Does your marketing allowance resemble more of a shoestring than an actual budget? There’s still lots you can do to help fill your space.

Even as you grow, there are plenty of things you can do for free without needing to hire an agency to do it for you.

Below are just a few ideas that I’ve pulled from the archive to help you get to work on the fundamentals.

Of course, some of these ideas do require some skills, but they can all be learned with a quick Google search or some help from your techie friend/colleague.

So without any further ado, here they are:

1. Start with strong positioning
2. Have a fully complete and well-maintained Google My Business page
3. Optimize your website for conversions
4. Be everywhere people are looking (advertising aside for now)
5. Use a CRM to manually track the source of your leads
6. Ask your members questions to find out what they value (and then deliver on it)
7. Calculate the average lifetime value of your ideal members
8. Make your members the star of your social media
9. Track all key conversions as goals in your Google Analytics
10. Write useful blog content, and not just written for search engines
11. Do basic SEO, including meta titles and descriptions, alt tags, internal and external linking, etc. (I’ll write more on this soon)

I recognize that not everyone has a big budget for marketing. It’s a very real situation to be in.

But if you neglect the fundamentals, especially the free ones, it will cost you a LOT more in the short and long term.