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The prospect of marketing can be overwhelming, and with endless avenues to go down, it can be difficult choosing the correct approach for your business. Many companies will try to charge you for doing your marketing, but realistically you don’t have to have a huge budget if you can set aside some time to do it yourself. Here are a few of the best ways to market and advertise your brand, and what’s more – their basic packages are free!
In This Post:
Social Media
Long gone are the days of just keeping friends to social media. Business listings can now be setup on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. You should take an approach similar to a blog listing, (laid back, casual rather than corporate) – this will invite people to interact with your pages and content you post. Advertisements can also be placed on Facebook which can reach to your customers, and the price is currently very reasonable.
Blog
Blogs are an effective way of driving traffic to your website. They encourage growth, enforce branding and if you have a website it can positively affect your search ranking. It’s important to understand your audience and post topics that relate. You can also write content on other people’s blogs and link back to your business pages.
Google My Business
My Business is a free listing tool by Google that is visible when someone in the local area searches for a relevant service or product. Typically, the information includes your business name and your brand, a map, your website and opening hours.
Directories
Online directors are another way to boost local listings. Yelp is a great one to get you started, but there are many others that can help advertise your listing. Note that many will try to charge you – tread carefully with these, it’s rare that you’ll get enough return on investment to make it worthwhile, even for large businesses.
Email Marketing
If you have a list of your client’s email’s, then email marketing is defiantly a great a way to enforce your brand and potentially sell products. Mail Chimp will actually send the emails free of change if you have less than 2,000 email addresses. They even have an online newsletter design for you to play around with. It couldn’t be easier!
Merchandise
Items such as mugs, mouse mats, even silicone wristbands are a great way to enforce branding. These offer a subtle way of bringing attention to your logo on a daily basis. People tend to leave merchandise lying around, compared to print advertisements which are often just thrown in the bin.
Cross Marketing!
Take full advantage of all the types of marketing listed above. The best marketing plans and methods hit everything at once. Try to cross market your plan where possible. If you are releasing a blog post, let everyone know on social media!
I would like to add a number 8 to your very informative list, adding an affiliate program to your business is an easy way to increase your webpage traffic.
For a fairly small starting budget you can, through commission payments hire other people to promote your product or service. It really is an awesome way to increase your customer numbers, basically, the affiliate programs function by providing rewards to participating affiliates for leading traffic to your site.
You also get the added bonus of other people building a buyers contact list for you, take a moment to think how huge that could be for your business in the future. Focus on building trust with your customers and they will have confidence in your content to buy again and again.
Have a lovely day.