The Employer Report: How to Build a Marketing Team on a Budget

Welcome to the Urban Interns Employer Report - a free resource to help you grow your business by creating and implementing win-win opportunities for part-time staff and interns.

This issue is brought to you by Traci Feit Love, a small business writer and consultant. To learn more about Traci and how she can help your company, visit her website at http://tracifeitlove.com.

 

Question of the Week:

I need to do a better job promoting my small business, but I have a very limited marketing budget. What's the best way to get some marketing help without breaking the bank?

Answer:

Marketing plays a key business development role in any small business.  It's important to focus on, regardless of your budget.  

If marketing is a foreign language for you, setting a strategy is best left to the experts.  The good news is that once you have that strategy in place, you can bring in some less expensive resources to help you execute.  

For example, if part of your marketing strategy involves e-communication, there are many do-it-yourself email platforms out there that provide you with great templates.  Many programs also provide easy-to-understand analytics, so you can see how effective your campaign was.  We use Constant Contact, but another great one is Vertical Response.  Or if you're more tech-savvy, we've heard Campaign Monitor is good.

Still, developing the content for your campaign can be time-intensive and perhaps writing isn't something you enjoy.  This is a perfect job for a part-time person or even a really great intern.  

This can apply to many other areas: social media, guerrilla marketing, blogging, even PR. These "free" forms of marketing can comprise the bulk of your marketing campaign in the early days of your business.  The key is that as a business owner, you set the strategy, and hire others to execute.

The bottom line:  The more limited your budget, the more creative you need to be about finding great resources.  That doesn't mean cutting important pieces out of your growth plans, it just means understanding what's worth your time as a business owner, and stretching your dollars to include some highly efficient "do-ers".

When you're ready to find the perfect candidate, visit www.urbaninterns.com and click on "Find an Urban Intern." To submit your questions for future issues of Urban Interns' Employer Report, just e-mail us at admin@urbaninterns.com.