Free Ways to Market Your Small Business to Build Capital
Advertising your business is serious business – it can cost a lot – sometimes more than what you’re currently making. However, there are a couple of ways you can promote your products or services for free in your local area – heck, even worldwide if you want.
You don’t need to take out a full-page colour ad in your local paper to let potential customers know that you’re open for business. With some savvy marketing, you can put your business on the business map without paying a penny, all the while building capital for your business, which you can then use to expand.
Here are the free ways to market your business:
Ensure that your website is well optimized.
Your website should be able to clearly explain what you do, be easy to find and navigate, and be attractive both for returning clients and visitors. This applies whether you’re targeting local or global customers. Look at the following things when building or revamping your website.
- The quality of your content.
- How goal-focused it is.
- How well it communicates and projects your brand identity.
- How easy your website is to navigate by your target audiences.
- Social media channel usage and integration.
- How search engine optimization (SEO) is.
- Mobile internet users.
Owning a website doesn’t have to be expensive – or even worth anything at all. There are powerful and free website creators online like Wix that allow anyone to build websites or e-commerce stores fast and easy.
Use email marketing software to boost sales.
Emailing is a fast, free, and efficient way to disseminate information across your captured audience (those who already did business with you.) With free services like Mailchimp lets you create a free account and use their templates to automate your email marketing efforts. Their service also allows free insights and tracking of all your newsletters.
Prioritize blogging.
It’s important to either have a blog on your website or a separate one. Blogs increase your chances of being noticed, encourages client interaction, boosts your ranking, and allows web crawlers to track your website and place it on search engines. High ranking from relevant contents and cross-linking puts your website on the page of search engine results. You may use a free account on WordPress to start blogging. WordPress can also be used for websites.
Be active on social media.
If your business isn’t already on social media, then you risk losing a lot of potential clients. The world has gone social, and if you hope to maximize your reach, you have to be in it too. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among others allow your business to have another virtual shopfront to showcase your products and services worldwide. There are free features embedded in these channels if you want to create ads or boost your ads. It is also one of many ways to improve your network of people that could help with your business.
Capitalize on word of mouth.
In relation to utilising blogging and social media sites, word of mouth is another great free way to market your business. But this is not easy. It relies heavily on the quality of your products and services, and how much effort you provide to customer satisfaction. If you keep your customers satisfied, you will gain loyal customers and they will promote your business to friends and families, giving you more sales and boosting branding. This takes a while, but this is the best way to establish a long lasting business.
After initial marketing success – what’s next?
After toiling over the marketing tactics above and creating a steady source of leads, maybe even a stream of clients, you should consider expanding your small business by gaining capital for your business either for renting a bigger place, hiring more workers, or purchasing new technologies.
What other free marketing tactics do you know? Share it with us!
