Don’t have the fortune to spend on online marketing your budding business? No worries. Here are some low cost, high impact ways to attract attention and raise the profile of your business online.
- Make your business findable in online marketing directories
Let’s start with something that doesn’t cost you a thing. Get your business listed in all the relevant local business directories in order to improve the online visibility of your business.
When prioritizing which online listings to pursue, free-of-charge Google My Business (GMB) outpaces others as Google is still the Goliath of search engines. Other relevant directories that could increase your business exposure include Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Pages, White pages plus the many other local businesses listing online directories in your region. You can start with free listing and upgrade to premium one, as your business grows.
- Make blogging your online marketing strategy
It doesn’t cost you anything to put together some informative non-sales content on your blog page that can add value to your prospects and clients and promote your business socially. There are free blogging platforms, such as Blogger and WordPress.com, to maintain a professional appearance for your business branding and show off your business expertise.
Frequent and constant blogging significantly increases your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines and enables you to connect with your market to get feedback and provide customer service. Blog posts can generate some leads to your business. Guest blogging is also one of the best marketing tools to build authoritative backlinks to your blog and build your domain name.
- Embrace social media
Social Media Marketing(SMM) is an affordable advertising medium with easy to track campaigns, immediate traffic drives and tons of targeting options including age, likes, interests, location, income bracket and other demographics. Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest are powerful ways to express yourself and interact directly with your customers. It can even create devoted brand advocates and driving leads and sales. SMM plans like keyword research and competitive research brainstorm content ideas that suit your target audience.
Make sure you post consistently and offer valuable information which is ‘sticky’ using contents like social media images, videos, GIFs, infographics and more. Organic social media contents and boosting your top performing posts is one of the most inexpensive social media advertisement to reach maximum customers. Curating and linking to reliable outside sources through social media is yet another way of improving your business trust and reliability. You may even get some links in return.
- Email Newsletters
With over two hundred billion emails sent daily, it remains a lucrative and effective channel for marketing your business without ending up boring a hole in your business pocket. According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing brings in about 40 times more returns which is one of the highest Return On Investment(ROI) for any type of marketing. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and establishes direct contacts with your target customers. Highly engaging emails can drive traffic your website, generate qualified leads, gains you more loyal customers and more.
- Search Engine Optimization
Are you up against competition that has deep pockets? SEO could be your savior. Search Engine Optimization makes your business search engine friendly so that they can be found where they need to be found. Your content gets more credibility and visibility when it appears up on the first page of search engine result pages (SERP) using SEO. It is affordable and can be customized according to your requirement and make your website competes for the local market.
