Marketing on a small budget: a Help Barter playbook

You do not need a big budget to market a small business. You need skills, content, attention and partners — and Help Barter lets you trade for all four. Here is a simple plan.

Week 1: get set up

• Create your account and finish your profile — you start with 200 Time Coins.
• Write your skills honestly. What you can do for others is what pays for what you need.
• Switch on the boards you want to appear on in Help Settings.

Week 2: get the skills you lack

Use Ask for Help for the gaps in your marketing:

• A clearer tagline.
• Better product photos.
• A review of your website's home page.

Earn the coins back on Offer Help by helping others with what you are good at.

Week 3: build attention

• Join a Group Rotation Works group of people in a similar field. Every day you engage with their posts and they engage with yours — and completed rotations pay Time Coins.
• Do a Website Traffic Generator challenge or two: it pays coins, and it shows you how other businesses present themselves.

Week 4: find partners

Create a Business Listing, then put a card on Business Cross-Promotion. Partner with a business whose customers are like yours, and promote each other.

Keep going

• Publish a Featured Post every month answering a question your customers ask.
• Use the Store Coins that come with Premium or Elite on a Coupon Listing or a Featured Ad when you have an offer.
• Check the leaderboard — every week the top contender in each Exchange Place category wins 2,000 Time Coins, and signing in seven days in a row pays 400.

The principle

Every hour you give on Help Barter comes back as something your business needs. That is marketing paid for in time.

Start with Getting started.