Creative Thinking to Keep Your Business Afloat

These are trying economic times for even the savviest of entrepreneurs. Businesses seem to be closing up shop everywhere we look. Many small businesses that are surviving are struggling to cut costs, while trying to maintain their bottom line by keeping the clients they already have. For some cutting down may mean little cuts such as eliminating the purchase of unnecessary office supplies, subscriptions and memberships. For others the cuts may go deeper, eating into staff salaries, possibly benefit programs and marketing budgets.

While some cuts may unquestionably hurt the business, many small businesses make these drastic cuts without considering how at least some of them can be counteracted. For example, how can a business continue to attract customers with a drastically reduced marketing budget? During this challenging financial period, a little creative thinking may just be what keeps your business afloat.

Less costly alternatives to expensive print ads, or mailings doesn't necessarily mean that you will attract less customers. In fact, there are a plethora of marketing ideas out there that will cost you almost nothing but time to implement. For example, if you are a business with a web site, consider adding a blog. Aside from being a great tool to increase search engine rankings, a blog is a great way to demonstrate your expertise in your field by offering tips and advice while generating the trust of your readers. When a visitor to your blog trusts you and views you as an authority in your field, they are more likely to purchase your product or service when the time comes to do so.

Other great tools to get the word out about your business are online press releases and article marketing. Press releases are a great way to get news out about your business and attract new customers, while articles are a way to show your expertise and make people want to visit your website to learn more about your company. Both can be distributed completely free of charge. As long as you can write, you won't have to pay a penny for these great promotional tools. There are hundreds of article banks and press release sites out there willing to distribute content at no cost. An added bonus to these marketing methods is that if done consistently, you also end up creating back-links to your website which in turn increases your visibility and your search engine ranking. If you don't have the time or the skill to write and distribute articles yourself, you may consider hiring a Virtual Assistant, or a ghost writer at the fraction of the cost of advertising in print.

Another economical way to market your business is to join your local chamber of commerce, or another such organization in your area. These are for the most-part relatively inexpensive to join, and the ROI can be tremendous.

You don't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to market your business. A little research and some creative thinking could have you on the way to increasing your revenue while saving thousands!