Big marketing impact on a tiny budget
Oxfam and your local hospice shop run on donations, volunteers and a fiver's worth of card and chalk — yet they out-market half the chains on the high street. Here's what they're doing for free, and how your small business can nick it.
Before loyalty apps and email funnels, the bloke behind the counter of your local shop knew your mum's name, your usual order and exactly which day you'd pop in. Turns out that was a marketing strategy — and it still costs precisely nothing.
There's a chippy near every British seafront with a specials board that looks like it was written during a fire drill — and it's often the busiest shop on the street. Here's when scruffy beats slick, and how to tell which one your business actually needs.
Most small businesses are sitting on the best advertising spot they own — and covering it in words nobody reads. Here's why 'Quality Service Guaranteed' is costing you customers, and a seven-word challenge to fix it.
Nobody reads a five-star review as closely as they read a one-star. Handled well, a public complaint becomes the most convincing advert your business will ever run — and it doesn't cost a penny.
Every small business in Britain already owns a marketing channel most of us ignore: the building itself. Here's how to squeeze a full advertising campaign out of the four walls you're renting anyway — for the price of a box of chalk.
A handwritten sign in a chippy window can pull in more custom than a week of paid social. Here's why the humble window sticker still rules British high streets — and how to write one that actually works.
Timpson gives away shoe repairs, cuts keys for pensioners and hands staff the keys to be kind — and it works better than most paid campaigns. Here's how your small business can steal the generosity playbook without spending a penny more than a kind gesture costs.
The tombola is a pound, the tea is fifty pence, and nobody bargains. There's a quietly brilliant pricing philosophy running through every village fete in Britain, and it might be the best free business advice you'll get all year. Here's how to steal it — legally.
Britain's car boot sales are the country's cheapest business school — no fees, no textbooks, just a folding table and a box of DVDs. We break down the sales tactics that work in a drizzle-soaked field and show how to translate them into marketing moves for your small business.
Wilko had low prices and still collapsed; Aldi has low prices and keeps growing. The difference was never the number on the tag — it was the story around it. Here's why 'cheap' is costing you customers, and what to say instead.
Britain's car boot sellers have been mastering pricing, positioning and persuasion for decades — all without a marketing degree or a media budget. Here's what the professionals in hi-vis vests can teach your small business about making a sale.
Rave flyers, chippy menus, charity shop typography — deliberately low-fi branding is having a moment, and honestly, it's about time. Here's why wearing your budget on your sleeve might be the most trustworthy thing your business can do.
A pound coin only holds a hundred pennies, and your marketing budget is no different. We walk through allocating all 99 of them — and the leaks that'll make you wince.
Village fetes, Sunday league sides and school fundraisers fill rooms and fields on virtually nothing. Here's what they know about marketing that big budgets forget.
You don't need a £500-a-month retainer to look professional. From design and email to local SEO and print, here are nine free (or nearly free) tools that cover most of what an agency would charge you for — plus where each one's free tier runs out of road.
Before you sign off on that quote or hit publish on that campaign, ask one blunt question: is this worth 99p? Here's how a simple pricing gut-check can stop you overpaying for marketing that doesn't earn its keep.
Most small businesses are pouring money into channels that feel busy but deliver nothing. Here's how to run a proper audit of your marketing using nothing but a spreadsheet, some free tools, and an honest hour with the numbers.
Everyone's fighting for attention on screens, which means the letterbox and the shop window have quietly become the least crowded places to market. Here's the case for spending your next £50 on paper instead of pixels.
Aldi, Innocent and Greggs run campaigns with budgets bigger than your annual turnover. But strip away the spend and the strategy underneath is something any small business can copy for less than a hundred quid. Here's how.