You have built an excellent product and put it in the shop for people to see and buy it. Now, if you think your job is done, then you are far away from making sales!
Every business needs to market itself to create brand awareness and generate leads that will convert into sales in the long run.
Marketing is the secret behind every successful business today.
For making sales, you have to show your product to the interested people and marketing is the only way to achieve this.
Of course, you need a budget to do so. But, you can get creative with marketing even if you have a small budget.
Business marketing strategies
Marketing is one of the most challenging parts of running a business.
Here are some of the low-cost ways to promote your small business to scoop new leads and create brand awareness.
Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy for more information.
1. Video Marketing
Video marketing is hands down one of the best ways to promote your business.
Take full advantage of TikTok and Instagram reels.
Create high-quality videos showcasing your products.
Video marketing is even more effective if you can entertain your audience through the video and not just make a video for the sake of promoting your product.
Many of you might not be comfortable with cameras and making videos for your business. In that case, you might hire someone to make the video for you.
Billo is a platform where brands ask content creators to create videos for their business.
Get custom-made videos for your business by Billo creators.
In this way, you can create videos for all your social media platforms.
Billo has a rating of 4.5 on Trustpilot!
Check out this page to have a look at some professional videos by the Billo creators.
2. Social Media Marketing
Take advantage of the big social media sites like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!
It is one of the free ways to promote small businesses business but one needs to be patient with it. It takes time to build a following on those platforms.
Create your brand identity and build a trustworthy relationship with your audience.
Run polls on Instagram to know what kind of products your audience wants, answer your customer’s questions and stay active on the platforms.
As a beginner, it is very difficult to juggle constantly with all your social media pages.
So, you can use a tool like SproutSocial to schedule all your posts on social media by spending 2 hours a week.
3. Display advertising
You must have seen banner ads at the top of the websites. These are known as display ads.
It is an online advertisement that is presented on a third-party website. It can be a static ad with a combination of text and images or can be animated as well.
The more your budget is, the more your ad will be shown on popular sites that receive thousands of page views each day.
In most cases, the cost of the display advertising campaign is determined by how many people click on the ad. This is known as the cost-per-click campaign.
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4. Use coupons and freebies
Coupons are a fantastic marketing tool that satisfies both parties i.e. the sellers and the customers.
Who doesn’t love to save some dollars while shopping? Offering discounts will shower you with tons of new customers.
Discounts help to boost the conversion rate. The first-time buyers would turn into loyal customers.
Also, try to offer freebies occasionally.
Last day, I was scrolling on Instagram and came across a lip balm ad which said that we can get 2 lip balms for absolutely free of cost!
I immediately clicked on the ad and added it to my cart. When I proceeded further to checkout, it said that I just had to pay the shipping fees of $2!
Offer these types of deals occasionally and collect the customer’s email address. Also, ask them to make an unboxing video and review the product. In this way, your business will get exposed to a lot more people in an organic way!
Of course, don’t compromise too much with your profit margins.
Make sure it’s a win-win for both parties. You get ample leads and your customers save a ton of money.
5. Start a business blog
One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business owner is not having a website. A website is a must for every business.
People can just scroll through it, see what you have to offer and when they are ready they can just add products to the cart and checkout.
Also, add a blog category to your website where you can provide in-depth knowledge to your readers.
Build your credibility by offering high-quality blog posts. It is a great way to secure the trust of your audience. Provide value and solve a problem with your in-depth articles.
If you want to get found in google searches, start practicing SEO from day one.
Start building backlinks for your website to increase the domain authority.
SEO is the best and only way to drive organic traffic from Google.
When your page ranks on the first page of Google, your monthly traffic increases, resulting in more and more sales.
Target low competition keywords and Insert them throughout the post to rank higher in search results.
6. Conduct free webinars
Conducting webinars is one of the best ways to interact with your potential customers.
With the rise in remote work, more people are relying on technology for education. This leads to more webinars and zoom meetings on a specific topic.
Niche down your webinar topic. For example, if it is about getting sponsored content, then make it specific like how to send a winning proposal to your customers and so on.
See where the majority of your audience is located and choose the best time and date for the webinar accordingly.
7. Email marketing
To collect the email addresses of your customers, you need to create a lead magnet that will prompt the users to provide you with their emails.
A lead magnet is something of high value that you can provide to your customers in exchange for their email addresses.
A free ebook or a checklist is one of the most common lead magnets.
You can also provide a cheat sheet, a list of free resources, free video training or a free trial of your services.
Use Convertkit to collect emails from your audience.
Once you capture their email address, you can send regular updates like coupon codes or a sneak peek of your new products before launch.
Don’t spam them with emails or they will be bound to unsubscribe.
8. Use Facebook ads
With over 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook is one of the most preferred platforms for small business owners to grab the attention of customers and get their business rolling.
Posting an ad on Facebook will lead more people to visit your site. More people means more sales!
It will show your products to the interested people and generate sales even if you don’t have an established audience.
You can also tell Facebook exactly which type of audience you want to target and show your ads.
For example, you can choose people of a certain age, gender and interests.
9. Create an affiliate program
Creating an affiliate program is one of the best ways to generate sales.
Here, you don’t have to make sales directly. An affiliate will do it for you and in return, you have to share a part of the commission with them.
Reach out to bloggers and ask them to promote your business.
Once they make a sale, you will share a percentage of the commission with them.
The affiliate programs with higher commissions get promoted the most and in return generate the most sales.
10. Hire micro-influencers to create awareness
Partnering with influencers is one of the best ways to market your videos.
An influencer is a person who has a large following of loyal people who actually trust them.
Head over to Instagram and TikTok to find some influencers who create content in the same niche as yours.
Therefore, he already has the audience that you are looking for!
Collaborate with them to create video content for your brand.
Choose those influencers who have a high engagement rate.
Sometimes we see advertisements from our favorite celebrities and purchase those products without a second thought! That’s the power of influencer marketing!
You can definitely notice a rise in the sales curve when you collaborate with an influencer.
How to develop a marketing plan
Budgeting is very important while marketing your small business.
Don’t get overwhelmed and start promoting a half-grown tree.
Make sure that your website is fully professional, you have enough products in the store and have several lead magnets ready to offer to your customers.
Because, if the overall attire of your business is not lucrative enough, you will lose potential customers even if you spend lots of money on marketing.
So, decide what type of customers you want to target and set a goal to generate a certain amount of lead within a specific time with your freebies, coupons, discounts etc.
Once you have your customer’s email, you can go ahead and provide additional offers to them. This will help you to create a loyal fanbase for your business and get more customers with just the word of mouth!
Start marketing your business
Get your business off the ground by implying these strategies.
Marketing is essential and cannot be avoided at any cost.
Do you have any other creative marketing ideas in your mind?
Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you!
