Cheap advertising ideas for small businesses in New Zealand

The cheapest advertising for a small business in New Zealand is a complete Google Business Profile, a shop front and a van that say what you do, and asking every happy customer for a review, all of which cost nothing. After that, the best value paid options are a poster or counter card in a business your customers already visit, a junior team sponsorship, and a small Google Ads budget for anything people search for in a hurry. Here are eighteen ideas, sorted by what they cost.

Every one of these has been used by a real local business. None of them needs an agency. Pick a few, not all of them, and read the last section before you start.

Free

A complete Google Business Profile

The panel that appears when somebody searches your name or "plumber near me". Fill in every field, add twenty photos from your phone, keep the hours right, and post something once a month. A complete profile with recent photos outranks a bare one, and for "near me" searches it matters more than your website. Costs nothing. Suits every business with an address or a service area.

Asking for reviews

Most happy customers would leave a review if asked, and almost nobody asks. Text the link after every job or sale. Ten reviews in three months changes how you look in a search result. Costs nothing but the habit. Suits anybody, especially trades, health and hospitality.

The van and the shop front

If your van does not say what you do and where you work, in type readable from the next lane, you are paying for a vehicle and getting no advertising from it. Same for the shop front: what you do, in words, not just the name. A signwriter can do the van for a few hundred dollars, which is the only cost. Suits anybody who drives to jobs or has a street frontage.

Community Facebook groups

Every town and suburb in New Zealand has one, and "can anyone recommend a good electrician" is posted in them every day. Be a member, answer questions helpfully, and let your customers recommend you there. Do not post advertisements; the group will remove them. Free. Suits trades, home services and anything people ask for recommendations on.

A referral offer

"Refer a friend and you both get $25 off" costs you nothing until it works. Put it on the invoice, the receipt and the counter. Suits any business with repeat or word-of-mouth customers: salons, gyms, cleaners, lawn care, tutors.

Cross-promotion with a neighbouring business

The cafe puts the florist's card by the till; the florist puts the cafe's menu in the window. Costs nothing, takes one conversation. Suits any two businesses that share customers and do not compete.

The school newsletter

Most schools have a newsletter with a community notices section, and many will include a local business for free or for a small donation. Parents read it every week. Suits anything families buy: swim lessons, tutoring, takeaways, family photography, orthodontics.

An email list

Collect email addresses at the counter or on the website and send one useful message a month. An offer, a seasonal reminder, a new product. Free on the basic plan of any email tool. Suits any business with customers who come back: retail, hospitality, beauty, vets, mechanics.

Under $100

A noticeboard card

The supermarket, the dairy, the library and the community hall all have a noticeboard, and people still read them. A printed card costs a few dollars, and some boards charge a small fee. Suits home services, lessons, pet care, and anything sold to the neighbourhood.

Community paper classifieds

A classified in the local community paper costs from a few tens of dollars. Readership skews older and local, which is exactly right for gardening, home help, health, funerals and real estate. Run it for a month before judging.

A QR code that counts

A QR code on anything you print, pointed at your booking page or your phone number, costs nothing to make, and the free versions count scans. That turns a poster from a guess into a number. Suits everybody.

Flyers in the right letterboxes

A thousand flyers cost a couple of hundred dollars to print, and delivering them yourself on a Sunday is free. Response is small, so it only works when one job is worth a lot: a roof, a heat pump, a kitchen, a landscaping job. Pick the streets, not the whole suburb.

A talk at the business association

Most towns have a business association or a chamber that runs breakfasts and evening events, and they are always short of speakers. Twenty minutes on something useful, in your area of expertise, puts you in front of fifty local business owners for the price of a coffee. Suits accountants, lawyers, insurance and mortgage advisers, IT, marketing, and any trade that works for other businesses.

Under $500 a month

A poster or counter card where your customers already are

An electrician's customer is standing in a lighting store. A physio's is in a gym. A mortgage adviser's is in the real estate office. A poster or counter card in that business puts you in front of the right person at the moment they are deciding, which is the whole game in local advertising. We run a marketplace for local advertising space: on Pritty Ghood local businesses list their windows, counters and screens, you book online, and the price shown is the price you pay with fees already in it. Listings run from about $55 a week. Find the right kind of business for your trade at /advertise. Suits any business whose customers visit a particular kind of shop or office.

Sponsoring a junior team

Your name on the shirts of an under-11 rugby team, or a sign on the fence at the home ground, is seen by the same few hundred families every Saturday for a season. Junior team packages start from a few hundred dollars a season, which is one of the best value placements there is. Our guide to sponsoring a local club has the costs and what to ask for. Suits any family-facing business, and anything sold to the parents: real estate, mortgages, cars, home services.

A small Google Ads budget for urgent searches

If people search for you at the moment they need you, blocked drain, lost keys, broken tooth, dead battery, a few hundred dollars a month in Google Ads puts you at the top when they do. Track calls, not clicks, or you will not know whether it worked. Suits plumbers, locksmiths, dentists, mechanics, glaziers and anybody else with an emergency service. Suits nobody whose customers do not search.

A market stall

A stall at the Saturday market costs from a few tens of dollars a week and puts you and your product in front of hundreds of local people who are there to buy. Suits food, plants, crafts, anything you can sample or demonstrate, and services that want faces: a physio doing free posture checks, a photographer with a portfolio on the table.

A boosted post to your own district

A Facebook or Instagram post boosted to a five kilometre radius costs from a few dollars a day and is good at putting a picture of your work in front of local people. It is weak at catching somebody ready to buy today. Suits cafes, retail, events, fitness and anything visual. Judge it by enquiries, not by how many people it "reached".

Pick three

Do not do all eighteen. Do the free ones that apply to you this week, because there is no reason not to. Then pick one paid idea where your customers actually are, give it the whole budget, and run it for eight weeks with something that counts: a QR code, a mention-this offer, or simply asking everybody where they heard about you. If it brought in more than it cost, keep it and add a second. If it did not, swap it for the next one on the list. Our guide to what local advertising costs has price ranges for each of these, and the full guide to advertising a small business compares the channels in more detail.