Market Your Business with Little or No Money

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As a small business owner, it can be incredibly frustrating trying to gain exposure for your business when you have a very small or nonexistent marketing budget and no idea where to start. Luckily, there’s a ton of free information on the internet these days. The only problem is sifting through it. We’ve saved you hours of surfing the web and compiled the top 4 online marketing strategies you can use to begin marketing and building awareness of your small business for free.

Before we go over marketing strategies, we want to make you aware of these few essential steps you should make sure you take before beginning marketing of any kind. Some of these do cost money, but are definitely necessary and important and can be completed on a small budget.

  • A logo (A good logo is scalable, timeless, memorable, appropriate, clean & clear)
  • Trademark your business name
  • Reserve the domain name you want to use

Once you’ve got these essentials in place, you’re ready to really begin!

The Importance of a Blog

No matter what type of product or service you provide, a blog should be an essential part of your marketing strategy. This is where you can answer relevant questions your audience may have regarding your product or service. It builds trust between you and your potential client and establishes you as an expert in your field. Then, when a person they need your product or service, they will turn to you – the expert. Check out How to Write a Blog Post that Converts Customers for more helpful tips and guidelines.

WordPress.org is a website where you can create a blog for free. It has built-in SEO, social media integration, and sharing capabilities to make blogging convenient and easy.

Marketing Your Business With Little or No Money

 

 

Utilize Free Business Listings

Free business listing sites like Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook are the top sites where consumers find, evaluate, and choose where to spend money. Womply research showed businesses who claim their free listings on various sites earn up to 78% more money. So, setting up a few free business listings can leverage you above your competitors without even spending a dime.

Growth Through Social Media

Social media may not seem very important, but Facebook and Instagram (organic platforms) are places where you can begin to build goodwill within your community, improve your search ranking, and generate more traffic to your website.  Start by posting relevant content that your audience can relate to and solves problems for them, and post it on a regular schedule. This helps you build trust and stay at the top of their mind so that when they need a solution to their problem – it’s you they’ll turn to.

Here are some social media guides to get you started:

The Small Business Guide to Social Media

The Best Ways to Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach

5 Essential Tips to Start a Facebook Page from Scratch

These guides are chock-full of tips and will help you get the most out of your social media platforms.

Promote Online Reviews

Online reviews can significantly impact your sales. This is because in the buyer’s journey, consumers look for feedback before making a purchase decision. Research from Womply showed that people spend up to 49% more money at businesses that take the time to reply to reviews. While many business owners balk at taking the time to reply to reviews, this is only good news for you. If you do take the time to reply, you’ll easily stand out from the competition.

Check out these guides to find out how to get the most out of your business reviews:

How to get Online Reviews

How to Respond to Negative Reviews

Remember – with any small business – the natural evolution of growth and change will eventually show your current marketing strategy’s inadequacy. As you begin to see these cracks in the road appear, take that leap into expanding your marketing strategy into paid advertising so you can continue to grow your business.

Ready to take the leap from free tactics to bigger and better marketing and more growth? Give us a call at 906 629-1802 today.

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