5 Easy Ways to Advertise Your Small Business That Don’t Cost a Thing

• Updated on: 2020-09-03
• Read original article here

Ready to take your marketing plan up a notch? As a small business owner, you know that marketing is a business need – not a want – but where do you start?

There are countless ways to market your business, but sometimes it can come down to cost and, even more importantly, what you have time for. Here are some great (free!) places to start if you’re looking to market your business more.

Is there a day that any consumer doesn’t use Google for something? Especially if your target audience is on the hunt for a specific product or service that you can deliver for them, having a well-rounded Google My Business profile is not only beneficial but in today’s digital marketing world, it’s almost necessary.

Google My Business offers the following benefits and features for small business owners to amp up their online marketing presence:

Does your online marketing strategy involve social media? If it doesn’t, it really should.

Social media is a fantastic element to any small business’s digital marketing strategy, and can be tailored to your industry and your audience, while also allowing a substantial amount of room for creativity if you want it.

What’s important here to note is that you don’t need to be on every social media platform in order to make the most of your digital strategy. Instead, select the top two platforms that make the most sense for your business and audience.

Social media is GREAT because it is free – but there’s also a downside to this – it’s a saturated, noisy market. This means that almost every business is online competing for the attention of their ideal customer, which makes it harder for every business to get their message seen, heard and remembered.

If you have the budget, a great way to supplement your social media strategy is by putting a little money behind it for some social media advertising. The mix of both paid and organic is highly beneficial, with the option to boost your organic posts with just a little bit of money or go all-in with Facebook advertisements.

Give consumers a better understanding of what you do, how you are different from your competitors and even provide more value with informational and instructional content.

Blogging can also be beneficial in helping your business get seen on relevant Google searches. By creating content with key SEO keywords in mind (you know, the search terms that your ideal customer would use to find you), Google will begin to see that you are continually creating relevant, useful content and start to prioritize you in user search results.

Free advertising for small business marketing can be as simple as using your local directories. Though a little time-consuming, most local directories are free, allowing you the opportunity to list your business in the most appropriate categories and take advantage of the market’s growing interest in supporting local.

Don’t let your online marketing strategy depend on any one platform. While social media can be great, the ever-changing landscape of social media means that you are often at the mercy of new algorithms, which sometimes means your content doesn’t get in front of the right people.

Collecting your ideal customer’s email addresses allows you to access them with your most important messages when the timing is right, in a place where they are on a daily basis: their inbox.

It can be difficult to maintain a strong email marketing list without paid software to help you collect and manage your subscribers, but it’s possible. Whether or not you choose to subscribe to software is your choice, but at least developing the content of the email newsletter is free of charge since you can do that easily yourself!

Don’t have the time or energy to undertake online marketing? See how Outreach Digital Marketing can take care of all of your advertising needs.