Five ways to advertise your business at a near-zero cost
Starting your own business and need to promote your products and services, but have no money? Here are five ways to advertise your business at a near-zero cost.
With the growing disinterest in 9 – 5 jobs and the competitiveness in the well-paying job market, more people are opting for their own business. But since established companies are also working their fingers to the bone to keep customers within their confines, it is imperative to employ innovative techniques to stay in the field.
If money was not an issue, start-up business owners would emulate methods used by their established counterparts to drive their profits skywards. But because money is an issue, you must think of ingenious ways to achieve this within the limits of your pockets.
Since most effective tried and tested techniques like using famous athletes to promote products are out of bounds to emerging entrepreneurs. The three options left are to go economical on advertising, stay at the bottom of the ladder forever, or look for employment.
Five ways to advertise your business at a near-zero cost
However, to help reach out to more customers for a small-scale business, there are some pocket-friendly methods to promote your business. And to help you spread the word with a micro budget, here are five ways you can advertise your small or start-up business at a near-zero cost.
1) Start a blog
Blogging is one of the most effective ways to grow your online presence. Still, it is important to note that no matter the traffic you receive in your blog, it won’t automatically market your products. You should therefore innovate ways to convert your blog visitors into customers.
Some bloggers are even making their revenues exclusively from their blogs without running other businesses and reaping big. But if you aim to promote a physical business using a blog, it requires a little more creativity.
How to use your blog to market your products
There are two key ways you can use your blog to market your products:
- Choosing a blogging niche related to products you are selling – For example, you might want to open a health and dietetics blog if you are operating a green grocery or a gym. This way, you will find some browsers interested in these products/ services and refer them to your business.
- Direct advertising – This can only work well when you have massive traffic. Then, you just post ads for your product for any viewer who might be interested, just the way they do it on TV.
2) Optimise your business website web search
In the third decade of the twenty-first century, going digital is no longer a luxury. Almost everyone now has some degree of an online presence. This opportunity has benefited businesses in changing their business’ course of history for the better.
Some businesses have gone even further to the point of doing all their transactions online. But even if that is not your preferred path, maintaining an online catalogue for your business is a very judicious strategy. After opening the catalogue, you need to employ search engine optimisation tools to help it stand out.
With every business trying to outshine the rest in the web presence race, just optimising your business website alone won’t help. Instead, you need to find an exemplary web design agency that will not only design a user-friendly website but will also answer all your questions with regards to opening and maintaining the website.
3) Make use of social media
With a whopping 4.33 billion globally in 2021, you cannot just omit social media from the list of the most innovative business practices. There are numerous ways you can employ social media to advertise your business. But there are two which stand out.
Two of the easiest ways to promote your business using social media
Here are two of the easiest ways to promote your business using social media.
Using social media ads
Since your goal is to find ways to promote your business for as little budget as possible, social media ads can greatly save the day. Taking, for example, Facebook, which is the most popular social media, you can advertise for as low as one dollar. But, of course, from that minimum amount, the offers become more appealing as your budget goes up.
Growing your social media presence
This is the advertisement method that requires the highest degree of patience of all the possible options. But when you succeed at it, it can be a real money-spinner. With an overwhelmingly substantial social media presence, you can become a millionaire by merely promoting other businesses’ products, even without showcasing your own.
Many celebrities whose social media following is noticeable have used this technique as a backup source of income from their main money inlets. But for them, social media following comes naturally as their success in their careers grows. However, if you are not a singer or an athlete, you must invest enormous time to produce superb quality content, which will translate into a huge following.
With a big social media following achieved, you can advertise your products for free.
4) Create a Google Business profile
Google has made digital life easier in almost every aspect of life. And without a doubt, business is one of the most positively impacted fields by the digital revolution. With a Google business account, you will be able to add your business to Google maps.
Google Maps can be of tremendous help if you are in a big city where many visitors don’t have preferred sellers in the city. In addition, all customers near your location who don’t have time for manual search will quickly locate you digitally.
5) Write guest blogs with links back to your products catalogue
This is a symbiotic method you can use if you are not able to run your blog. First, you will write for other popular websites either for free or for some amount; then, you include links to your business website in the article. To get impactful traffic from this, you may want to use popular websites like Wikipedia, Yahoo, Medium, Quora, etc.
This method, just like running your blog, needs some creativity to realise its full potential. Complementary niches between you and the host website may be an excellent idea. For example, suppose you are selling kitchenware or furniture. In that case, you may want to blog for interior design-related blogs since after the interior design of a house is over, furniture will be the next apparent considerable element.
And a final bonus tip!
Using videos can also be a great way to promote your business. Because some people are too busy to read and others just prefer a demo. Written content can’t serve everyone, but video content is necessary for all
Just like Facebook and other social media, videos also have numerous ways they can help you reach out to more customers. The most popular video-sharing platforms are YouTube and TikTok.
As your business is growing, it is advisable to pump more money into your advertising. However, you must not stick to the cheap methods forever.
Photo by Jodie Cook
