Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Business
How can you promote your business to a broader audience without spending a ton of money? It may seem overwhelming, but all it takes is a strategy focused on low-cost promotional techniques. The digital realm empowers startups and small businesses with a wealth of promotional tools and platforms.
Digital marketing tools allow small and medium-scale companies to compete against larger rivals and conglomerates. It’s crucial to avoid getting intimidated by businesses spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on their marketing campaigns. Instead, it will help if you embrace creativity, consistency, and craft to sway search engine and social media algorithms in your favor.
Keep reading to explore low-cost promotional strategies that will work wonders at boosting your brand image and attracting new customers.
Table of Contents
1. Polish your Soft Skills
Leadership is a combination of soft and hard skills, such as problem-solving, analytical reasoning, communication, and academic learning. Polishing your soft skills will facilitate your entrepreneurial journey with robust communication and networking skills. These skills will help you with networking, finding investors, and building consumer loyalty with excellent customer service.
These soft skills will help you build relationships with your customers, employees, investors, business associates, and supply chain, partners. In the long run, your communication style will help promote your business with a vibrant community presence and word-of-mouth marketing. But, how can you polish your soft skills and become a savvy communicator?
Young entrepreneurs are advised to pursue an executive MBA to harness their soft skills and learn powerful self-assessment techniques. These self-assessment strategies allow professionals to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and overcome obstacles with resilient leadership mindsets. In recent years, EMBA jobs have grown exponentially, and entrepreneurs have much to gain with leadership programs.
For instance, an executive MBA allows business owners to embrace a global perspective to build an international clientele with extensive networking. The e-learning landscape makes it easier for entrepreneurs to balance business operations with higher education. It eliminates the barriers of the traditional classroom to create a flexible learning experience.
2. Blog with Consistency
A blog serves as the official mouthpiece of your website and brand to disseminate news, promotions and run creative campaigns. People love reading about topics that fascinate them, but a blog serves a far greater purpose than audience engagement. You see, blogs incorporate keywords that tie your website to an audience of search engine users looking for your products/services.
By creating a blog and posting with consistency, you can win over customers and search engine algorithms. However, stuffing a blog with keywords to build rankings is a fruitless endeavor. It’s crucial to maintain readability and present your audience with immersive, interactive, entertaining, and informative content. Ensure to cleverly incorporate high-ranking and long-tail keywords to increase website visibility and web page rankings.
Creating a blog is easy, and in 2021, it’s an absolute necessity to build domain authority and website visibility. It’s wise to develop a mix of content niches that you can explore on your blog. For instance, you can provide your readers a blend of informative whitepapers, entertaining articles, product reviews, and photo stories.
3. Video Marketing Campaigns
Video marketing is all the rage, for watching videos is much easier and more entertaining than reading a lengthy blog. People can watch videos on long commutes, tedious workdays, while having lunch, and before falling asleep. In short, people devour video content as it’s digestible and makes it easier to comprehend complex information.
We urge you to brim up your social media marketing campaigns with interactive and immersive videos. For instance, you can use videos to explain complicated shipping and delivery processes using animations. You can also use videos to share product tutorials or explain how your services offer competitive advantages.
Video campaigns hold the potential of getting viral when infused with creativity and originality. You can develop an excitingly unique concept to share the story behind your brand and capture a broader audience. Most entrepreneurs shy away from video marketing as they have minimal videography skills. You can experiment around with video shooting and editing or hire a videographer.
Video marketing offers superior ROIs and significant exposure as compared to pay-per-click campaigns and other promotional endeavors.
4. Promote User-Generated Content
Consumers are more likely to believe other consumers’ accounts of satisfactory experiences with your brand, products, or services. You see, consumers trust other consumers more than they trust the promotional gimmicks of a brand.
That’s a significant reason why word-of-mouth marketing can make or break the reputation of a business. So, how can you use this bond of trust between consumers to promote your brand?
It’s simple: promote your user-generated content as a stamp of approval from a happy, flourishing, and vibrant clientele. Actively ask your customers to share your products or testimonials on social media and use those images to create campaigns. You can use the content posted across Instagram stories, Facebook reviews, and Snapchat videos to create immersive campaigns.
User-generated content is highly effective at building trust and encouraging new customers to invest in your products/services.
5. List on Google My Business (GMB)
Is your local restaurant, hair salon, automotive repair shop, or retail store listed on GMB? If not, how do you expect your customers to find you?
Google search is a popular tool people rely on to find credible businesses in their proximity. It offers all the details needed to perform one’s research and make an informed decision quickly. For instance, a GMB listing includes links to the website, social media platforms. It offers a map address for easy navigation.
GMB also allows customers to share their reviews, which creates an aura of transparency for new customers. Be sure to add high-definition imagery of your outlet, window displays, and team to build trust and encourage new customers.
6. Referrals & Recommendations
Here’s an easy trick to acquiring new customers: incentivize your existing customers to refer your brand to their friends and family. You can incentivize your customers with discount vouchers, loyalty cards, or special treats. It all comes down to the right incentive that would encourage them to bring you more customers.
Conclusion
Contrary to what most business owners believe, marketing isn’t about spending tons and tons of money. Instead, it’s about getting creative with the resources you have and using them to maximize exposure. All entrepreneurs must work within their means and resources and find lucrative mediums to promote their brands.
Search engine optimization (SEO) holds great significance, alongside creativity, consistency, and communication. Customers connect with brands to embrace products and services that offer value for money and life quality. It will be best to use the right promotional tools to communicate with your customers and build trust and loyalty.
