How to Market Your Business on a Budget

March 12, 2018

Whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur or a recent college graduate with the next best idea – you’ll likely find that marketing can be quite a challenge.  Professional marketers will be the first to tell you just how much goes into marketing and depending on whether you have the right strategy or not – it can cost you a fortune.

Luckily, there are several marketing ideas and budget ideas that will help you advertise your business.  We’ve created a list of the best marketing techniques that will give you the highest return for the lowest possible cost.

1.   Create a Website with a Blog

Kill two birds with one stone by creating a website that incorporates a blogging feature.  While it’s likely you already have a website and/or blog and know they’re important for your business, not everyone truly knows just how crucial a blog is to a business’ marketing efforts.

Finding a Content Management System for Your Blog

If you’re not too fluent with web development and design, you’ll want to look for a Content Management System (CMS) platform that you’ll be able to design both your website as well as your blog. A CMS is a software application designed to create and manage digital content. 

In other words, a CMS is what organizes your blog posts and the content that goes along with them in one location.  They’re similar to the file explorer on your computer.  Without a CMS, you will not be able to easily host your blog articles on a blog section of your website.

It’s important to note that not all website hosting software feature a CMS, while some website hosting software comes with a CMS included.  Great CMS are:

*WordPress offers both a paid service that includes several benefits such as website hosting, domain registration, live chat support, etc., as well as a free open-source CMS download you can install yourself on your website hosting platform.

2.   Optimize Your Website for Search Engines (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can be extremely frustrating as there are hundreds of “unofficial” rules and laws that are constantly changing.  In order for your website and blog to even appear in Internet searches, you’ll need to ensure that your website is completely optimized according to the standards set by Internet powers such as Google.

A great free resource to audit your website for SEO is GTmetrix.  Without signing up, you may enter your URL into the website, and it will quickly analyze virtually everything that matters from a technical backend perspective. 

A cheap and beneficial alternative is Certified Alexa Rank, which is similar to GTmetrix and widely relied on to rank websites based on their qualities and content. Having a high score and being certified with Alexa Rank is crucial for any online presence, so consider subscribing to the $19.99 a month service.

3.   Research Keywords for Free

Believe it or not, there are actually free ways of doing keyword research to come up with both content ideas and keywords to include in your created content.  While paid services do this type of work much quicker and more efficiently, services such as WordStream or SpyFu offer keyword tools.  They’re limited in their free versions, but they’re definitely a great place to start when it comes to the best low-cost strategy.

Google Ads also offers a keyword planner tool, which we will discuss in the next point.  

4.   Register with Google

Google offers several services that are considered “must-haves” when it comes to ways to advertise your business. 

  1. Google My Business– GMB allows you to register and verify your business with Google; thus, your business will appear in Google search results with information relating to your business such as its business hours, contact information and the location of your business.
  2. Google Analytics– It’s crucial that you pay attention to how well your marketing campaigns are doing and the behavior of viewers who make it to your website.  Google Analytics allows you to track how many people clicked onto your website, how long they stayed on your website, etc.
  3. Google Ads – Google Ads offers one of the best solutions to promote your business.  It gives you the option to set Display or Search ads at a specific budget.  Your campaigns can be targeted based on demographics, keywords, or even interests, and allow your business to appear in Google Search results, YouTube videos, partnered websites, and much more.  Depending on what type of promotions they’re running, Google sometimes offers $100+ in advertisement credits for new and loyal Google Ads users.
  4. Google Trends – This tool is excellent for finding marketing material ideas.   You start by entering a search term or topic relating to your business and the tool will gather statistics for a trend report based on what you entered.  This can be used to gather new ideas for blog content, discovering if there’s interest in a specific product or service you may want to begin selling, and so much more.  You can also compare two topics against one another side by side.
  5. Google Alerts– This tool allows you to keep up with your business’ reputation, updates on the keywords you track, as well as what your competition is up to.  You should enable it to track your business every time it is mentioned, as you’ll be able to quickly respond to any positive (or negative) content written about your business online!

Google offers a ton of marketing solutions for not only big business advertising but also small business advertising as well.  It can take a lot of time to get used to each tool and learn how to use each one efficiently.  With that said, Google offers free training and certifications on these tools through the Google Academy.   

5.   Register with Social Media

Your website and Google Business shouldn’t be your only online presence.  You should be registered on all relevant social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Yelp.

  • Facebook – Your Facebook business profile should have everything about your business, content relevant to your business, as well as a video to show people more about your business.  You should also create Facebook groups not centered around your business to build a community.  You will be able to engage with an audience and advertise to them as well through your group.
  • Instagram – Your Instagram account should be a business profile and should be used to post aesthetic & visual content relating to your business.  Once you reach 10,000 followers, you’ll be able to take advantage of some marketing tools on Instagram such as “slide-up” for direct linking to whatever product you’re advertising on your Instagram stories.
  • Twitter– Your Twitter should be used to keep your business involved with new trends and hashtags, as well as a medium for you to engage with your customers (followers).
  • LinkedIn– Your LinkedIn should be made for both your own personal profile as well as your business’ profile.  Employees of your business should register themselves as team members.  LinkedIn is a great way to professionally have your business noticed.
  • Yelp– Yelp is a great alternative to Facebook/Google reviews, as it’s known for being one of the best review platforms available online.   Those with great reviews tend to really stand out in search engine results.

6.   Build Relationships

Since humans have been doing business itself, building long lasting relationships has been a key element and absolutely necessary for any business to succeed.  Your neighborhood is a great place to start.  Promote your business by word-of-mouth at town council meetings, local events, etc.

Build Relationships Online

The relationships you build shouldn’t be limited to in person only.  The Internet allows us to reach out and connect with someone thousands of miles away instantly.  You should be speaking constantly with other online businesses to exchange backlinks/guest post on each other’s websites.

Having healthy relationships with other online businesses also allows you to feature each other on your social media through collaboration – something that’s great to stimulate both of your audiences. 

Your social media is a great place to start doing this.  Ensure you reply to every comment and every message you receive, and don’t be afraid to reach out to other businesses’ profiles to leave comments as well.  Online forums relating to your niche are also great platforms to engage on. 

Make a profile with your business’ name and try to solve problems.  Many people turn to forums to seek answers to their questions.  If you’re able to provide them a solution, it’s likely they’ll remember you.  In addition, those who have the same question will find the solution you provided in the future.   

7.    Take Advantage of Free Email Marketing Services

Once you’ve established an online presence for your business, you’ll definitely want to begin capturing the emails of those who reach your sites.  MailChimp is an excellent service that allows you to build an organized email list and create beautiful templates for your email campaigns.  It allows up to 12,000 emails per month and 2,000 subscribers for free.

Chances are if you’re new to email marketing you probably won’t be sending more than 12,000 emails a month in your first few months.  MailChimp offers plug-ins that integrate the service directly into your websites and social media profiles for native email capturing.

Get Creative

There is no such thing as black and white marketing, and the best business advertising ideas are the most creative.  Unless you’re diving into your business with a budget that has no limits, you’re going to have to discover creative ways to market your business.

Creative marketing ideas could be anything from creating a business mascot that appears at local sporting events, to painting murals that represent your business around your city (with the appropriate permits, of course), or even making a jingle that no one will ever be able to forget.

While this article touched on 7 great ways to market your business, it’s hard to put a number to just how many great marketing methods are out there.  It may take a lot of trial and error, A/B tests, and many visits back to the drawing board, but with time and hard work, marketing for your business will become more fun and less stressful. 

What Is A/B Testing?

A/B testing, which is also known as split testing or bucket testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a webpage, application, website, etc., against each other to determine which one performs better.  As stated earlier, marketing is not black and white and there are thousands of different methods you can apply to your business in terms of your marketing strategy.

A/B tests are important as they make it easier for you to identify which campaigns perform well and which do not.  The last thing any business person wants is to waste time and money on a campaign that will almost always perform poorly.

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