15 Ways to Promote Your Small Business Online For Free

Small businesses don’t have much funds for online promotions. Online marketing is necessary, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune on it. 

Paid promotions aren’t the only way; here are the top ways for your small business digital marketing that are free. 

List On Popular Directories

There are various online directories that people use to find online businesses. Moreover, people even use Google to find the businesses, then these directories rank in top positions, showing the list of top relevant businesses to your query. Hence, online directories can help you generate traffic to your business website or physical store. 

You can use Google to find the directories for your niche. Most of the online directories allow you to make free profiles. So, use the online directories to spread the word about your brand online and drive customers to your business. 

Build Topical Authority with Content

Content has many benefits for online marketing, and whatever your strategy is, you’ll need content for sure. As you know your business in and out, you can create rich content for your business. You may consider the blogs, landing pages, infographics, podcasts, etc., to build the authority and relevance for your business keywords.

People who don’t know your business will come around when they search the relevant terms and find your business providing solutions to their pain points. 

So, create quality content for your business and share it across various platforms to drive the relevant traffic to your business.

Do Video Marketing On YouTube

YouTube is the #1 video search engine, and it allows you to share your videos for free. People like the video content more than any other format because it is easy to grasp and remember. Hence, it will be beneficial if you create the content in the format your target customers like. You can create informational, promotional, announcements, and review videos to educate, invite, and convert your customers. YouTube is free of cost, and you can create decent videos even with your phones. Make sure you avoid being over promotional and focus on shared value instead.

Repurpose Content

Initially, when you create content, you’ll have a plethora of ideas. But after creating much content, you have to struggle to find the content ideas. There is a solution to this. You continue your research but repurpose your existing content to maintain your content consistency across the platforms. 

You can turn a blog into a video and promote that on YouTube and other video-sharing platforms. 

Make a blog on the basis of a video and publish it on your site or some other website as a guest author. Moreover, you can make compact content for your social posts through your existing blogs and videos. This way, you can leverage the potential results from a single content idea. 

You can generate significant traffic only by repurposing your content. 

Create Your Email List

Email marketing is one of the underrated but effective online marketing techniques. You can do email marketing for free, although you need an email list first. Your email marketing will fail if you send emails to random people who aren’t interested in receiving your emails.

Hence, you need to create your own email list of the people who want to have your emails. 

You can add a lead generation form on your site to collect the emails of your customers. Ask your customers to sign up for your newsletter to receive the latest updates. You must offer something like freebies or discounts to encourage the customers to share their email with you.

As your whole list includes the people interested in receiving your email, it will ensure the success of your email campaigns and the accomplishment of your business goals.

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing can boost your online sales. All you have to do is plan a referral program on your site, in which your customers will refer your business to their friends. You may offer some discount or cashback to your customer on the successful purchase of his friend on your site. Moreover, you should also give something to the new user as well like some discount or brand credits. This way, you can make a chain of referrals and increase your sales. 

Make sure you offer the best quality products or services, so people happily recommend your business to their friends or family. No one refers to a bad product, so make sure you prioritize the best customer experience. 

Giveaways

Yes! Giveaways are not free, but it doesn’t cost you much, and you can do wonders with giveaways. However, you need to make sure you do it in the right way. Make sure your giveaways only attract the attention of your customers only. When you put extravagant things on the table for giveaways, it intrigues the people that aren’t your target audience. Your reach to an irrelevant audience won’t be fruitful. So, offer something that only attracts your target audience’s attention and encourages them to participate in your campaign to win the giveaways. 

Few giveaways can generate significant traction on your site. So, do the giveaways and add a booster to your marketing results.

Podcasts

Podcasts are one of the free mediums that you can use to market your business. There are several podcasts on the internet; you just need to find the ones related to your niche, and here you go. Mostly, podcasts need guests, and you may go live on podcasts to share your business knowledge and subtly promote your business.

Co-marketing

Co-marketing is partnering with other businesses to promote your business to their audience. It’s a two-way thing; when other businesses promote your business, you’ll also recommend their business to your audience. It is a great way to extend your brand reach to a vast audience. 

However, you need to make sure that the business you are partnering with has your target audience as customers. 

Moreover, the business shouldn’t be your competitor. For example, you have a clothing business, then you can partner with a shoe business to promote your apparel to their customers. Whereas, if you partner with a construction or finance business, then it’s fruitless, no matter how big the organization is.

Businesses easily agree to the marketing partnership because there is mutual benefit. So, reach out to brands for co-marketing and roll in new customers.

Do Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is for increasing your audience exposure. In guest blogging, you write the blogs for other websites, and as a credit, you get a link back. This credit link or backlink allows the users to click and visit your business. It is called referral traffic. 

Alongside the increased traffic and business opportunities, backlinks escalate your domain authority and rankings in the search results. Hence, you get multiple benefits with guest posting.

However, make sure you do guest blogging for the relevant websites to have your potential customers as referral traffic. 

Search engines also value the backlinks on the relevant websites only. So, find your niche websites, and create high-quality content for their websites, so they post your content happily.

Here are the few search operators that you can use to find your niche guest post websites.

[your_topic] “write for us”

[your_topic] “guest post”

[your_topic] “guest article”

[your_topic] “become an author”

Invite Industry Experts or Influencers to Review Your Products

People highly consider the experts’ reviews of the product/service before making the purchase. So, it’s wise you send your products to your industry experts or influencer to review your product online. This way, you can grab the customers’ attention who don’t know your business and encourage people to convert your brand. 

Make sure your products have enough quality to vie the other competitors and make the sales happen. You may brief the influencers about the USPs of your products so they can highlight them in the reviews to influence the buyer persona.

Add Comparison Pages to the Site

People compare available options before getting anything. They scale all the options with different factors to find the best for them. So, to help your customers with the comparison, you should create web pages that show the comparison of your and competitors’ products.

Again your products must have the quality because then only you can show the superiority of your brand and drive the conversion. You need to give significant reasoning to your customers to choose you over others, and bestowing the best quality is the only way to do it.

So, make your products/services exceptional and show this through comparison web pages to boost your sales.

Earn Customer Reviews

Reviews are like your best salesman; they can get you a plethora of sales. So, the more reviews, the better. Surprisingly, you don’t have to do anything extra to earn the reviews. Just do your business, give the best experience and products to your customers. Moreover, you must provide an excellent post-sale experience to win customer trust and brand loyalty.

When your customers are happy, you can ask them to review or rate your products to show the quality and reliability of your brand. 

79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. (Bright Local)

As you can see, reviews have a significant influence on buyers, and you must have them. It’s quite certain that you’ll get some negative reviews with positive ones. However, you can turn the problem into an opportunity by responding to those negative reviews in the most humble and humane way. You may offer some discount or free consultation as compensation. This will show your customer services and increase the confidence of new customers in your brand.

Be A Speaker At Events

You don’t need to be at giant events with thousands of people to show your expertise and spread brand awareness. You can start from small events to speak and share your knowledge in the domain. So, look for upcoming niche events where you can speak and spread the word about your brand. Online events are the new trend now, and you can speak at an online event from the comfort of your couch.

Leverage the Power of Social Media

Making business social profiles isn’t a formality or protocol. You can use social media to grow your online business. However, you should focus on building relationships and sharing quality content instead of bluntly selling your products. People hate promotional posts, so connect with your customers and pass value to them with quality content. You may promote your business, but try it in a subtle way. 

Use social media to engage with your customers and earn customer trust. When you do social media in an above-described way, you’ll get new customers, customer loyalty, and extended reach. Ads aren’t the only way to reach people on social media; be consistent on social media to build a huge following and enjoy the business results.

Final Words

These are the free marketing tactics that you can use to promote your business. However, you can invest in paid marketing as soon as you get the budget to boost your business results. Because there are many customers out there, you haven’t reached yet.

So, consistently work on your business’s digital marketing, or you may hire a digital marketing agency to achieve exceptional business growth most efficiently. 

Wish you steep business growth!!

Additional resources: 

• OwnYourVenture
• YouTube Marketing Strategy

---

Become an Insider

Subscribe to get a free daily budget planner printable to help get your money on track!

Make passive money the right way. No spam.

First Name:
Email Address:

Leave this field empty if you're human: