Five free marketing ideas for small businesses
As a one-man band, small business owners are very often forced to wear different hats, so there’s not much time or money left that they can spend on managing multiple marketing channels.
Sounds familiar?
To successfully compete with other companies from their niche, small businesses with a limited marketing budget will have to prepare a really clear and cost-effective strategy for lead generation.
If you can relate, your best chance is to focus on doing fewer things better and using digital marketing tactics that bring actual results without you having to spend countless hours on content creation and/or every earned penny on paid ads.
Begin with taking the time to research your competitors and analyse their actions. Market research is still such an underrated practice. But, if done thoroughly, it allows you to understand what works for others, what doesn’t and then put a personal spin on it to come up with even better ideas.
I hope you’ll find this blog useful. Without further ado, here are my top five free marketing ideas for small business owners.
Create a Google Business account - it’s free!
Google Business account is completely free but still widely underestimated by many businesses, especially those with physical locations.
Do not neglect the value of your Google Business account and focus on updating it regularly with news about your business, services and products. You'll be surprised how many people pay attention to these posts when they show up in search results.
Additionally, regular updates send a positive signal to Google and help improve your local SEO ranking.
Repurpose your old content
So you decided to run a blog, but after a few posts, you ran out of ideas?
Make sure that the work you've done already doesn't go to waste. For example, if you have good, popular content on social media, repurpose it for your blog and if your blog articles are popular, turn them into social media posts.
Repost old content after a while, too, on the same feed. It's a good practice to reshare old posts with the new followers who, trust me, won't have the time to look back at your old posts.
Use fewer social media channels
If your social media efforts don't bring results, it's most likely because you're spreading yourself too thin and have too many accounts. Be where your audience is.
At some point, there was a standard set of channels that every new business would set up without even analysing the audience: Facebook, Twitter & Instagram or Pinterest.
To save time, they would fire up scheduled posts on all channels without adapting them to each platform is a big NO-NO. It's spammy and doesn't look good. Additionally, each platform has a specific content-sharing format, rules and caption limit so make sure your posts don’t get cut off and prepare different formats for each channel.
Start with one or two social media platforms, grow them consistently, then scale up and add more accounts depending on the audience demand and competitor actions.
Use a free Canva account for design
I've been using Canva ever since its inception. I like Photoshop too, it's suitable for more intricate work, but daily, when you have lots of branded posts to create and a limited budget, Canva is the #1 choice.
Still, there are some rules that you should follow. For example, ALWAYS adapt templates to your unique brand and spend enough time on image, fonts or design elements research to ensure your posts don't look the same as other brands.
If you insist on designing content yourself, spend time studying graphic design basics, learning about contrast and colour pairing best practices to make sure your social media posts stand out and are easy to read.
Networking is king
Whilst everyone's going crazy trying to use every digital marketing tool possible in their strategy to limit human interaction, they often forget that the audience comprises of real people, not algorithms. Google and social media mimic human behaviours so focus on that instead of chasing trends.
Be approachable, be friendly and start creating or joining strong networks with communities of supportive members and partners that believe in developing long term relationships over quick cheap wins.
