Now much of what I'm going to say isn't anything super out of the ordinary but on many occasions I meet so many business mums who are so busy working 'in' their business they don't have the opportunity to take time to step outside and reflect on what's working and what isn't. So here are a few money saving tips!
Paid Adverts -
Paid adverts are expensive, end of, so lets see how we can do it the sensible way.
- Leave buying advertising to the last minute your bound to get some kind of discount.
- Have a figure ££ in mind and try not to go over that.
- Remember you need to be advertising all year round don't spend all your cash in January.
- Make sure you have some way of tracking your advert either a special offer code, or free delivery or possibly a free item when placing order or buying your service. You can then say I paid x amount for an advert in 5,000 magazines and I got a return of x amount of orders/clients = success rate of ??. If you have no way of tracking it you never know if the advert was a success or not.
- Or do a competition entering via email … this way you also get a contact email which you can then use to send out newsletters and special offers etc.
- See if you can barter for them … if the adverts are online you maybe able to swap banner links on their site for yours.
This can be whatever your vice is LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogging etc... Social Networking is FREE so you are a fool not to utilise it in some way shape or form. But here are a few tips to make it cost effective to you.
- Ensure you limit your usage everyday. Make a clear distinction between 'working' on Facebook/Twitter and 'socialising'.
- If your using a blog to promote your business/services or products plan your blog posts for the month and then write and schedule as many in as possible. This will also free up time which you can use more effectively in other areas of your business to make MONEY.
- Use your own blog to highlight your strengths in business what you know a lot about, businesses that appear to be 'experts' in certain areas will very much be sort after.
- Make sure your following local magazines, radio stations and newspapers they will all be on Twitter and Facebook looking for local scoops.
- Also find out if National Magazines are online many baby related ones use twitter to find items for stories they have coming up.
- Search hashtags on twitter #journorequest (I've had some success with this) and if you do contact a journalist this way make sure you save their email into your database.
You can buy one if you want. But if your looking a reducing PR costs make your own.
- Give yourself an hour or so and pop into your local library pick up all the magazine relevant to your business and jot down the name and email of the editor. You should do this also with all the local newspapers, community magazines.
- Check out media requests on free sites such as netmums.com take note of the emails of journalists relevant to your business.
- Use big companies contact forms … many moons ago I emailed BBC South via their online form about an event that I had going on. I was lucky enough to receive a reply from a reporter on BBC Radio Solent who is now one of my main contacts. Recently she changed shows but thankfully her new presenter enjoys having me on too!
- Send regular updates about what you have been up to and keep an eye on what's happening in the news might be that you can jump on the band wagon and contact one of your journalists with a relevant story. (i.e. VAT increase on small businesses at the moment)
Find out more about Joanne Dewberry and her business Charlie Moo's.
