Small businesses often have a tight marketing budget to work with, which can make promoting your business a challenge. The good news is, there are plenty of ways for you to market yourself to your customers without spending any (or much) money.
Now as a business owner, you probably don’t have the time to research and identify these free marketing ideas, so we’ve taken care of that for you.
In this post, you’ll find a ton of free and low-budget ways to market your business.
1. Create a free Google My Business account
For local businesses especially, a Google Business Profile has become one of the most effective free marketing strategies available. This must-have piece of marketing collateralallows your business to show up on Google Maps, the local section of Google Search, and the right-side Knowledge Panel for branded searches.
2. Post (and engage) on social media
Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is a free way to grow your small business while expressing your brand’s personality and building trust with your audience. Create business accounts and participate in the big social media sites—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and more. This is something you can do whenever you have a few minutes to spare.
You can:
Promote your blog posts, which drive traffic to your website.
Directly dialogue with followers to express your brand voice and garner more engagement.
Run polls and request feedback.
Take excerpts from longer forms of content and create quick and informational posts that are easier to digest.
Whatever your motivation, make sure you are regularly active and proactive on the social media accounts you create. Think: consistency, community, collaboration, and commitment.
3. Tag people (and brands) on social media
Tagging your loyal customers, brand evangelists, or even neighboring companies and vendors on social media can broaden the organic reach of your business to a new potential audience, help you grow your following, and potentially even attain more clients. You should also encourage your followers to tag your social media handle or business location in their posts
4. Use hashtags!
Another free marketing tactic that can broaden your reach is to incorporate hashtags into your social media posts—on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok for sure but also for Facebook and LinkedIn.
Broad or trending hashtags can help you reinforce your brand identity, but they should not be the only hashtags you use. More specific hashtags (sort of like long-tail keywords) are good for when you’re providing resources or advice. Location-based hashtags are a must if you’re a local business. And don’t forget custom hashtags! Apply a mix of hashtag types in your posts so they can reach the people for whom they are meant.
5. Don’t sleep on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a major social media site that is often under-utilized. Don’t just add network connections and sign out; enter into dialogue with the connections you make, share your blog posts and offers, join and contribute to forums, and share others’ quality content.
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