What Can SMBs Achieve With a $900 Marketing Budget?

As a small business in today’s competitive environment, we’re constantly thinking about ways to attract new customers. How can we best leverage our limited resources to bring in new business while also retaining the customers we already have? Ultimately, the answer to these questions will determine whether we succeed or fail.

In this article, I’ll focus on three key activities that can give your business an edge when it comes to customer acquisition, revenue generation, and referral business. These activities are grounded in experience, and the order in which they’re presented reflects their relative importance.

Product or Service Demand

Cost: Free

We all have great ideas, in the sense that they’re great to us. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there is demand for the product or service that you’re looking to develop. One of the biggest hurdles that I’ve encountered in the past is establishing what my unique value proposition is.

• The Offer: What about your product or service makes it unique and desirable to your prospective customers?

• Pitch: Can I sum up the services I offer in one succinct sentence that is concise and clear?

• Pain-Points: What problem(s) does my product or service solve for my prospective customer(s)?

• Urgency: Does it convey a sense of urgency or desire? What is the immediacy?

• The Hook: Why would I buy from you and not someone else?

Identifying your Target Market — Ideal Customer

Cost: Free

Product or service placement can be incredibly time-consuming and unrewarding if you’re just throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. I’ve done it, and it’s an exercise in futility. Once you have established that there is, in fact, demand for your product or service, the next step is to figure out who you are selling to.

For small to medium-sized businesses, it can be as simple as placing feedback forms on each email confirmation or asking each customer 3–4 questions while they’re checking out. Then, you use that information to begin to build a customer profile. Let’s say you have five customers, four of which came through referrals for your skincare product. Your first customer filled out your post-transaction survey, here’s what it looks like:

Name:

Hannah Williams

Age: 32

Gender: Female

Marital Status: Single

Location: Los Angeles, California

Income: $65,000/year

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Marketing

Occupation: Social Media Manager

Family: No children

Living Situation: Rents a one-bedroom apartment in a trendy neighborhood

Technology Use: Tech-savvy, uses Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok frequently

So, in a nutshell, how do you target more Hannahs, while keeping costs down and maximizing profitability? You know, based on feedback, that 90% of your customers have come via referral. Here is your potential area of focus for a revenue multiplier, and the beauty is, referral is going to be your cheapest channel of acquisition.

Competitor Insights & Pricing

A very important factor before investing thousands of dollars in your business and its build — Pricing. All pricing models are built from COGS (Cost of Goods and Services). How much does it cost you to provide the product or service before factoring in profitability? This is a pivotal decision and will absolutely be a determining factor in terms of success and failure. Spend as much time as possible reviewing the numbers and decide the strategy.

• Market Share Play: Sometimes it can be a market share play, and you’ve got burn rate — cash reserves, meaning you can run at break-even or a deficit for a period of time to chew into your competition. A market share play can be a strategic move where a business sacrifices short-term profits or even operates at a deficit with the goal of capturing a larger share of the market. But this strategy comes with a devastating downside: If you’ve overestimated your market size, don’t have control of supplier pricing, or have underestimated your cost of acquisition. While this strategy can be highly effective, it comes with significant risks, including financial strain, brand dilution, and operational challenges.

• Slow Build + Maximizing Profitability: Limited cash reserves will inhibit your ability to scale; however, there are many benefits to taking this approach. Rapid expansion typically requires a significant injection of capital. A slow build means expanding at a pace that your business can afford without needing large sums of money or taking on debt. With limited cash, focusing on referrals, affiliate, and word-of-mouth marketing can allow you to maintain a healthy cash flow while ensuring that each step of growth is financially sustainable.

Go-To-Market Strategy

Crafting your GTM will depend largely on your budget, in many respects. You’ve established a solid base for the following:

• Product/Service

• Ideal Customer

• Competitors & Competitive Landscape

• Channels of Consumer Acquisition

One of the next steps will be drafting a marketing budget, which, for most startups, is somewhat laughable. Even if you have less than $1,000.00, drafting a marketing budget is a key component of deploying marketing dollars. This doesn’t need to be a page PowerPoint; it can be as simple as the following:

• Advertising and Promotions: 30–45%

Email: MailChimp or HubSpot or Klaviyo (Free)Google Ads, Social Media AdsBusiness Cards

• Salaries and Personnel: 20–30%

Probably not there just yet.

• Content Creation: 10–15%

This will be you, most likely.

• Events and Sponsorships: 15–20%

Event Registration, Networking, Email Promotion & E-Blast Special Offers

• Miscellaneous: 5%

Running a small business today comes with its fair share of challenges — especially when resources are limited. But even with a marketing budget of just $600 to $900, you have the potential to make a significant impact.

The key lies in understanding your unique value, targeting the right customers, and being strategic about where and how you spend those dollars. It’s about being smart, scrappy, and focusing on activities that give you the best return, even if that means starting small.

Whether you’re playing the long game with a slow build or deciding to go head-to-head with competitors in a market share play, the decisions you make today can set you up for sustainable growth tomorrow.

The percentage split in terms of success/failure is in the vicinity of 95% failure — 5% success. Don’t bite off more than you can chew or be too loud out of the gate, especially with more experienced market players. They will squash and eliminate you within 24 hours.

If you’ve got a great idea, a unique opportunity, or product — cover your bases and don’t get caught flat-footed by over-sharing. Small bursts of progress are, in many respects, the best teacher.

Now, I just need to take my own advice.