Lack of funds should not be a limiting factor. Lack of Creativity and adaptability are. What you require is the right people and the right environment and not necessarily huge reservoir of funds.
The Online Option
If you are going to outsmart and outsell other competitors to your business it is high time you looked at the internet world and the options it has to offer the small and medium business in reaching out to prospective customers. It still remains the most cost effective alternative to reaching out to potential customers and creating hype about your organization and its offerings. You will have to develop your own unique approach to getting people to know and talk about your business through the social media available on the internet.
Creative Collaboration
Once upon a time businesses fought each other and never entertained the thought of rubbing each others’ back. It never mattered that they may not be direct competitors. Today the smart thing to do is to have a plan of systematically getting marketing help from complementary business organizations to yours. A bookshop owner creates an enduring and mutually beneficial marketing agreement with a nearby theatre to display books from the bookshop that are especially relevant to films being shown. In return the theatre gets to display banners of showing movies at the bookshop.
Both benefit from the customer traffic to each organization. No one loses. Your situation can be made better with such deals just get more creative and look around with the mind to see opportunities.
Delivering the Wow! Effect
Service is a key fundamental to business growth and success. The customer involuntarily gets hooked and not one comes back but sends friends and family your way to do business with you. Every day it is said with levity but actually the customer being loyal to your business is very important and cannot be achieved with the average service available everywhere. Zappos is an example of an organization trying successfully to create a cult like following of loyal customers. The key test should be no matter what business you are in the customer should first think of you before your competitors . For the customer that needs a pair of shoes for instance what option comes first to her mind. Does buying from you ever occur to her?
It is called Occupying the First Position in the mind of your customers. To do that you have to create outstanding service experience for each customer or client who does business with you and use a combination of the ideas stated in this article.