A lot of entrepreneurs are afraid to spend money on marketing, even though they know it might be in their best interest to do so. The fear comes from the unknown, and with so many marketing opportunities out there, the toughest part can be deciding which things are worthwhile vs. just a waste of money.
This is completely understandable. You’ve worked hard to set up your business, so if dropping hundreds of dollars down on a marketing campaign sounds like a terrifying concept, then take the $5 Challenge instead!
What is the $5 Challenge?
Before you do spend a lot of money on advertising, it is better to “dip” your feet in. This can be done with $5. Although it does not sound like a lot of money to invest, the challenge is for you to turn that $5 into five new clients! If not, how about at least five new prospects?
Here are Five Ideas to Turn Five Dollars’ Worth of Advertising into Five New Clients:
1. Attend a Networking Event
In most cities, there are networking events that you can attend. It will cost you about $5 for lunch or breakfast, but you can use that time to foster relationships with some of the other attendees.
2. Facebook Advertising
Rather than spending a large sum on Facebook advertising, you can spend $5 on several different methods of attracting visitors and leads. Test your ads first by spending $5 to see how many clicks it generates and make sure you have a lead capture system in place when those prospects visit your website. Or you can spend the $5 on boosting your posts to get more traffic, but either way, that small sum is not going to break the bank or bust your budget. Once you settle on an ad or post that works, you can up the ante and gradually increase your marketing budget.
3. Fiverr
If you’ve never heard of FIVERR.com, it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are hundreds of vendors willing to do tasks for only $5. One of the categories is “Online Marketing” and when you click on it, you will see a number of individuals willing to do tasks; such as sending 10,000 visitors to your website, or tweeting your product to 20,000 fans, or creating a promotional video for you, boosting your social profile to 5 million fans, and much more! Check it out and try that $5 out with one of the vendors. You may be surprised at how well it works!
4. Google PPC
Pay-per-click is unchartered territory for many new business owners, or even those who have a few years under their belt. If you do it wrong, it can eat up a lot of your precious advertising dollars, but this is where the $5 comes into play. It is a great way to “test out” different sponsorship ads to find the ones that generate the highest click-throughs, and once you have a winning ad, you can spend more and spread the advertising on more keywords.
5. $5 Awards and Payments
Have you ever seen signs advertising services in your community? Hire a teen or responsible person to hang signs all over town for $5. This works best if your product or service is local. Carpet cleaning companies, real estate investors and even apartment home complexes, jewelers and more have used this strategy all day to bring more traffic or phone calls their way.
If you have to spend more than $5 on some of these things, so be it. The point here is that it does not have to cost a lot for you to get the word out about your business, especially if you are testing ads or just starting out. Make your advertising dollars stretch by thinking of the most creative ways to spend it.