You don’t need a huge budget to market your small business, but you do need a plan.

There’s a myth floating around that marketing only works if you’re spending big: boosted posts, ad funnels, outsourcing, the works. And sure, money helps (actually, it helps a lot). But the truth is that most small business owners don’t start with a budget. They start with time, grit, a tiny audience, and a whole lot of “okay, how do I do this without going broke?”

If that’s where you are right now, you’re not behind. In fact, you’re right where most successful business owners start. Because marketing isn’t supposed to be about throwing money at the problem. It’s about building momentum. Brick by brick. Post by post. Connection by connection.

And yes, you can market a business on a small budget. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What real marketing budgets are for small businesses
• Why you don’t need to “spend money to make money”
• 3 steps to marketing your business with a low (or non-existent) marketing budget
• How to allocate the budget you do have time
• Free and low-cost marketing tools to help you market your business this year

What do small businesses really have as a marketing budget?

We’re talking about “small marketing budgets” but what is a small marketing budget? To answer this question, we’ve got stats from the State of Small Biz Report we put together. (We surveyed hundreds of real small businesses and asked them 47 questions about them, their businesses, and marketing. And one of the questions was obviously, “On average, how much money do you spend on marketing each month?” 

Here is the breakdown of small business marketing budgets:

• 2.69% don’t know 🙈
• 1.35% spend $5,000 or more a month on marketing
• 2.69% spend between $2,500-$4,999
• 9.87% spend between $1,000-$2,499
• 7.62% spend between $500-$999
• 34.98% spend just $100-$499 on marketing a month
• 32.39% spend less than $99 a month!
• And 8.52% spend NOTHING!

So when we are talking about how to market your business with a small budget, this is what we’re talking about.

Do You Need To “Spend Money To Make Money?”

If you think you need $1,000/month in ads to grow your business, take a deep breath—you don’t. Actually, most small businesses can’t afford this!

What you do need is a clear marketing plan, consistent content, and a smart way to track what’s working even if your current marketing budget looks suspiciously like $0 and your time budget isn’t much bigger.

A lot of small business owners fall into the trap of thinking marketing = money. But truthfully? Marketing = momentum. Because (as we like to say) marketing is the things you do to make sure people know you exist. So when you have a plan (even a simple one), you can start attracting clients, building your audience, and generating revenue before you spend a dime.

So if you’re working with a tiny budget (or no budget at all), you can still build real visibility and growth. Let’s walk through exactly how to do that, without emptying your bank account or carrying a balance on your credit card.

Step 1: Know What You Actually Need From Marketing

Before you start posting, pinning, blogging, or brainstorming “genius” Reel ideas in the shower…pause. Good marketing doesn’t start with doing more. It starts with knowing what matters most for your business right now.

So before you touch a single piece of content, get clear on:

Your Goals (what does “working” even mean?)

Are you trying to:

• Book more clients?
• Grow brand awareness?
• Build your email list?
• Increase website traffic?
• Get more leads for a specific offer?

Marketing without goals is a fast track to frustration paired with a side of “nothing’s working” energy. Here at Enji, we recommend picking 1–3 goals to focus on because if you try to go after too many goals at once, you will burn out and actually slow down your results.

Your Audience (who you're trying to reach)

A small marketing budget works when every effort is targeted (read: intentional).

So another thing to do is ask yourself:

• Who needs what I offer?
• What problems are they trying to solve?
• Where do they already spend time online?
• What kind of content do they engage with?
• What do they care about more than anything?

Your marketing should take all the answers to these questions (or a form of them) into account. So if you're not sure about them, talk to people! Interview past clients, survey industry peers, have conversations with your community. Five real conversations beat 100 assumptions.

Your Available Time

Most small business owners don’t fail because they lack ideas, they fail because they put together a marketing plan that requires way more time than they have. How do we know? We asked! And here are more stats from the State of Small Biz Report:

• 13.06% of small business owners spend less than 1 hour a week on marketing
• 57.66% spend 1-5 hours a week on marketing
• 19.82% spend 6-10 hours a week on marketing
• And only about 9% spend more than 10 hours a week 

The report does tell us there is a sweet spot, but that’s a conversation for another day. But be honest: How much time can you realistically spend on marketing each week?

And if you’re in the camp having just 1-2 hours per week to market your business? That’s enough when you have the right system. But you do need to be really focused on what marketing tasks you say yes too. 

Step 2: Decide Where to Show Up

When you’re working with little to no marketing budget and limited time, focus and consistency beat trying to be on every platform and burning out two weeks in—trust us. So the next thing you need to do when you have a small marketing budget is create a marketing strategy to guide how you are going to spend your time and money.

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Once you know your goals, audience, and realistic capacity, creating a marketing strategy becomes a whole lot easier. Which, if you don’t want to figure this out on your own, use Enji’s Marketing Strategy Generator to get a personalized plan that includes:

• Your goals and what you can do to work towards them
• Suggestions on how often to posting frequency
• Recommendations on what social media platforms and marketing channels to focus on
• A to-do list based on your time, goals, audience, and budget

It takes guesswork off your plate so you can skip straight to taking action without wasting time figuring out where to start. Score!

To get you started, here are free marketing strategies that still work in 2025 and won’t require a huge budget.

Make Sure Your Small Business Shows Up in Search

Search is the most scalable way to market on a small budget and in a way that gets you more and more results over time. Seriously, the content you create today can continue driving traffic and leads months or even years from now.

Pinterest and blogging continue to be long-game gold for service providers and product-based businesses who want to be found on Google or through AI tools like ChatGPT. They help your audience find you when they’re already searching for solutions, inspiration, or expertise.

A little tip? Use keywords people are actually searching for (not just what you think they search for).

That means paying attention to the exact phrases your ideal customers type into ChatGPT, Google and Pinterest. Most people don’t search like marketers, they search like real humans with real questions. Instead of industry jargon, think:

“how to choose a wedding photographer”

“affordable branding tips for small business”

“how to start email marketing without a budget”

“best CRM for solopreneurs”

“how do I get clients as a copywriter”

Answering these kinds of plain-language questions builds trust and drives organic search results, because you’re not trying to sound clever, you’re being helpful.

Use Social Media Intentionally

Social media only works when you treat it like a tool, not a full-time job. That means that instead of scrolling for inspiration for an hour and giving up on creating your own post, try this:

• Batch-create content once a week or month instead of posting on the fly
• Repurpose what performs well instead of reinventing the wheel
• Stay consistent (even two posts a week is better than disappearing for months)

Something you need to hear: You are not trying to go viral. In fact, we had 3 social media posts go viral last month and guess what it did for our business? NOTHING. So worry less about views and focus more on building familiarity and trust, one useful post at a time.

Engage With Your Audience, Community, and Followers

One of the fastest ways to grow without a budget is to be social on social media. But it is not just about posting content. You have to invest time into engaging with the humans you hope to turn into paying clients and customers. So be sure to:

• Comment, reply, and start meaningful conversations
• Engage with industry peers, referral partners, vendors, and your current audience
• Share, support, and reference others because collaboration will always beat isolation

Community marketing is so much more effective than cold DMs or generic outreach. People buy from people they trust, and trust comes from showing up and participating, not pitching.

Reuse and Repurpose Content You Already Have

Here is the permission slip you have been waiting for: You do not need to create new content every time you want to post. Instead you can save tons of time by:

• Turning past blogs into reels and carousels (Enji’s Blog Repurposing Tool is perfect for this!)
• Turning longer form social media captions into email newsletters
• Turn FAQs into a series of Instagram stories
• Turn a “how I do this” post into a “here’s a tool that helps me do it faster” post

If you struggle to create long-form content that gives you a solid foundation to repurpose, Enji’s free content tools like the Blog Idea Generator can help you choose topics that your audience will love! Then, Enji’s AI copywriter will help you write them and repurpose them into social posts!

Don’t Sleep on Email Marketing

If you’re trying to market a business on a small marketing budget, you cannot not be email marketing. Email subscribers convert higher than social followers, and email still outperforms every platform when it comes to driving sales. Even just one email a month builds trust, nurtures your audience, and keeps your brand top-of-mind.

Choosing the right platforms and using them well is what creates sustainable growth. You don’t need to chase every trend. You need a clear plan, consistent actions, and the commitment to stick with what works long enough to see results.

We think Flodesk is the best email marketing platform for small business. Give it a try and save if you subscribe with our link!

Step 3: How to Allocate a Small Marketing Budget Effectively

A small budget doesn't mean you can’t do a good job with your marketing. Yes, it is the harder way to do your own marketing, but it’s far from impossible. It just means you need to spend intentionally. Every dollar should either save you time or help you reach more of the right audience.

For most small businesses, the goal here is to build momentum first, then scale your investment as your business grows.

If you have $0/month

This stage is real and the truth is that many businesses start here.

Your focus should be on:

• Showing up consistently on one or two platforms
• Creating content that builds trust and solves real problems
• Reusing and repurposing what you already have
• Engaging with others to build community and visibility

And yes, it’s harder to build without tools or support. So use Enji’s free marketing tools to make this phase more manageable:

• Free Blog Idea Generator and Social Media Idea Generator
• Free Customer Persona Generators
• Free social media scheduler for up to 8 posts per month
• Free Brand Voice Generator

If you have ~$20/month

At this stage, your priority is buying back a little time and increasing consistency. This is where a Social Media Scheduler Only plan makes a big difference.

What you sign up for Enji’s upgrade:

• Cross-platform posting and repurposing (Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, and Youtube)
• Drag-and-drop calendar
• Auto-posting so you don’t have to be online all day
• Batch content with the AI Copywriter
• Unlimited scheduling (you can post 20x a day on threads if you want)

Your investment here is small, but the time you save is significant.

If you have ~$50/month

Now you can upgrade to Enji’s Full Suite of Marketing Tools and truly streamline your systems.

You get access to:

• Marketing strategy and planning tools
• The AI copywriter that includes blogs and the blog repurposing tool
• Marketing campaign templates
• Full social media scheduler
• Our popular KPI dashboard for tracking all your marketing metrics

Especially if your time is limited, this is where using tools to increase efficiency really compounds.

When your small marketing budget is a few hundred dollars a month or more

At this point, the question becomes: What support or tools will move the needle the most?

Options might include:

• Hiring a VA for a few hours a month
• Outsourcing content editing or scheduling
• Running ads
• Investing in PR or live events

Even here, the priority is the same: spend where it saves time or accelerates results. You don't have to jump to a big budget overnight. For most small business owners, we recommend you increase your investment gradually as your business grows and your marketing systems strengthen.

You Don’t Need a Big Budget To Market Your Business

You don’t need a big marketing budget to grow, you just need a simple, consistent plan and the tools to actually stick to it. Start where you are, focus on what matters, and let your efforts compound over time.

And if you want an easier way to do that without juggling six different apps or spending hours figuring out what to post, Enji can help.

Build your plan, generate your content, and schedule it all in one place (even on the free plan).

Start your free trial of Enji today and make marketing manageable.

‍

Tayler Cusick Hollman

Enji Founder and Small Business Marketing Expert

Tayler is one of the Founders of Enji (marketing tools for small business owners who need to plan, do, and review it themselves). With over a decade of marketing experience, she has helped thousands of small business owners create simple marketing plans that help them get results. When she isn't thinking about how to solve the "I do my own marketing" problem, you'll find her skiing, mountain biking, or climbing rocks somewhere.

Try Enji's marketing tools for small business owners for free at enji.co

‍