Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2013, and its social media advice (Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags, LinkedIn) and SEO and guest-blogging tips reflect online marketing at the time. Guest posts written mainly to gain links are now treated with suspicion by Google.
How can I get my business known or increase sales when I’m just starting out? What marketing strategies can I use for my small business when I have almost no money?
When we start a small business, the challenge is getting potential customers to know about us.
The best way to do that is clearly through advertising, but we’re starting from the assumption that your financial resources will be more limited than those of big companies.
Even so, marketing isn’t something you should overlook, however small your business may be. One of the most profitable investments for the long term is investing in getting known in the short and medium term. Whatever your size as a business, let’s look at some low-cost marketing strategies to maximize your value as a brand and as a company.
1. Keep active social media profiles
Many people still believe that having a Facebook page is very useful for big companies but unnecessary for small businesses. That’s not true. If you have a business, it should be online and have a social media profile. Many small entrepreneurs set up profiles on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, don’t see results in the short term and decide it’s a waste of time.
Any social media marketing strategy takes dedication and time before it pays off. You can offer discounts to people who follow your Facebook page or who use your hashtag on Twitter. There are many ways to attract potential customers for your product on social media; it’s a matter of trying until you find the right one. Best of all, this kind of marketing is free.
2. Let your website speak for your business, product or service
The great thing about the internet is that we can run our business from home and still have a website that makes us look like an international company. Get a professional website and a company blog, and tell the story of your business in detail: how you got started, the advantages of your product, the important clients who work with you (as long as it’s true). When someone visits your site, they should see a professional, not someone trying their luck in business.
3. Run an online survey
Many services let us run online surveys for free. It’s a good way to get feedback from customers and find out how they think, what they want and what they expect from your product. If we do a survey properly, with the right questions, customers themselves will tell us who our biggest competitors are (and that’s not always a big company). You can offer a small incentive to people who take part. That incentive can be very profitable for us if it’s a discount on our products that the customer ends up using.
4. Build your credibility and get your name out there
One way to increase your credibility and popularity is to establish yourself as an expert in your field. How can we do that? Write a short book or guide about your industry, make a video and upload it to YouTube, take part in seminars, record a podcast. Put all of this on your website and social media. Every time a media outlet talks about the benefits of your product or service, add it to your website and share it online, trying to include links to whatever you most want the public to see.
5. Appear on websites that specialize in your field
There are millions of websites and blogs today, but very few specialize in one specific field. If your product has to do with selling home decor, talk to the owners of websites and blogs about decor or architecture. Try to negotiate an ad banner on their site or some kind of barter arrangement with them.
6. Donate to charitable causes
We’re not saying you should hand over money for nothing; we’re talking about cheap marketing strategies. It’s become popular to donate a percentage of your business’s profits to different charitable causes. That way we only donate part of money we’re already earning. It can even catch the attention of the media or specialized websites. It’s an excellent form of publicity, no doubt, and we’re also helping a good cause.
7. Invest in SEO
There’s no better marketing strategy than appearing at the top of Google every time someone searches for the product we sell. Of course, achieving that with so many people competing online is anything but easy, and it takes a lot of time and dedication. There are many ways to go about it, but in the end the best thing is to hire a serious, professional person to try to get our site into a good position in the search engines. But watch out for people who promise you the top spot on Google extremely fast, because they may be using illegitimate methods that could eventually get our website penalized.
8. Offer to write for specialized blogs
This is another way to gain visibility by showing your professional skills. Look for websites or blogs that cover your business’s subject and offer to write an article, on the condition that they let you sign it with your name and include a link to your website or social profile. If you show an interesting point of view, readers will take the trouble to find out who you are.
9. Other tips
Once we’ve put these strategies in place to get known as cheaply as possible, let’s move on to other steps we’ve already talked about: 10 ways to improve your business in 2013. We also shared some ideas for giving your company a new image.
Further reading
- 10 commandments for failing in business, guaranteed
- 5 ways to know what your customers want before they tell you
- 15 habits of successful salespeople
Featured image: Giuseppe Milo, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
