In my own businesses and in the work I do with clients, I’ve always tried to find ways to market effectively without spending a fortune. I actually enjoy the constraint. Having a limited budget forces you to think more creatively, experiment with ideas you might otherwise overlook and find ways to use the resources you already have.

Over the years, some of those experiments have worked surprisingly well. They’ve taught me that good marketing doesn’t always require a big advertising budget — sometimes it just requires looking at your business from a different angle. Here are some of the low-cost strategies I’ve used myself and with my clients.

1. Use auctions to create competition and brand exposure

I discovered the potential of auctions almost by accident. When I sold a few cars from my rental car business through an auction, I ended up getting a surprisingly good price. It made me realize that auctions can do more than help you sell something — they can create competition and attract attention at the same time.

When several people want the same product, they’re no longer negotiating only with you; they’re competing with one another. According to Bidbus, auction prices were 4.51% higher with two bidders than with one and nearly 10% higher when five or more bidders participated.

You don’t have to auction off your entire inventory to test the idea. Try one product, a service package or even a limited number of available spots. There are platforms where you can run an auction for a relatively small fee, making it an inexpensive experiment for the right type of business. And even though only the winning bidder makes the purchase, everyone who watches, shares or participates in the auction is interacting with your brand. That turns the auction itself into a marketing event, not just a way to make a sale.

2. Go where your ideal customers already are

When I was a young entrepreneur, a friend and I ran a small bike shop. We would buy used bikes, fix them up and resell them. We didn’t have much of a marketing budget, so instead of trying to bring customers to us, we went to where they already were. We would load around 10 bikes into a van, drive to local sporting events and offer free test rides to anyone interested.

That turned out to be even more valuable than simply putting the bikes in front of the right audience. People could actually ride them, see how they felt and experience the product before deciding whether to buy. According to TLG, 61% of consumers say they are more inclined to make a purchase after attending a live event.

You can apply the same principle to almost any small business. Find out where your ideal customers already spend their time, then look for an inexpensive way to let them experience what you sell through samples, demonstrations, trials or small events. Instead of spending your limited marketing budget trying to bring a broad audience to you, go to the right audience and give them a reason to try your product.

3. Use cost-effective AI models to scale your marketing

According to ZenMux, 48% of small businesses are already using AI in their marketing, including for writing email and social media copy, creating visual content and analyzing data. But using AI doesn’t necessarily mean using it efficiently. It’s easy to default to the most powerful — and often most expensive — model for every task, even when much of your everyday marketing work doesn’t require it.

In my businesses, I try to match the model to the job. I use cheaper, faster models for high-volume tasks such as brainstorming headlines, creating variations of social posts or rewriting product descriptions, and reserve premium models for work that requires deeper reasoning, research or more nuanced writing. There’s little reason to pay for the most capable model when a less expensive one can produce the result you need.

The difference might amount to very little on a single prompt, but it becomes meaningful when AI is embedded into your everyday marketing workflow. Across hundreds or thousands of tasks, those small costs add up. Instead of automatically using the best model available, use the most cost-effective model that can reliably do the job.

4. Turn referrals into a marketing strategy

I always pay people who refer clients to my businesses — even when they tell me not to. If someone sends me a client, I’ll get their PayPal or bank details and send them a referral fee. If that client continues working with us, I keep paying the referral every month. Sometimes people tell me, “You really don’t need to send me anything.” My answer is simple: It’s my rule. You can donate the money to charity or spend it however you like, but I’m still going to pay you. And if someone refuses the money altogether or sends it back, I’ll offer them one of my services for free instead. I want people who help my business grow to get something in return.

There’s a business reason behind that rule. Referrals can be one of the lowest-cost ways to acquire customers because you’re not starting from zero — the person recommending you has already transferred some of their trust to your business. According to Tailor Brands, 92% of people trust referrals from people they know. That’s why I don’t treat referrals as a lucky bonus or simply hope that satisfied customers will spread the word. I reward them deliberately and make referrals part of how I market my businesses.

5. Turn your customer experience into visual content

When I take on a small business as a client, one of the processes I use is a questionnaire that helps identify opportunities to turn the work they’re already doing into visual content. The idea is simple: Don’t create something just for marketing — document the customer experience that already exists. A restaurant can capture dishes being prepared and served, a gardening company can show a yard before, during and after a job, and a home improvement business can document an entire renovation from the first day to the finished result.

There’s a good reason to make this content visual. According to research, 60% of consumers always look for photos or videos before purchasing a product. Social media also gives small businesses an inexpensive way to put that content in front of potential customers. Seventy-six percent of small and midsize businesses say social media has had a positive impact on their business performance.

I’ve found this works particularly well for small businesses because it can be incredibly cheap to execute. Ask employees to take photos and short videos while they work, do it yourself, hire a photographer for just a few hours to build a library of professional material, or give satisfied customers a small incentive to share photos and videos of their experience.

Once you have the content, distribution can cost virtually nothing. Build visual libraries on Instagram and Pinterest, add galleries to your website, and upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo. 

6. Get mentioned by other local businesses and organizations

During the slower winter months, my rental car business sometimes has cars sitting unused for days. Rather than leave them parked, we’ve offered them free for a few days to travel vloggers and other creators visiting our city. It helps them explore the area and create better content about the destination, while we ask for something relatively small in return: a mention of our business, sometimes just a 20- or 30-second segment in a video they were already planning to publish.

I particularly like this approach when there’s a natural connection between what you give away and the audience you want to reach. A travel creator visiting your city already has an audience interested in travel, so a local car rental recommendation makes sense within their content.

According to Adam Collins, three in four consumers say they’re more likely to spend money at a local business if it supports community issues or charitable causes. Look for similar opportunities to support local creators, events and organizations with something your business can provide inexpensively.

The key is to think beyond cash when deciding what you can spend on marketing. A restaurant might provide food for a local event, a gym could offer its space to a community group, and a service business could donate its expertise. Something that costs your business very little to provide can be genuinely useful to someone else while introducing your brand to a relevant new audience.

7. Turn customer questions into low-cost marketing content

Some of your best marketing ideas may already be sitting in your inbox. We recently took on a client and went through the questions their customers were already asking in emails, phone calls, sales conversations and support requests. We then turned those recurring questions into useful content that answered them directly. It didn’t require expensive topic research or a complicated content strategy, yet after implementing the approach, the client’s visibility in AI-generated answers increased by almost 400%.

There’s a broader reason this works. According to Discovered Labs, its analysis of 2 million AI citations found that pages that more closely matched what users were asking received significantly more citations — about 30% more for a meaningful increase in alignment. In other words, the questions your customers ask you every day can also be clues to what potential customers are asking search engines and AI tools.

Start keeping track of those questions and turn the recurring ones into blog posts, guides and FAQ pages. You’re essentially turning conversations your business is already having into inexpensive marketing assets that can keep attracting potential customers long after you publish them.

8. Use an AI sales agent to run outreach on a small budget

Cold outreach can be one of the most affordable ways for a small business to start conversations with potential customers, especially when AI sales agents can automate much of the repetitive work, from prospecting and research to sending emails and following up.

The key is to use automation where it saves time without automating the entire relationship. According to Instantly, 58% of replies come from the first email, while the remaining 42% come from follow-ups. That’s why I always build two or three automated follow-ups into my outreach campaigns rather than relying on a single message.

But the moment someone replies, I go old-school. I take over the conversation personally and leave AI agents and automated responses out of it. When inboxes are increasingly filled with AI-generated outreach, a genuine human conversation can be one of the simplest ways to stand out. The goal isn’t to automate sales from beginning to end; it’s to use AI to do the repetitive work cheaply and consistently, then spend your time where the human element matters most.

What I’ve learned from running my own businesses and working with clients is that a small marketing budget doesn’t have to limit your ideas. In many cases, it does the opposite — it forces you to be more creative about the assets, relationships and opportunities already around you.

You don’t need to try everything at once. Pick one or two ideas that fit your business, test them, and build on what works. Some of the best marketing strategies start not with asking, “How much should I spend?” but “What do I already have that I’m not using?”