How To Market a Small Business With a Limited Budget

It’s no secret that the companies that I advise at VaynerMedia have a lot of resources. Probably a lot more than you do. So when I go on and on about how important content production is, you might very well think “whatever, Gary, that’s easy for you to tell PepsiCo, but what am I supposed to do!?”

When you’re hustling and you have limited budget, you might think you’re in trouble, but truthfully, the best way to close that financial gap is to work harder. You need a little extra hustle when you’re limited. Put the TV remote down and work a little harder, for a little longer. Tactically, this depends on the business, but business development is always the way to go. Hustle. Knock on doors. Spread your message. With a limited budget, time is really your only asset. My advice? Spend more of it working.

Additionally, content is a tremendous ally to have. As a business owner in this day and age, you have to start focusing your energy on pushing out content rather than the other things you would otherwise be doing. If you believe in the power of content but you don’t have the resources, then you need to respect that belief and do whatever it takes to make it happen.

So let’s assume, for the sake of getting as much helpful information out there as possible, that you don’t have the resources for content creators, editors, and whatever else is needed to run those operations. In that case, I say do what I did in 2006 when I had the wine show: Take hours away from staffing, strategizing, selling, and all the other things you’re doing, and put one, two, three hours into becoming a media company. I really do believe that this practice has, and will continue to have, an enormous upside to the future of business.

The way these ‘media’ companies will work are of course going to be wildly different. There’s a difference between Buzzfeed and Seth Godin’s blog. Buzzfeed puts out a ton of content all day, every day, ranging on a variety of topics. Seth, on the other hand, puts out his best effort once a day. Back in my early days I was doing a wine show, and right now, I’m doing the #AskGaryVee show. Not much has changed for me since my Crush It days in 2009, except that I’m even more confident now because I was RIGHT. The topics discussed may be different but the emphasis on putting out the content has only grown. Depending on the business at hand and the potential for content creation, there will be varying differences in how and what content is put out; All that really matters though, is that you’re focusing your efforts on being more like a media company.

Every business needs to start thinking and acting like a media company. All companies need to be putting out content. Period. This is what I believe in.