to successfully market their enterprise without spending a dime. Even still, by following the previously mentioned helpful hints those dimes can go a lot further.

Local stations rarely seek out firms for stories “just because.” A business that manages to get involved in news that is currently taking place, though, can easily gain a bit of local airtime. Being willing to do an interview at a local event will surely pay off, but there are other approaches that will work too.

Steal Present-day Fads

Twitter hashtags and trending topics on Facebook can get small social networking pages in front of the masses. Naturally, a small business should never blatantly hijack a news story that has nothing to do with them.

If a large blizzard has just come through town and an entrepreneur owns a snow shoveling service, though, posting about the subject and using popular hashtags could be appropriate.

Be Proactive In Community Occasions

Local newscasts do not often go out looking to concentrate on small or mid-size businesses. If a business happens to take part of the news that is already occurring, though, it only makes sense that they might get recognized. Attending events and being open for an interview is wonderful, but there are other methods to go about this as well.

One key method of getting involved in the news of the day is to sponsor an event or team that is essential to the area. Reporters are often willing to speak with local business owners who are willing to spend to aid their community. Want to get seen in the local news? Become involved in local events.

Reach Out To Area Journalists

Many businesses hope they will just get lucky and fall into a popular news story. There is no reason to wait to get noticed, though. Try not to be afraid to email local newsrooms and journalists to let them know if the corporation is involved in something newsworthy. The worst they can do is decline.

Marketing on local stations can be helpful, but why bother if it is easy to get noticed for free? Take these hints into account, and if something seems newsworthy, don't just sit around waiting for the media to take notice.

A tank did amazing things in the hands of the Governor, and Rick's assault rifle can save the day. Neither of these characters, however, ignores the simple things. Baseball bats and car trunks both are simple, but they have both been utilized to wipe out zombies.

Timing is basically Everything

AMC clearly made a great move by releasing The Walking Dead on Halloween in 2010, but the survivors on the show also realize how essential timing is. Despite what they're doing, they know to be indoors before nighttime.

For small businesses, timing is also essential in online marketing. For instance, were you aware that 17 percent of Facebook likes all take place on Fridays? How about the fact that posting after 8 pm or before 8 am can reduce your reach? In the apocalypse and social media, timing is imperative.

Related: Knowing When Its Time to Change a Marketing Strategy

Do Not Forget the Simple Things

Sure the Governor did very well with a tank, and Rick having an assault rifle in his hands cannot be stopped. However, it doesn't mean they forget the simple things. Daryl's crossbow and Michonne's katana are simple, but they perform.

Remember this when considering your online marketing. Whether it is a funny meme or a simple picture of your best product, consumers sometimes don't need extras to stay happy.

Related: 5 Tips For Creating A Small Business Marketing Plan

Be Ready to Adapt

If there is one thing survivors on The Walking Dead have had to do, it is adjust. From coming to terms with a reality where the dead walk the earth, to growing past the “do no harm” mantra that Rick naively had when first awakening, it is obvious that adaptation is essential for survival.

For a company, this holds true as well. As ad blockers become more prevalent, you will need to reassess your pay-per-click budget. If a new social media platform begins to gain steam with your target demographic, it may be time to start shelling out some money on the platform. Adaptability means endurance, in both the actual and The Walking Dead universes.

The Walking Dead has taught us much about zombies, but local business owners also learned a few lessons. By focusing on these aspects, your online marketing strategy can make it through any apocalypse.

When a business puts out content constantly, they are bound to strike gold once in awhile. This conveniently puts into view just why inbound marketing methods, which include content marketing, garner 54% more leads than traditional methods.

So why should you relegate a once-great piece of content to the history books? When small businesses put out an attention-grabbing blog post, they should basically spin it into a video.

Related: Offline Marketing Techniques that Actually Get the Job Done

How about memes that get shared in all places? They can be reposted periodically and get that attention rolling in again. Do not think of great content as a single-use entity. It paid once before, so go ahead and use it again.

Small Business Advertising and marketing Plans That Will Not Break the Bank

Recycle Great Content

Every business that engages in content marketing has intermittent great pieces of content that basically get noticed. This can explain why inbound marketing strategies,such as content marketing, net 54% more leads than their outgoing counterparts.

So if you have had a fantastic piece of content treat you right before, why not bring it back around? If a small business creates a great blog post that gets attention, why not spin the content into a great video? Did a meme acquire more attention in a day than most posts get in a week? Why not repost it every now and then to get the same attention? Great content is not remanded to a single-use existence. If it worked once, be successful again.

Related: Inexpensive Ways to Market your Small Business

Mail Out Weekly Emails

People are fickle creatures. When we're not frequently reminded of something, we'll often forget. Understanding that, send out weekly messages to your email list. When doing so, however, ensure you have something crucial that you say. Sending a ‘when will we see you again?' email is simply inappropriate. Something should always be going on.

Hold a Class or Event

There are some people who find themselves simply unlikely to walk into a small company they don't know. After all, this would change if they saw a future event or class they were interested in. Restaurants could hold cooking classes. Sporting shops could host an archery competition.

Whatever the business, there is some event that can get individuals in the door. Additionally, community announcement boards should have no problem with posted flyers for these events.

Go big or go home works in a few marketing situations, but it is not just a steadfast rule. Be certain you don't allow simple yet promising ideas fall through the cracks.

Offline Marketing Ideas for Local Businesses

Local newspapers would like content to fill their pages, and through submitting an announcement, you are able to help ensure that your business gets a spot. Planning on having a big sale to celebrate a holiday? Have a press release written up. Are you reopening from a remodel or expansion? Send the details to the local news stations. What is better, local newspapers can release your announcement in print and online media.

Printed Material Still Works

Even with online technology providing numerous marketing methods, you very likely still see fliers in your mailbox or on local community boards. This is because, whatever you think of traditional marketing, printed material is still effective.

A simple flier, for instance, is often printed at a low cost and spread around any local targeted area. It has to also be noted that business cards are yet another type of printed marketing material that works magic. The fact is, for every 2,000 business cards given out, a company's sales boost 2.5 percent. Lesson learned: print works.

Establish Press Releases

Even when everything that happens in your business may not be newsworthy, some events unquestionably qualify. Will you be offering a Veteran's Day discount for current and former service members? Create a press release. Planning a sale to celebrate an expansion? Local journalists may believe it is deserving of the newspaper. Better still, local newspapers will frequently publish these stories in the paper and online.

Engage in Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is a method of marketing your company that is outside of the conventional methods. It is usually thought that this is only prosperous if it is so extravagant that people must notice it, but thankfully, this is simply not the case. Anything from leaving a branded pen at the local bank to working with different color Post-It notes to develop a mural can be effective if it gets people to take note.

There is not any doubt that marketing has moved mainly over to digital media, but that does not always mean older technique don't work. As long as you get people's attention you've got a successful marketing device, regardless of the platform.

Remember when LinkedIn was that place you visited whenever you wanted to either post of look for a new job? It's so much more than that now, and for small businesses, it is now a powerful tool for branding and networking your company.

LinkedIn helps you brand, is a terrific place to post pillar content, and gets your name and brand face-to-face with people you'll want to work with.

Let's look at 5 tips for helping your small business get a better footing on LinkedIn.

5 Tips for Small Businesses on LinkedIn

Utilize your profile – Your attempts at using LinkedIn for branding will ultimately be hindered if you aren't taking full advantage of the tools the platform has to offer, foremost among these your profile. Use the rich tools available here to provide a full and complete picture of your business.

Use great images – Take every opportunity to inject visual content into your LinkedIn content by making use of images, videos, presentation and more. People react to visual far faster and better than mere text.

Get involved in groups – It's an undeniable fact that those who get involved in groups on LinkedIn have about 4X more profile views than those who don't. Moreover, it's a prime chance to showcase your authority and expertise in front of a highly-targeted crowd.

Do the work of connection – The fact remains you have to put out some effort to have LinkedIn work well for you. Posting terrific content, being available and helpful, and branding yourself here will pay great dividends.

Use LinkedIn Company Pages – This is a great way to showcase your small business on LinkedIn. Use it as another social property supporting your main site, and drive visitors to it from your company page.

Another choice resource that is available to you to help you on this platform is LinkedIn's small business helps. Make sure to make use of these free resources to help your business grow in authority on LinkedIn.

You may have heard the term cross-channel promotion tossed about, and were wanting to know what exactly it is and how can it possibly benefit your business.

In case you aren't acquainted with the concept, cross-channel promotion is where you conceive an integrated plan to market to your target audience irrespective of which web platform they prefer. With content found on blogs, sites, videos, audios, image sites and more these days , it's more valuable than ever to make use of a strategy that meets them where they are.

Where is your audience found?

It's clearly important to have business intelligence that allows you to anticipate where your audience is and how it can be identified. Another vital aspect is the conversion factor. Some platforms convert very well, (Pinterest for example) while others are more effective as a conduit leading to your content.

Another concern is the demographics of a particular site. If you've got an offer designed for a particular age range or other pertinent demographic parameter, it would be foolish to market it on a platform that doesn't share that. Still other channels have dramatically different demographics. Integrating an Instagram lead with your LinkedIn crowd would not make a great deal of sense, given the age and focus of each audience.

Plan your content strategy accordingly

Once you know where you're planning on posting, you need to carefully map out a step by step approach to distributing your content there. There are numerous forms of content that work well for this, including…

• Search engine optimization
• Search engine marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Videos
• Events
• Speaking engagements
• Websites
• Blogs
• eBooks
• White papers
• Special reports
• Presentations
• Press releases
• Webinars
• Print

Make use of as many as make sense for your business as a way to widen the reach and overall exposure your content receives.

Then simply execute the plan

This is the part where many stumble, in the actual execution of the plan. This presupposes you have a plan, which is a necessity in an undertaking like this. There are many moving parts that need to coordinate with each other, and good intentions fall short when there is no cohesive, step-by-step roadmap for your team to follow.

Utilizing cross-channel promotion is a terrific way to significantly expand the reach of your content and influence. Use it as often as possible for best results!

Covering all the tasks associated with running a business online is an enormous undertaking, but the good news is that you don't need to take all of it on by yourself.

Sure, many of us suffer from that “if you want it done right…” maxim, but the truth is, overtasking yourself while not delegating some of the tasks that be easily completed by someone else is a recipe for ensuring your business doesn't grow.

We've found many reasons why you need to consider outsourcing some of your digital marketing both in-house and offsite. Here are several we'd like you to ponder.

Create more time for the important things – Since you're the big cheese, it seems logical that a number of tasks can only be done by you. However if you're tied up doing the deliverables, you won't have enough time to think, plan, network and in short create more business! This is the very best reason to free up your time by outsourcing.

Accelerate your growth – A benefit of the above, when more hands are helping deliver a project, you are able to reduce the time necessary for projects and consequently book more. Moreover, when one person moves on, gets sick, goes on vacation or simply fails to deliver, you don't have to explain these delays to the client. This can also help you avoid the “single point of failure” mistake.

Increase your levels of expertise – Outsourcing tasks to people who may actually know how to do it better than you has benefits too. Not only is your firm more capable now, you benefit by having increased levels of expertise you can sell and package. Also, let's face it, no one person can know and do everything.

Isn't it time to take the plunge and set your business up for growth and greater productivity by outsourcing work you don't need to do yourself to others?

In order for any small business to stay relevant and competitive in today's competition business environment, it requires a reasonable and viable marketing strategy.

Fortunately today it's easier than ever to market your business online. That said, marketing a small business with a small budget can be quite a bit tricky. Free and low cost takes more time and effort, but the opportunities are there. Let's show you some basic, effective and best of all low-cost ways to market your small business.

Effective ways to market your business on a tight budget

Use Social Media – Social media has dramatically changed all facets of human life. Due to the millions of active users on social media, social media has become a honeypot for many small businesses. The first step towards reaping the benefits of marketing in social media is opening social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. One great way of ensuring that you effectively use social media avenues in your marketing plan is by posting engaging, relevant, and informative content.

Set Up a Website – Websites play a center role in marketing and advertising small businesses. If you don't have a website, putting one up would be a prudent move. However, if you don't have the funds to hire a designer, perhaps engage a student to put up a simple WordPress site on your own domain with your own web hosting. This will at least ensure you are building an asset for your company. Never opt to put your business on a platform you don't own.

Get Awesome Business Cards – Another business staple, a card will help you reach those who may not be as savvy online as others. It can also be a great tool for lead generation. Our sister company, Joe The Goat Farmer, has a variety of free business card templates for you to download. Check out their freebie section here.

Attend Local Events – Networking is very advantageous when you want to market your small business. Attending local events is one of the ways of networking with people that are in the same business. Before visiting any local event, make sure you have those new business cards in hand!