Do you want to grow your business, but think you don’t have the resources to do so? Fortunately, you don’t have to hire an expensive marketing team or shell out thousands of dollars on social media ads to get your brand name out there. While these methods can be effective, they’re costly and you might not see immediate results. Instead, try these 5 local marketing strategies to market your business for free (or nearly free). You might be surprised at how easy it can be to grow your business with little money spent on marketing!
1) Create a blog
Creating a blog is one of most cost-effective ways to market your business. A blog is an excellent place to start sharing valuable and interesting content with your target market.
This can help increase traffic to your website, and be an opportunity to attract new customers by using local SEO techniques on all of your blog posts (and other webpages as well).
Another benefit of blogging is that it allows you to engage with potential customers in a personal way, increasing their comfort level with purchasing from you.
If you would like to learn more about local SEO, contact this North Sydney SEO Agency in NSW.
2) Participate in online communities
At its core, business is about building relationships with people. When you take that concept online, you can interact with a whole new world of potential customers and partners. Communities like Reddit and Quora have opened up a wealth of opportunity in recent years. Look to communities in your industry or with similar interests—there are plenty out there!
An easy way to find them is using Google search operators to look specifically for niche communities. Try searches like reddit marketing or quora digital marketing (minus quotation marks). Don’t be afraid to jump in and start sharing content! Just remember that participating online communities is just another way to network online…don’t be a troll. You want to add value, not stir up trouble.
3) Give helpful advice
It might sound counterintuitive, but giving people helpful advice can also be an effective way to get your brand in front of new people. After all, as a small business owner, you probably have a few pieces of advice to give (and maybe even a few lessons learned). If you’ve got a lot of great tips up your sleeve, publish them on your company’s website or create a page on social media and share them.
You never know who might see it! You could even do both! For example, with your website readership and Facebook fans from one particular post in mind, you could create different versions of that same post for each platform to make sure every single piece of advice reaches its target audience. Another fun idea is to offer themed content around certain holidays or seasons.
4) Contribute quality content
This is one of the most underrated and easy ways to market your business. If you’re a freelance writer, there are dozens of writing sites where you can contribute content on a consistent basis. Do some research on blogs related to your niche and pitch thoughtful, engaging posts on topics that people would be searching for.
You can also reach out to companies directly—either through email or LinkedIn—and ask if they’d be interested in having an industry expert share their thoughts with their audience. If you run a business, there are lots of ways to share quality content outside of social media; consider guest blogging as well as writing thought leadership pieces and contributing to industry publications and newsletters.
5) Join social media channels
One of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to market your business is to take advantage of social media channels. Social media can be incredibly powerful and should definitely be a part of your overall marketing strategy. However, it’s important to pick and choose which networks will work best for you.
Choose only two or three to start with; that way you can really dedicate yourself to each one rather than spreading yourself too thin across five or six. Think about your customers’ interests when deciding which networks they use most frequently, then set up profiles (and business pages) on those sites. Start interacting immediately; don’t wait until you have an event or promotion coming up!
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