If you just launched your small business, chances are you are starting with a limited budget – both financially and in terms of time, especially when it comes to marketing and planning.
So, here’s a list of 9 free marketing strategies that’ll improve your marketing and help you get more customers.
Know your Customer Persona
A customer persona (or buyer persona) is a semi-fictional archetype that represents the key characteristics of a large segment of your audience, and it’s based on the data you’ve collected from web analytics and user research.
The purpose of customer personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. Creating customer personas, and using them to guide your business, can help you focus on the needs of your customers.
Build an email list
An email list is nothing more than a collection of email addresses from people who have subscribed to your newsletter, website, or blog, and its primary purpose is to increase the number of your potential leads.
The first step toward creating your first email list is finding an email service provider. It is important to make sure that they have a minimum of capabilities, like providing a variety of sign-up forms, having the ability to send the sign-up to different lists, monitoring the effectiveness of each form, and sending automated messages.
You should also keep your list current. At least a large percentage of subscribers change their email addresses each year, so make sure to delete the inactive ones at least once a year. Remember, you should focus on quality over quantity.
Building an email list is, in theory, not a very complicated process. However, it does require one thing: that you have visitors to your website.
So here are some proven methods for getting that traffic in the first place.
- Create engaging content. Great content will bring visitors to your site. You just have to make sure that you have a clear call to action and a link that goes to the page you want your visitors to see.
- Write Guest Posts. Guest posting for other websites is an effective way to generate backlinks, boost referral traffic, and increase search engine results page (SERP) rankings.
- Keep active on social media. Social media is huge for attracting visitors. To increase your website traffic, make sure to interact with followers by replying to them, reposting their content, and tagging them. You should also use hashtags that are relevant to your business or include enticing information from the content to encourage people to click on the link you provide.
Sign up for Google My Business
Claiming your Google My Business listing is one of the simplest ways to gain traffic and customers. It is, in my opinion, the best free marketing strategy you can apply to your business. Google My Business is a listing of your business’s operating information, reviews, posts, and so much more. When used correctly, it is a powerful tool that can increase your revenue and provide valuable insights about your customers.
- Make sure your information is accurate, detailed, and updated.
- Ask for reviews (and respond to them. Yes, even the negative ones!)
- Speak directly to your customers through Google My Business messages.
- Add posts to share business updates.
- Track user actions.
Give things away for free
People love free stuff. So, offering a good deal or a giveaway on your website or social media business page is a great way to get more interest and business. You don’t have to offer anything big. Often, a small item like a coupon code for free shipping or a percentage off a future order will do the trick.
Nonetheless, the business this generates can be great and people might want to share your giveaway with their friends or social media followers.
Set SMART goals
When you start a business, you have a lot of goals. Perhaps you want to reach a certain number of customers by the end of the year or generate a profit by a certain month or year. Whatever goals you choose for yourself, make sure they’re SMART goals.
So, what are SMART goals?
SMART goals are a planning technique that includes five criteria that business owners can use to define and assess goals. So, what exactly do SMART goals stand for?
To help you set goals in your organization, the SMART method employs the acronym:
- Specific: Be as specific as possible about your goal.
- Measurable: Analyze whether you were successful in reaching your goal.
- Attainable: Include a practical strategy that divides your general objective into smaller action steps.
- Relevant: Create goals that are relevant to your business strategy, mission statement, market, client base, and sector.
- Time-bound: Set goals for a given timeframe.
The SMART approach will assist you in better outlining your goals and providing a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.
Improve your online visibility
The pandemic has taken online shopping to new heights, and it’s a trend that shows no signs of faltering. Whether you like it or not, the first place consumers look for information about your company is online. Even if they plan to buy from you in person, now is the time to build a website if you don’t have one.
Your website will be the first impression of your business for many potential customers. It’s essential that it’s both professional and engaging. Keep in mind to include all the necessary information about your company that your customers might need. At a bare minimum, include contact information, pricing, business hours, street address and/or service area, and, if pertinent, delivery, and refund information.
Make sure your website is SEO-friendly
With an SEO-friendly website set up and running, you can hope for organic traffic. This should be a priority before you venture into other marketing options. A crucial step to organically growing your business is ensuring your business website is optimized for search engines and conversions.
- Your website design should support an easy and user-friendly user experience (UX).
- Another crucial SEO aspect includes the keywords that you decide to use.
- To further improve your position in SERPs and your brand authority, it’s very important that you regularly create good-quality and engaging content for your target audience.
- In terms of SEO, long-tail keywords work the best in this case.
- While it’s still essential to include your keywords, the best approach to content creation would be to incorporate content hubs.
Enhance Social Media Strategy
There are around 3.78 billion social media users worldwide in 2021, and that number is projected to keep growing in upcoming years. That is potentially a very strong market of consumers looking to buy goods and services, possibly clients for your business. Also, more than 50% of brands are discovered on social media.
So yes, social media channels are great places to connect with your family and friends, but are also great for growing your business. With a little planning, social media channels can easily turn into budget-friendly platforms for establishing your brand and growing your reach.
Here are some tips to help you out with your social media strategy:
- Choose platforms that your target audience uses the most.
- Humanize your brand. Add the human element to make it easy for people to understand and empathize with you and your brand.
- On a frequent basis, share engaging and meaningful material
- Use hashtags that are relevant to both your niche and your target audience.
- Add relevant information about your company, including a link to your business website.
Repurpose content on multiple channels
The success of a marketing strategy depends on the constant production of qualified, authentic, and persona-adequate content.
Your content calendar should always be full to maintain the relevance of your channels. And while this sounds like a challenging task, it doesn’t have to be.
By using a repurposing content strategy, you will be able to make the process faster and more productive.
Ways to repurpose content for your business:
- YouTube videos or webinars can be divided into different parts and published on Facebook and/or Instagram.
- E-books can be the source of several blog posts, which in turn can be announced on other social media platforms.
- Share testimonials on your social media to enhance the credibility of your company.
- If your digital marketing strategy is efficient, turn that data into a case study.
Repurposing content is a great way of exploring new audiences and creating even better experiences for your customers. Also, the benefits related to time management cannot be discarded.
So go ahead and make changes to your existing content and keep your editorial calendar full!
