If you run a small business, chances are you do not have a huge budget to invest in a spellbinding marketing campaign that will get people talking and spending, but that’s okay because what you do have is the internet and with the internet, you have lots of options to grab their attention and boost your bottom line on a budget.
Here are just some very effective, low-cost ways to put your business out there and get noticed online:
Start with Social Media
As a business operating in the 21st Century, chances are that you already use social media to promote your brand, but do you use it for anything else? If not, now might be the time to start because, although it is important to promote your stuff on platforms like Twitter and Instagram, most customers get extremely bored of businesses who only ever talk about themselves and their products, What you need to do if you really want to grab their attention is start posting other niche related stuff. Post links to interesting news stories, make funny videos, promote the good stuff your followers are doing, add personal stories and do whatever you can to build up a community. Your feed will become a lot more interesting to a lot more people if you do this, meaning you will have their full attention, so when you do make a promotional post, it is likely to be far more effective.
Build Relationships with Other Niche Sites
Any good seo company will tell you that one of the best ways to climb the search engine ranks is by having well-placed backlinks on other prominent sites in your niche. This has tempted many people to buy backlinks in a bid to drive more traffic, and although this can work, there is a significant risk to doing so if it becomes obvious to search engines that your links are not organic.
It is, then, a far better idea to build real lasting relationships with other websites. You can do this by offering to write guest posts for them, syndicating your content so that more people can see it and you can benefit from the links as a result, or even posting favorably about other websites and companies in the hopes that they will return the favor – there are lots of options, you just have to experiment and find the ones that will work best for you.
Create Amazing Content
When it comes to grabbing their attention and driving far more traffic to your business website, you cannot beat creating high-quality content that people actually want to read. If you have to hire a professional writer to achieve that, then it will be money well spent.
What represents good content? Good content is anything that your audience actually wants to read or view. It should be interesting, engaging, able to answer questions and solve problems, and it should be fresh and regularly produced. If you can create that kind of content you will see results.
Use Unique Images
Areally easy way to grab attention online is to use unique photos when other companies in your niche are using stock images. All you need is a decent DSLR camera and free image editing software like GIMP and you can create beautiful eye-catching images that they won’t anywhere else. This will undoubtedly boost your brand image and send more customers your way. You could hire a professional photographer if you aren’t exactly artistic, but as long as images are clear and dynamic, providing they’re also unique, they should be fine.
Run a Competition
It’s really easy to run a competition over social media right now and doing so is a very effective way of drawing attention to your business because people love winning stuff. To maximize interest, you should make the competition as simple to enter for as many people as possible, and you should ensure that the prize is valuable enough that people will be compelled to enter. That could be a bundle of your products, a cash prize or even a vacation depending on your budget, but your products should feature in the mix somewhere for maximum publicity.
It’s also important that one element of the competition entry, at least, should involve sharing links to your social media or website so that you can increase traffic and potentially sell to more people than before now and in the future.
Get Friends and Family on It
It might be very simple and very old school, but if you’re on a really tight budget, you can potentially get some serious attention by asking all of your friends and family to talk and post about your company and the products and services you offer. Many of them will be more than happy to do so, especially if you give them a discount or some other appealing treat for doing so. This will increase your visibility and build links, which should help to boost your traffic at least a little bit.
Woo Influencers
Social media influencers platforms like Youtube and Instagram can have thousands, even millions of loyal followers. So, it makes sense to identify a few who are working in your niche. Once you have done this, you can offer them free products and services in exchange for mentioning your brand in their posts and videos. Some of the higher ranking ones will expect to be paid very well indeed for this kind of thing, so you might be better of focusing on smaller influencers with loyal followings than going for the big names if your budget is tight, but it can still be very effective.
Team Up with a Complementary Brand
Teaming up with another established business that complements yours -for instance working with a jewelry making course provider when you sell beads – so that they agree to promote your stuff and you theirs can be pretty effective at raising your profile. The hard part will be finding a company that is willing to team up, but it can be done.
Get their attention and see your profits soar!
