There comes a time where campaigns are running smoothly, lead goals are being met and sometimes budgets are not being fully spent.

Rather than spending the money you’ve saved on beer or a company party, here are some fresh ideas for your security company that work and are inexpensive. We can’t say it enough: The security company with the biggest, most recognized brand wins over competitors any day. We see it time and time again; if you invest heavily getting end users in your service area to recognize your security company’s brand, you’ll see an increase in the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, guaranteed.

So, what are some inexpensive ideas for 2017?

One: Paper, Plastic or … Publicity?

Here in California you now have to bring your own bags to the grocery store or pay $0.10 per bag. You'll remember to always bring your bags with you, because if you don’t you’ll have to purchase new bags. So we convinced some of our clients to simply print their logo with their branded message and then hand them out for free at places such as the farmers market or other local events. Now, hundreds of people are reusing your bag every time they go to grocery store, guaranteed.

Two: Walking Billboards

We recently came up with the idea for one of our clients of creating cool looking swag — like hats, t-shirts and rubber bracelets — and combined the idea from No. 1 into a gift box that was given to each residential client that had their system installed. We knew the idea was a good one, but it surpassed even our expectations. Not only was the entire family more than happy to rock our client’s swag, but we saw an increase of great reviews within Google, and even better, families are taking pictures of themselves in the swag and posting it on Facebook and Instagram. Think of the last marketing campaign you did where it generated that type of a response. Crickets.

Three: Driving Billboards

Most of you already know that one of the top sources for incoming leads is your service vehicles. Get your vehicles wrapped today! Time and time again dealers will share the fact that many of their leads come in as a result of people in the community seeing their vehicles driving down the street. So make sure your vehicles communicate your messaging simply, and use striking colors to get more attention. We even have a client we convinced to wrap their service vehicles in bright pink colors. When is the last time you saw a pink security vehicle rolling down the street?

Four: Do It for Charity

We may sound like a broken record, but video, video, video. Videos are awesome when it comes to brand recognition. We recently ran a campaign with our client in which we created five simple videos in front of their building and vehicles with a simple message: For every like we get we’ll donate $1 to the local Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. We simply targeted on Facebook people in the client’s service areas, ages 32+, within a 40-mile radius of their office’s zip code and those who were homeowners. The amount of shares was more than 120, and we spent literally only $100 in the ad spend and were able to raise more than $1,200 for the Cub/Boy Scouts. Think of all the feel good emotions your local community will have toward your company, and guess who they’re going to call when it comes to their security needs?

Five: Riding Coattails

Finally, we didn’t believe this would work, but we figured anything is worth a shot as long as it brings results, right? We met with a local HVAC company, shared with them our local client’s security referral program and had little flyers that were affixed to thermostats after servicing with a message of “Happy with our service? You might want to consider using our partners to secure your home!” Within one week of these little guys going onto thermostats throughout Los Angeles, leads started to trickle in.

So there you have it: five simple, inexpensive, creative ideas that you can incorporate today to help increase your brand awareness.