Make the most of a right marketing budget with “7 Surprisingly Effective (and Cheap) Ways to Bring in New Customers” from Inc.com contributor Minda Zetlin. With the right choices and a keen focus on the numbers, it doesn’t take a huge investment to grow your business. See if you can incorporate any of these tactics:

1. Partner with other businesses, even if they seem like competition. Indirect and even direct competitors can be extremely valuable to you, and vice versa. Work with indirect competitors to promote each other, and pool resources with direct competitors to make it affordable to promote your industry in general.
2. Understand the lifetime value and acquisition cost of each customer. Cost is relative. When you run a promotion, you can’t just think about the immediate return. Track how many new clients you bring in, and how many you retain long term to really judge the efficacy of your paid marketing efforts.
3. Use paid marketing, but very carefully. “Start small, make sure the economics work, and only then scale.”
4. Get on Your Map. Literally. Showing up on Google Maps and Yelp, at minimum, is crucial in the mobile age.
5. Ask for referrals, and off incentives. Your current customers love you, right? Offer rewards to encourage them to share the good word with their friends – and don’t forget to reward the friends for coming in!
6. Go where your customers are. Invest some sweat equity rather than dollars by passing out valuable offers at events that your ideal customer would favor. Also, develop relationships to get free publicity in appropriate media.
7. Don’t neglect your existing customers. Perhaps most importantly, don’t forget about selling to your current customers. You don’t want to overdo it, but sending worthwhile promotions to your customer base regularly is typically appreciated and worth the effort.

Click here to read the article from Inc.com.