When consumers are on a strict budget, businesses have to employ a number of strategies to encourage them to spend their hard earned money at their stores. Companies have a variety of growth strategies to choose from in order to generate a return on investment (ROI).

There are plenty of well-proven brand awareness strategies available that can help increase business revenues, like having an awesome website design, collecting customer data (analyze and optimize) and creating an effective marketing plan. Without these simple but powerful strategies, your business isn’t living up to its full potential.

It is important to remember that a marketing strategy doesn't necessarily have to be just focused online but it can also be done the old-fashioned way: offline and in the eye of the general public.

Here are 6 areas of marketing that can help grow your business: 

Data Collection

As long as you have the know-how or metrics analysis, the data your business collects can definitely be a guide to enhancing sales and improving the bottom line. From customer profiles to spending habits, generating a greater understanding of how consumers shop can increase the growth of any business. 

Website (mobile-friendly)

If your business website is not responsive, user-friendly and quick to load then you might as well say goodbye to a good amount of revenues. Websites are key to placing your brand under a positive spotlight. From the colors you choose to the amount of multimedia placed on the webpage real estate, a well designed website can either make or break your company. 

Google will penalize websites if they are not mobile-friendly. Always ensure that the website is optimized for mobile devices. 

Internet Marketing

In recent years, marketers have allocated most of their conventional budgets (radio, television and newspapers) to digital marketing initiatives, such as website display banners, social media advertising, sponsored content, email marketing and blog posts - mobile marketing will soon be at the forefront of the Internet realm. 

Fully utilizing these avenues implies innovation and understanding your market base. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For years, the death of SEO has been greatly exaggerated. Every year, there is some hypothesis that search engines have killed SEO, but when in reality it's just the wishes of webmasters, journalists and bloggers. SEO is still a crucial element to marketing because it gets a company's website on the first page of Google, Yahoo! and Bing while also helping it become a prevalent name on the web. 

Offline Marketing

Flyers, billboards, posters and print media are still necessary facets of the advertising industry. Despite the trend to jump on the online bandwagon, people are still reading newspapers and taking notice to bus shelter posters and giant billboards on busy streets. Although you don’t have the benefits of marketing analytics that digital media can offer, investing in print media can reach target customers that aren’t online.

Trade Shows

Talk about face-to-face interaction. Trade shows offer something that Facebook, Google and YouTube can't offer: a personalized and physical approach to showcasing your product or service. There's a reason why trade shows are newsworthy and exciting events because there are people from all over the world that are looking for the next big thing in the world of consumer electronics, baby supplies and restaurant foods.

Although many of these aforementioned strategies do come with a price, they provide an excellent ROI and can help the company expand to new heights and reach their sales targets. 

Let's be honest: it can be somewhat expensive to take advantage of these ideas. However, there are alternative business funding solutions available, including a business cash advance, a financing option that can cover these short-term marketing investments. 

In an age when budgets are tight and risks could lead to financial ruin, a business cash advance is a prudent funding tool for marketing efforts. By doing this, you're incorporating advanced analytics and metrics technologies that can give the business an opportunity to tap into certain demographics and markets.