Free Marketing Options For Small Businesses
When you’re a small business owner, the marketing budget may be small or completely non-existent. Especially in the current economy, small business owners are finding themselves having to stretch every last dollar just to make ends meet. Elaborate and expensive marketing strategies are starting to become a thing of the past, which leaves many business owners asking: Are there any free marketing options for small businesses? The answer is an astounding yes, but you do need to know where to look. Today we’re going to share with you a few of these free marketing options for small businesses so that you know where to start looking.
If you market any aspect of your business online, you may know that you can place contextual advertisements through the search engines. These ads are the ones that you see in the top few results on search engine result screens (the background is normally shaded a different color than white); and running down the right side of the results page(s). When you place ads in the search engine results, oftentimes the ads may also appear on other websites which are relevant to yours, depending on how the advertising account is set up. The problem with these text ads is that they cost money – normally on a pay per click basis, where the business is charged a certain amount every time the ad is clicked on by a search engine or website user. A few cents a click doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but if you have hundreds or even thousands of people clicking on your ads every day or week, the cost can be extreme.
If you’re a small business, you may be able to tap into this system for no charge. While this method will not work for long term results, it can help if you need a little extra marketing push and here’s how: Many times when you sign up for one service, you can get special offers for other services. For example, if you sign up for website hosting; have used pay per click advertising in the past or you pay for other web based services, some search engines team up with these other companies to offer customers free pay per click credit. The amount of credit normally ads up to $50 or $100 so it’s not a large amount, but it’s enough to get a small business started for free or to give you a little extra push. To find offers such as this one, poke around a little bit in the web services accounts that you already have and make sure to check out any mail you get from search engines as they may be offering you advertising credit.
Most social media platforms know that businesses are strapped for cash, which is why most of them offer “business page” listings for free. While the option is there for a business to use pay per click or paid for advertising methods, a page or a listing is generally free of charge. With social media being all of the craze right now, one of the easiest ways that small businesses can market for free is to sign up and use social media and social networking platforms. Websites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and LinkedIn are free to sign up for and use at the basic level.
Finally, if you have something valuable to say in the area that your business is in, there’s a good chance that there’s a website or blog that is searching for the content that you could possibly provide. This is called guest blogging or guest authoring and it’s a great way to get your business’s name out there without having to break the bank. To get started as a guest blogger, simply Google or search for websites that are relevant to the type of business that you operate. For example, if you sell handcrafted furniture, then you’d probably want to explore DIY (do it yourself) blogs and websites. Check around to see which ones offer guest posting and then make contact with that business or blog owner with a concept of what you’d like to say or write about on their website.
There are plenty of free marketing opportunities out there for small businesses; it just takes a little creativity and knowing where to start looking in order to get started.
