20 Tips on How to Promote Your Small Business for Free
If you want to promote your business effectively, then consider establishing an online presence. Learn how to reach your target audience without extra costs in this article.
While advertising on Facebook, Instagram or Google can be effective, it’s important to not rely solely on paid ads. In this post, we’ll share 20 highly effective ways on how you can promote your small business. Methods include search engine optimization (SEO), leveraging social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, maximizing your online directory listings and engaging with your local community through events, sponsorships and the press.
Don’t miss out on the following tips in order to stand out from your competitors and reach new customers!
Tip #20 – Create and Verify Your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is essential for your business to appear in Google Maps results, the local section of Google search results and the right-side knowledge panel when someone searches for your business name and location. As Google becomes more location-focused, your free business profile is becoming increasingly important. To leverage your business profile and promote your business to potential customers, you need to verify ownership through your business account. Once you have verified ownership, you can optimize your listing for higher visibility in terms of search results and relevant searches.
Tip #19 – Insert Calls-to-Action in Your Email Signatures
The daily volume of sent and received emails continues to surge, with last year’s average being around 333 billion per day. It is predicted that this number will rise to approximately 376 billion per day by 2025. Emails present a significant opportunity for promotion, but you do not have to rely on traditional email signatures to make the most of them.
Once you start seeing email signatures as marketing assets, they can become powerful tools for introducing your products or services to potential customers. To fully utilize email calls-to-action (CTAs), the best approach is to offer some kind of lead magnet or free offer that will interest your target audience and motivate them to move forward in your funnel.
Tip #18 – Get Your Product Featured on Review Blog Posts
If you’re in e-commerce, using a blogger outreach campaign can be an effective way to generate product reviews, which can help spread awareness and increase website visitors and sales. Rather than waiting for reviews to happen organically, proactively reaching out to bloggers can get the ball rolling. Offer to send them your new products for free in exchange for an honest review. With an excellent product, you can expect positive reviews that will generate buzz and attract new customers.
Tip #17 – Create a Blog
Content creation is a critical factor in driving SEO, to the extent that it warrants its own category as a promotional strategy (which we’ll discuss further in Tip #3). A business blog should not be treated as a personal one. While it’s acceptable to create some posts about company milestones and events, a successful business blog should primarily produce informative content written in your brand’s unique voice that addresses the questions and topics your ideal customers are searching for on Google.
Tip #16 – Promote Your Small Business With Affiliates
One way to go beyond product reviews and expand your product promotion is by establishing an affiliate program. This type of marketing provides an incentive for other people to generate traffic to your business by offering them a commission for every sale they refer to, similar to referral programs. However, it can be challenging to find your first affiliates if your brand doesn’t have widespread recognition.
To address this challenge, consider launching an outreach campaign to recruit your first few affiliates. When searching for potential affiliates, look for those who have an active and engaged audience and are already writing about your industry. By partnering with such affiliates, you can benefit from their reach and influence to drive traffic to your business and generate sales.
Tip #15 – Ask For Reviews
According to the Local Consumer Review Survey conducted by BrightLocal, 76% of people “always” or “regularly” read online reviews for local businesses. Reviews play a crucial role in building trust and credibility for your business, and they hold significant weight in the eyes of potential customers.
In addition, featuring reviews on your home and about pages can also boost your search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your website. This is because search engines value customer reviews and consider them a strong indicator of a business’ reputation and credibility. By featuring reviews on your website, you can demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction and improve your search engine visibility, ultimately leading to increased website traffic and potential sales.
Tip #14 – Focus on Email Marketing
As a small business, utilizing email marketing is an effective method to both acquire and retain customers. One way to gain subscribers is by including an option for potential customers to sign up for your email list on your social media profiles or e-commerce website. This allows you to establish a direct line of communication with interested individuals, allowing you to provide them with targeted content and promotional offers to help drive engagement and sales.
After potential customers have opted in, you can use email marketing to send them targeted promotions, product launch announcements and valuable content. This ongoing communication helps establish a relationship between your brand and your target market, which can ultimately lead to increased sales and brand loyalty.
Tip #13 – Share Your Content
If you’ve established a business blog (as mentioned in Tip #17), then you’re able to showcase your business’ expertise, approachability and dedication to helping your target audience. A blog is a powerful promotional tool, however, simply publishing posts is not enough. To maximize your blog’s reach and impact, it’s important to actively promote your content through various channels such as social media and email newsletters. You can even turn your blog posts into downloadable guides to capture leads and build your audience.
Furthermore, creating shareable content with valuable insights and practical tips can increase the chances of other credible websites referencing and linking back to your website on their platforms, thereby amplifying your brand’s visibility and reach.
Tip #12 – Get The Press Talking About You
Rather than hiring a PR company, businesses can take charge of their own publicity by proactively seeking out opportunities to share their unique story or interesting products with the world. You can promote your business by reaching out to relevant bloggers and local news sources that cover similar businesses. With press releases, companies can share their updates and achievements while generating buzz around their brand. If your business has a particularly engaging story, you may even be able to secure a featured write-up in your local newspaper, which can greatly enhance your visibility and credibility within your community to attract prospective customers.
Tip #11 – Join an Online Community
Joining an online community can be incredibly valuable for businesses. It provides an opportunity to engage with potential customers, build relationships and increase brand visibility. Online communities also offer a platform to network with other businesses and gain valuable insights into the needs, preferences and pain points of your target audience. By participating in online discussions and sharing valuable content, businesses can establish themselves as trusted authorities in their niche and attract new customers. Overall, joining an online community is a strategy that can lead to increased sales, improved marketing and long-term success.
Tip #10 – Consider Influencer Marketing
When it comes to promoting your brand, a shoutout on social media from the right influencer can go a long way. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub’s benchmark report, over 83% of survey respondents believe influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing. Our tip is to look for nano-influencers or micro-influencers on platforms where your target audience is the most active.
These influencers have smaller audiences and are less expensive to work with, but their influence can drive more engagement. Reach out to those whose audiences would be interested in your product and ask if the product can be featured in a post. Make sure to be aligned in terms of expectations with them before sending them your product for free, and you may find that a simple mention on social media can be just as effective as writing a guest post or asking for reviews.
Tip #9 – Attend Local Trade Shows or Local Events
Attending a trade show can be a good option for small businesses looking to sell products to a national audience or retailers. However, before investing in your own booth, you may want to consider attending as a visitor to assess the benefits. If you have a good relationship with a company that is already exhibiting, they may even allow you to hang out at their booth and learn from the experience, as well as promote your business for free. You can also collect contact information while you’re at the show to include in your email marketing efforts.
Tip #8 – Create Local Listings
To increase your online presence, it’s important to create business listings on major directories. The benefit of doing this is that smaller directories typically pull data from these larger directories, so you can increase the visibility of your local business across multiple platforms. Start with the following free directories, though they also offer paid options for more advanced features:
- Yelp
- Niche directories relevant to your industry
- TripAdvisor
- Angie’s List
- Better Business Bureau
- Glassdoor
- Foursquare
- Yellow/White Pages
- Bing
Tip #7 – Monitor and Respond to Customer Reviews
Online directories enable users to add listings, which means that your business might be listed even if you didn’t create the listing. It’s essential to claim your listings whenever you can and regularly monitor these sites to respond to reviews. Responding to reviews presents an opportunity to promote your business. It enables you to handle negative reviews and even convert them into positive ones. Additionally, how you respond to reviews, whether they are positive or negative, can show potential customers your brand’s values and what it’s like to do business with you.
Tip #6 – Optimize Your Local Listing
Creating a business listing is only the first step since optimizing it is just as important. By completing all the necessary fields, adding photos and collecting reviews, you can enhance the appeal of your business and outrank competitors in searches. Consistency across all listings is crucial, ensuring that the information matches that of your website. Any discrepancies may impact your business’s credibility. Regularly monitoring your listing is also necessary to correct any inaccuracies that may occur when listings are auto-populated.
Tip #5 – Promote Your Business With Free or Discounted Products/Services
Providing a complimentary or discounted item can attract prospective customers effectively. In fact, it can be worthwhile to accept even a loss to gain a larger market share, depending on your business model. Implementing this approach can yield numerous benefits such as generating leads, driving sales and increasing referrals.
Tip #4 – Host a Webinar or Presentation
Hosting a presentation or webinar can be a great way to market your local business. By sharing your expertise, you can establish yourself as an authority in your industry and build trust with potential customers. You can also use this opportunity to promote your products or services and showcase what sets your business apart from competitors. Additionally, presentations and webinars can help you expand your reach beyond your local community, as they can be attended online by people located anywhere. By recording and sharing your presentation or webinar afterwards, you can continue to generate leads and build your brand’s visibility.
Tip #3 – Create a Website
In today’s digital age, having a website is crucial for small businesses looking to establish a strong online presence. For small business owners, a website provides an important platform to showcase their products or services, connect with existing customers and build their brand identity. In addition, having a website that looks professional and is easy to navigate can instill trust and confidence in potential customers, which can ultimately lead to more sales.
Local businesses can also share their story and build a brand identity by featuring their mission statement, history and values. This allows businesses to connect with their customers on a deeper level and establish a loyal following. Lastly, a website allows businesses to collect valuable data about their customers through analytics. This data can be used to scale up digital marketing strategies such as targeted advertising or email marketing campaigns.
Tip #2 – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
While promoting your business is important, there is a distinct difference between promoting it yourself and having Google promote it. SEO involves aligning your business with Google’s ranking algorithm, which uses machine learning (ML) and user behavior to produce accurate and high-quality search results. Thus, optimizing for search engines means essentially optimizing for searchers who are seeking what your business has to offer.
Moreover, SEO is not a single tactic, but rather a combination of tactics that work together to improve your ranking. Google’s excellent location-based results mean that even small businesses have the opportunity to appear on the first page of search results without spending a significant amount of money.
Effective SEO strategies for promoting your business can include incorporating relevant keywords based on your industry and location into specific areas of your website, creating original and high-quality content regularly accompanied by tagged images and ensuring that your website maintains fast page load speeds and robust security measures.
Tip #1 – Promote Your Business on Social Media Platforms
Promoting your local business on social media platforms will offer you almost endless marketing benefits.
With approximately 4.7 billion social media users from around the world, your target audience is likely to be active on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. You can create social media campaigns that showcase your products or services, share customer reviews and testimonials and offer special promotions or discounts. Social media also provides an opportunity to build a community around your brand by sharing relevant content and engaging with your audience through comments and direct messages. Additionally, platforms offer powerful advertising tools that allow you to target specific demographics and interests, further increasing the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Here are some tips on getting started with social media:
- Generate relevant visual content related to your niche
- Utilize high-quality images or videos
- Encourage customer participation
- Make use of trending hashtags and current events
Conclusion
We hope this article provided valuable insights on promoting your business using cost-effective methods. If you need assistance finding the right marketing strategies, contact us today! Here at Find Your Audience, we provide expert guidance on growing your business online.
