How to promote business on small budget

CATS

Hi Guys,

I have recently launched a small online business and I am trying to find a way to promote it without spending a huge amount of money. essentially it is an online wedding dress shop. I am able to do competitions etc. I am just a bit stuck as to how to get visitor on a tight budget.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Kayalana99

Have you done your research? Personally I would never buy a wedding dress online unless I have tried it on in a shop then gone elsewhere to get it cheaper.

Google ads? eBay? Facebook page? Some people have an eBay shop with their website name so it drives traffic that way as well as getting eBay sales.

SailorSam

Could you start some sort of blog, maybe about wedding stories and have a link to your store. Or write things on other peoples blogs and leave your address.

Percy1983

Personally I go with facebook, freeindex and refferals.

InsideInsurance

What was in your business plan for marketing?

Do you have any sales yet?

Wedding in some ways is a terrible business to work for because you simply dont get repeat business and so you have to win every single sale rather than having customers that come back time and time again. This is one of the reasons why weddings carry a premium is because of the marketing costs.

Being online only, I am guessing, you dont even have a local market to appeal to which tends to be lower cost.

What is your unique selling point or niche?

If you've got sales coming in then try and promote to them both in the form of doing affiliate marketing for complimentary businesses (again will have to be national coverage firms) and also give then discount codes to give to their friends/ family to get better word of mouth promotion. In an ideal world you'd give them and their friend something to get repeat and new business but as above, there isnt repeat business in the industry. In theory you could do a discount for the friend and cashback from the friends purchase for the referrer but this is an administative headache that I wouldnt recommend is entered lightly into

The advantage of anything like this is that it is purely pay on success where as most other marketing mechanism are sunk costs which may or may not lead to sales

WolfSong2000

Go find Dee Blick's books on how to market small businesses - you can get them on Amazon for not a lot of money, and they're absolutely brilliant. Should take you through everything you need to know.