Keeping in touch without a marketing budget or any software

4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Introduction

Staying in contact with people who might buy later is discussed as though it requires a platform, a subscription and a content programme. It requires none of those. The forms of contact that work best for a small business are individual, occasional and free, and the constraint is attention rather than money.

That is genuinely a constraint, and it is why this fails when attempted. An hour a month is available; a weekly publishing commitment is not. Designing something that fits inside the time you actually have is the whole exercise, and a modest thing sustained for three years beats an ambitious one abandoned in month four.

1. Keeping in touch without a marketing budget costs time, not money

The starting position.

A message, a phone call, a note. The effective methods have always been free, and the tools exist to scale them rather than to make them possible. A business with no budget and an hour a month can do this properly; one with a budget and no time frequently cannot.

2. Keep a list somewhere ordinary

The infrastructure.

A spreadsheet with names, what they wanted, when you last spoke and when to speak next. This is the entire system most small businesses need. Four columns, kept current, outperform an unused platform.

3. Contact a few people every week

The rhythm that works.

Five individual messages a week is manageable and reaches two hundred and fifty people a year. A monthly campaign to everybody is more work and produces less. It also spreads the effort so it survives a busy fortnight.

4. Use the calendar you already have

The prompts.

Anniversaries of jobs, seasonal dates, renewal points, the dates people told you. These generate reasons to make contact without needing to invent any. Put them in the diary as they arise rather than trying to reconstruct them later.

5. Send something useful rather than something produced

The content answer.

A short answer to a question, a link to something relevant, a photograph of comparable work. Nothing here requires a designer or a publishing schedule. The bar is usefulness rather than polish.

6. Call people occasionally

The channel nobody uses.

A short call to a past customer is unusual enough to be memorable and it costs three minutes. In most trades this outperforms any written channel. It also produces information a message never will.

7. Use the free version of things

The tooling.

Where you do want to send something to a group, free tiers of ordinary email tools are sufficient at small list sizes. The cost is not the obstacle. Upgrade only when the list outgrows them.

8. Write things once and reuse them

The efficiency.

The same five useful items serve most contacts in the same situation. Preparing them once converts an ongoing effort into a selection. Keep them in a folder you can reach from a phone.

9. Sustain it rather than scaling it

The discipline.

Consistency over three years is what produces results, and the thing most likely to break it is ambition. Pick the smallest version you will actually keep doing.

Rules on marketing contact, consent and opt-out apply regardless of whether you are using a platform or sending individual messages, and they differ by jurisdiction. Individual correspondence with past customers is generally treated differently from bulk marketing, but it is worth knowing where the line falls.

Conclusion

Design something small enough to sustain, because the constraint is attention rather than money.

Keep the list in a spreadsheet, contact a handful of people individually each week rather than everybody monthly, use anniversaries and seasonal dates as prompts, send something useful rather than something produced, telephone occasionally because almost nobody does, use free tools where you need them, write the useful items once and reuse them, and choose the smallest version you will still be doing in three years.