Are you starting a business on a shoestring or need ways to stretch your small business marketing budget? Marketing a business doesn’t have to cost a lot. Small businesses often have a tight marketing budget to work with, which can make promoting your business a challenge. The good news is, there are plenty of ways for you to market yourself to your customers without spending any (or much) money.
Now as a business owner, you probably don’t have the time to research and identify these free marketing ideas, so we’ve taken care of that for you.
In this post, you’ll find a ton of free and low-budget ways to market your business:
- Create a free Google My Business account:
- For local businesses especially, a Google Business Profile has become one of the most effective free marketing strategies available. This free listing allows your business to show up on Google Maps, the local section of Google Search, and the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches.
- But in order for your Business Profile to show up higher on Google Maps or local results, you need to optimize your Business Profile, and in order to optimize it, you need to have verified ownership of it—which is done through your Google My Business account.
- Post (and engage) on social media & Tag People(Brands):
- Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is a free way to grow your small business while expressing your brand’s personality and building trust with your audience. Create business accounts and participate in the big social media sites—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and more. This is something you can do whenever you have a few minutes to spare.
- Whatever your motivation, make sure you are regularly active and proactive on the social media accounts you create. Think consistency, community, collaboration, and commitment.
- Tagging your loyal customers, brand evangelists, or even neighboring companies and vendors on social media can broaden the organic reach of your business to a new potential audience, help you grow your following, and potentially even attain more clients.
- LinkedIn is a major social media site that is often under-utilized. Don’t just add network connections and sign out; enter into dialogue with the connections you make, share your blog posts and offers, join and contribute to forums, and share others’ quality content.
- Local SEO: Local SEO is free, but it can take some time, so start now and keep working; the benefits over time can be huge. Here are some local SEO must-dos:
- Add location-based keywords (think: “Portland bakery”) to the titles, headings, and body content of your main website pages.
- Get listed in online directories, making sure your information is identical across platforms.
- Publish pages or blog posts specific to the neighborhoods you serve.
3. Develop an email marketing plan:
Email marketing is a great way to get new visitors engaged with your business, as well as maintain relationships with your existing customers. And though email marketing isn’t new, it’s still one of the most reliable ways to achieve a strong return on your marketing investment.
- Publish great content:
Content marketing, if done with care, is a highly effective tactic that doesn’t require a huge budget. Not only does this serve to demonstrate your authority, expertise, and genuine desire to benefit your audience; but also, Google prioritizes high-quality content that best answers the questions its users are asking. So it makes your website more visible on Google and brings in more free traffic.
- Run a Facebook campaign:
If you only have a tiny advertising budget, it might still be enough to run some Facebook ads! The cost per click for Facebook advertising can be very low.
Here are some resources to help you get started with your first Facebook ad campaign, depending on what type of business you’re running:
- Facebook Ecommerce: The Complete Beginner’s Guide
- Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Ads for Entrepreneurs
- Beginner’s Guide to B2B Facebook Advertising
