Don’t have thousands of pounds to spend on your small business? Not to worry. You really don’t need to be a big brand with a huge budget to market your business to new customers. There are lots of budget-friendly ways to promote your brand, attract potential customers, and entice them to buy from you.
In this post, we’ll share six ideas you can implement right away without having to spend huge amounts of money. Some may take a bit more effort so give yourself time to do them right to ensure you get the results you want.
1. Start a blog for your business
Blogging can be an inexpensive way to share information and advice, showcase your expertise, and attract new customers to your business. If you already have a website, the next step is to get a good understanding of your customers’ questions relating to your business and industry and then write content that answers those questions.
If you’re not sure how to get started with blogging or what to write about, the following articles have all the information you need:
2. Create engaging and instructional videos
Video content is not only extremely valuable, but it also gets more attention than regular written content. While some brands spend lots of money getting professional videos produced, that doesn’t mean you have to. You can get great results even if you shoot a video with your smartphone.
If you’re new to video marketing, read our articles to learn more about how to plan your first video and the types of videos you can create to engage your audience.
Now, if you don’t feel up to the task or would rather have someone else do it for you, then hire a freelancer or a film student to shoot and edit your video. Once it’s ready, publish it on YouTube to ensure it reaches a wider audience. We’d also recommend optimising it, so it shows up more often and at the top of the search results when people search for keywords related to your video. Here are some tips to help you get started with optimising a YouTube video.
3. Create infographics and other types of visual content
Infographics get lots of attention because they’re easy to digest and people love to share them. This makes them an effective tool to get eyes on your business, attract visitors, and have more people linking to your site. And when lots people link to your site, Google and other search engines count it as a recommendation, so you’re more likely to show up at the top of the search results when people search for your topics, business or industry.
Worried you don’t have the skills to design images or infographics, or the budget to pay a professional to do it for you? You shouldn’t because there are many free and easy to use tools for creating visual content. Here are 13 visual content creation tools you can use to create images, infographics, presentations, screenshots, and more.
You can also check out Visual.ly for inspiration. Browse through the example to see what types of infographics might work for your business.
4. Write guest posts
Blogging is a fantastic strategy to attract new customers to your business. While you can blog on your own space, you can also try publishing content on other blogs and business publications that you know your target audience is reading. This is called guest blogging and it works because the demand for valuable, actionable, interesting content is insatiable.
To get started with guest blogging, you’ll need to find relevant blogs, talk to editors about what their readers want to see, and then create engaging content that educates and engages that readership. Read this post to learn more about guest blogging, how to find blogs you can contribute to and how to make your pitch to blog owners.
5. Run a webinar
If you’re not familiar with webinars, they’re video workshops or events hosted online that cover a specific topic. You’ve probably seen invites for webinars in lots of places, including social media and Google search results. They’re popular because they work at attracting people who are genuinely interested in what the host has to say. Also, people attending webinars are usually more engaged and ready to act.
What do you need to run a webinar? Start by picking a topic that you know will be popular with your audience. It can be anything from strategies to improve a certain aspect of life or business to ways to solve specific problems that your audience is dealing with. Next, make sure to promote your workshop on your blog, social media, via email, and anywhere else you know your prospects spend time online. Read this post for a complete step-by-step guide to running a great webinar.
6. Offer free consultations
Another low-budget tactic to promote your offering and guide prospects toward your business is to offer free consultations. The reason this works is that it can help build trust and reassure people who are on the fence about whether to buy your products or services.
Now, while you can show prospects how your business can fulfil their wants and needs, make sure you don’t pressure them into buying. The reason you’re doing this is to get them interested in your offering by providing practical advice and ideas to help them solve a problem. Then it’s up to them to make the decision to buy from you.
Wrapping up
Promoting your small business online doesn’t need to be costly. You can be successful at attracting new customers even if you don’t have thousands of pounds to spend on advertising or other expensive marketing tactics.
If you implement these tactics and focus on providing valuable, actionable advice and resources to your audience, word will spread about your business and you’ll be one step closer to attracting potential customers who are ready to buy from you.
The post Six ways to promote your business on a shoestring budget appeared first on Better business online: Tips, insight and advice.