How to Market your Business for Free
Every business owner wants their products or services to be in front of their target audience. Most business owners feel that to achieve this, a lot of money has to be spent. But fortunately, there are many ways businesses can market their products or services for free or little to nothing.
Without any doubt, you will agree that expensive ads don’t guarantee a successful marketing campaign. Your ability to understand the ideal advertising tactic for your business is what matters.
Hence, we will be considering 6 free ways to market your business that can generate massive leads for your business. These marketing ideas cost nothing but your time investment.
1. Social Media
Almost all businesses are on one or two social media platforms. Social media platforms are not just a place for fun. Businesses are now using it to promote their business.
You can establish a social media presence for your business without running ads or paying top influencers to help promote your business. It is one of the most valuable marketing tools presently. And they are all free to join.
It is not advisable to go create an account on all of the trending social media platforms. You first need to understand your target audience and choose a platform you know your target audience is actively present in large numbers. But Facebook is a must for every business.
Create a business account on your desired social platforms and start posting useful content that speaks to your target audience. With time, your posts will start getting engaging and more people will begin to notice your brand and start engaging with your content.
Be active, reply to comments, interact with your followers, and always like their comments. Don’t be too promotional. If your followers notice it, some will start withdrawing, and you will lose potential future customers for your business.
2. Email Marketing
If there is any free marketing tool you must leverage to capture new and existing customers’ attention, it is email marketing. The return on investment outperforms almost all other marketing channels.
Findings show that people check their email for possible messages at least three times a day. Fair enough, right?
With email, you don’t wait for your audiences to come to you like podcasts or blogs; you reach out to them even when they’re not expecting you.
The marketing tactic is free, elementary, and the easiest means to send promotional messages across to all your prospective customers at once.
Embrace email marketing if you are determined to run impressive marketing that will convert leads into sales.
If you don’t have an email list, you need to start building one right away. Getting subscribers is very easy. Just look for something of value to your target audience that you can give away in exchange for their email address.
Position it on your website as a pop-up telling people to subscribe to get a 10% or 15% discount on their first purchase or something more enticing.
The more subscribers you have, the more money you can make in the future. Start now by creating an account with MailChimp and start building up your email list. Sending emails twice a week is enough. Don’t overdo it and don’t over-promote, unless many will unsubscribe.
3. Word of Mouth Referral
Word-of-mouth referral is another way to market your business for free. It is such an essential tactic where you allow your established fan base to help promote your business for you.
It is one of the most credible ways to attract loyal customers. People trust items recommended to them by their close allies more than any other type of marketing.
You can create a reward program for referrals. It can be anything from a coupon code to a Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) offer.
So, whenever your customers patronize your business, a gentle (referral) reminder will do the trick. As far as the reward is enticing, your marketing is being taken care of.
4. Capitalize on Local Events
Local events are great places to meet new customers and expand your network. You just have to look for business events in your locality via Google. You can also use AllEvents.in for events in different categories.
Most business events always attract a lot of people from distributors to resellers, founders, investors, and potential customers. You will be amazed at the value you will get from local events in your city. So, start looking for local events in your city and start attending.
5. Guerilla Marketing
Have you ever seen branded art or plastering stickers with an aesthetic storefront display depicting a particular business brand around town?
If yes, that is a Guerilla Marketing tactic. It is very effective and usually aimed at promoting businesses with creativity and ingenuity in public places.
Guerilla marketing will help create strong brand awareness for your startup with well-designed and branded art depicting your business.
6. YouTube
Do you know that over 3 billion videos are played on YouTube daily? And this number is growing every day. You don’t need an expensive marketing budget before you can grow your business into a successful business establishment.
YouTube gives you a free platform to market your business with videos. You just need to put up video content that people will be interested in watching and relevant to your business.
Create a YouTube channel with your business name and start creating good videos that educate, entertain, and promote your products or services.
Share the video links on your social media pages, blog posts, with your email subscribers and WhatsApp contacts. If you can create interesting content that can go viral, you will get a massive load of leads for your business.
You will need to learn how to use keywords in your title, tags, and description so as to drive organic traffic searching with those keywords to your videos.
Conclusion
There are more than 6 ways to market your business for free. You just have to think outside the box and be creative. These free marketing strategies shared above might take time to start seeing results, but when they eventually do, be rest assured that the leads are genuine prospects interested in patronizing your business.
Have any suggestions or free marketing strategies you know? Please share with us in the comment.