Promoting your business—whether it's new or well established—should be part of a comprehensive marketing plan. There are ways to do it the right way and ways to do it the wrong way. Ideally, you want to find ways to promote yourself without blowing your budget or breaking the bank.
After all, too much marketing can be a bad thing and really alienate your customers. However, the right type of marketing is aimed appropriately to draw lifelong customers to your organization. If you’re looking for ways to promote your business without spending too much money, there are many simple methods that can be effective. In this article, we'll go over five that can work out well for you.
Build A Web Presence
Effectively promoting your business starts with creating a quality, accessible web presence for your business. If you don't already have one, get started by building a website and setting up social media accounts. You should also consider using SEO and building links to your website so that it appears higher in search results.
To make your business stand out, it needs to be something that offers a unique experience or product to clientele. A website should be clean, organized, and effective. You want to use your website as a portal for interacting with your brand. This might be offering news, content, and product links in your pages. It's important to understand that a website is a great way to generate leads and potential conversions, but only if it's easy to use.
Consider using a heat map to measure your conversion funnel and see where people are interacting the most with your web pages. Also include a contact link so it's easy to get a hold of you. By optimizing your bypass, you can really make an impact on how your customers see your brand and ultimately put yourself on a path to success.
Leverage Social Media
Social media is a great way to connect with customers and potential clients, while also helping you build your brand. As such, it's a very effective marketing tool—especially when you want to be in direct contact with your audience.
From there, customers can monitor your timeline, participate in contests, and provide real time feedback to your company. Using social media to build trust and engagement with your customers is an integral part of any marketing strategy and offers a very high return on investment as most social media is typically free to use.
Consider posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even YouTube or TikTok to really get the most out of leveraging social media to promote your brand. Don't forget to always be open to feedback. If you run a social media contest, make sure the prize is something worthwhile and use a fun idea that people will want to engage with on a large scale.
Focus On SEO and Quality Content
Working hand in hand with maintaining a quality web presence, you should focus on search engine optimization and providing quality content for your website. SEO works by helping you rank your page high in search engine results. But that can only be accomplished by selecting high quality keywords, producing great content, and making it as accessible as possible. When done correctly, SEO delivers targeted traffic to your website at the lowest cost possible. But quality content and other ideas can help you increase website traffic without SEO, too, so it's best to use it in conjunction with other methods to get the most out of your marketing plan.
Online Advertising
If you’re looking to promote your business online, online advertising can be a great method. It's usually not as costly as you might expect, either. Try social media advertising, for instance. Facebook and Instagram ads are great places to start, especially if you want to get your message in front of as many eyes as possible. YouTube is another good place to set up an advertising campaign.
Most platforms can help build awareness for your products and services without breaking the bank. You can also try services like Google AdWords and Bing Ads, but they'll hit your budget a bit more. Ultimately, there's a wide range of options for targeting potential customers by location, age group, gender, and interests so that marketers can use online advertising. It's up to you to determine what's best for your needs and budget.
Give Away Pens
A sometimes overlooked method for promoting an organization is to hand out items for free to your customers. Promotional items come in all shapes and sizes, typically as small, low cost items featuring a logo or the business's name.
Keychains, many flashlights, notebooks, stationary, drinkware, and many other items fall into this category. One way that you can leverage your promotional power is to offer some of these items. Pens are a great idea for this because they're inexpensive, can be purchased in both, and can be heavily customized.
Giving away creative custom pens with your logo can help promote your brand, passively advertise it, and create rapport among your customer base. Don't forget to include your name, address, and contact info, too! Customers love free items, so giving away pens can work to your advantage when it comes to enhancing your marketing plans.