Growing your business will always be an integral of your to-do list, whether you are already established or still at the start. It’s a good thing that you don’t have to break the bank to market your small business, and it does not require much time.
Whether you prefer to market your business or be free or willing to put in a few dollars, here are some tips that you can use for your small business marketing.
- Free business listings
This is probably the easiest marketing tip for small businesses. You can take advantage of this to establish their presence on Google, Trustpilot, Yelp, and other review sites. You can claim free business listings with these sites. Some common platforms are Google My Business, Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, etc.
With claiming listings, you can also be more effective by including menu items, pictures, menu items, contact info, etc.
- Get business cards
There’s never the right place or time to meet a prospect. It can happen anywhere, that’s why you need your business card to always be with you. You don’t need just one or two, you should have a lot of them, especially if you are attending trade conferences.
Thankfully, it’s easy and cheap to create business cards now with numerous available sites. Some of the things that you have to pay attention to are the price, turnaround time of the website, customization options, and customer service support. After all of this, decide what you will have on your card but include your email address and website.
- Increase your presence on social media
This is the most popular marketing tip for small businesses. You can easily open a business profile on different social media networks and put your works out. Some social media networks to try are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Your website content should be targeted
The content that you create on your website has to be in on the first page of the Google search engine result page. There are many technicalities to make this, but having a good SEO strategy that puts you in the top 10 search results makes you more visible and gives you organic traffic.
- Develop your email list
While you do your marketing with social media and search engines, you are having other companies send prospects your way. Think of an email list as their point of arrival. All you need to do is offer a strong proposition to convince your prospects, and you will get their emails with ease
- Make use of video content
People now commit much of their time watching videos than they did before. So, it would help if you take advantage of this as a small business. Take your time to create more video content that relates to your business. Gladly, there are different types of video content that you can create. A typical example is a how-to video. You can show people how to do something relating to your business, or how to use your product, etc. Videos will give you more traffic and get more awareness for your brand.
- Use paid advertising options
While advertising your small business for free is necessary to save costs, using paid advertising options is also essential as it opens your small business to more customers. However, instead of just jumping into it, you might want to learn about the different platforms and how they work and how much returns you will get from it. With the right advertising medium, you can put your business out before the right people, and before more of them.
- Start a referral program
A referral program is one of the ideal marketing tips for small businesses. This is because you will have more people talking about your business and marketing to other people while you give them a little commission for every sale that comes through them. This is also known as an affiliate marketing program.
Another way to make people refer to your business is by offering your customers a discount on their future buys for the people that they refer to and make successful buys from your business.
- Host social media contests
Organizing a social media contest and having numerous people participate in it is a great way to build awareness for your brand. You can use a hashtag to make it trendy and open to more people.
Conclusion
Marketing as a small business is not as difficult as it might appear, and having a low budget shouldn’t be a deterrent to having good marketing. Most of the ideas in this article require little to no budget to run and are very effective.
Also Read: Steps to take your business online