Advertising is essential for the vast majority of businesses to succeed but advertising can be expensive, especially for new startups and small businesses. However, even on a limited budget, there are seven great places to start when looking for affordable ways to promote your business online.
Utilize Multiple Social Media Sites
Social media is the true gold standard for affordable advertising right now, but don't limit yourself to just one option. Most businesses utilize at least Facebook but expand your advertising using social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and even LinkedIn which can be especially relevant when trying to advertise business to business products or services.
Add a Blog to Your Website
Blogs provide a massive amount of content not only for your potential customers to read but for search engines to be able to index and help lead new customers to your website or social media page. Write your blogs to read naturally and you'll not only gain new readers but repeat visitors eager for new content about your business.
Prime Your Website with SEO
You can plaster the Internet with your companies name and products, but without using good search engine optimization techniques, or SEO, search engines like Google and Yahoo won't list your company towards the top of search results. SEO supercharges your advertising without spending a lot of extra money. However, it's important to understand not only what keywords to use, but how often you should use them while still maintaining natural-sounding content. Search engines continue to evolve their technology which may flag your advertisement if unnatural or excessive keyword use makes your content look spammy.
Online Communities
Join a free online community that is related to your product or service. There are online boards and communities for just about every subject that could possibly pertain to your business. Become an integral member of the community rather than just posting advertisements or spamming with company information. When you create value for the group through your product or service knowledge you can increase recognition of your brand while also exposing your company and gaining trust with potential new customers.
Online Advertisements
With the ability to set daily or per-click budgets, online advertising is a cost-effective way to promote your business by allowing you to scale your budget up or down based on how much you have to spend. These advertising options also allow you to focus on customer interest areas, target demographics or even specific locations at a very specific and detailed level. This feature allows you to control your advertising dollars spent to just local users, or you can expand nationwide or even worldwide depending on who you're trying to sell to. Two of the most popular sites for this are Facebook advertising and Google's Adsense.
Boost Your Content
Utilize a content marketing tool like Social Animal or Buzzsumo to help you develop targeted content based on trending topics in your desired customer base. These services are an affordable way to ensure that the advertising your business puts out reaches a wider audience for better overall results through both content and dispersal methods. These services not only benefit your business but can, but more importantly, free up more time for you to focus on other business tasks with often very little financial investment.
YouTube
Over 30 million people use YouTube every day to search out both entertaining and informative video. Placing content on the site is free, and well-produced, informative content can quickly gain you not only viewers but subscribers who will be alerted each time you post new videos featuring new goods or services for your business. Videos posted on YouTube can also open up a secondary stream of income from the website through ad revenue once you reach a certain amount of subscribers or viewing time.
Regardless of how you choose to promote yourself online, make sure your content is displayed through a professional looking design or website, and that it's relatable, well-written, and is packaged in a way that potential customers can find and understand quickly and easily.
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I think to run effective campaigns, score qualified leads and turn those leads into customers, marketers need to know more than just what their audience is saying on social.
They need to understand the emotion behind the words, and what is driving the desire to post, and, especially, to purchase.
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