Proven Budget-Friendly Ideas For Small Business Promotion

As more and more businesses establish their online presence, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain exposure.

This saturated market makes it necessary to consider alternatives rather than letting the business grow organically. Promotion is a particularly effective alternative.

Nonetheless, launching or having a small business is usually accompanied by tight budgets or very limited funds, which can make advertising very costly if not planned carefully.

If you find yourself in such a situation, keep reading. In this article, we’re going to list some of the best proven budget-friendly ideas for small business promotion.

Let’s get right to it.

Create A Killer Email Newsletter Using Examples of The Best Newsletters

(Source: Flodesk)

One of the best strategies to promote a business product or service, or to keep existing and potential clients informed of your company's news, is email marketing.

In addition to being a promotional tool, email marketing serves as a means to strengthen your relationship with prospects and to remind them of your presence.

This is also one of the cheapest methods for promoting small businesses. According to Active Campaign, consumer lists cost between $100 and $600 per thousand emails. This can also make it cheaper for smaller businesses with fewer subscribers.

Whatever the cost, email marketing needs to be planned, developed, and implemented effectively to maximize ROI.

To do so, you may wish to learn more examples of the best newsletters.

Promote Your Site By Implementing A Winning SEO Strategy

Apart from advertising methods, there are also organic strategies that, if implemented correctly, can yield even better results.

These strategies fall under the umbrella of search engine optimization (SEO).

An effective search engine optimization strategy requires that you take some actions to optimize your website and its content.

A properly optimized website will rank higher in search engine results, and users will be able to find it more easily, leading to more traffic and lead generation.

Many SEO methods exist that help you improve your search rankings . If you are trying to enhance the overall shopping experience for shoppers , for example, consider optimizing SMB mobile commerce performance or creating SEO-friendly product filters.

Performing SEO in-house will be completely free, and this will give your small business a boost in sales.

Don't forget to check these SEO tips out so you can execute SEO correctly and capture more organic traffic.

Start A Blog For Your Small Business

Another great way to promote your business is to start a blog. By creating a blog and updating it frequently, you will gain more visibility on search engine results and make it easier for people to find you.

As a result, your website will attract more visitors and convert them into paying customers.

The best way to make your blog stand out on the web is to focus on a niche topic that few or no other websites cover.

This will give you exclusivity and make you the authority within the niche.

Be sure that you follow the best SEO practices when writing posts for your blog to increase their visibility on search engines.

Leverage The Power of Social Media

The use of social media is another great way to promote small businesses for free.

They are popular among small businesses because they're easy to use and they're inexpensive since they're free if managed internally.

Today, there are many social media platforms with different formats and audiences, so you can choose the one that is most appropriate for your business.

If you're targeting young people, you might want to choose Instagram or TikTok, whereas older generations may prefer Facebook.

Once you decide on which platforms have the most potential for your business, you will need to decide on a social media calendar and create content. For this purpose, you may need a social media graphic tool like Canva.

Turn Customers Into Advocates With User-generated Content

You can also promote your small business by taking advantage of user-generated content.

User-generated content includes any type of content — text, videos, images, reviews, etc. — made by users rather than the brand. An example would be a video shared on TikTok or a praise-filled Instagram post.

Throughout the buyer's journey, user-generated content, particularly visual UGC, helps influence engagement and increase conversions, thus increasing your brand's visibility and value.

Find Affiliates To Promote Your Small Business

Another budget-friendly marketing strategy for small businesses is affiliate marketing.

In exchange for a commission, you can have other businesses promote your products, services, or your business in general in multiple ways, such as via social media and blogs.

You will only need to pay the promoter when someone uses the promoter's link to visit your website or buy from you. Hence, you are certain that the traffic is coming from the affiliate, and you are benefiting from your promotion investment.

To succeed with affiliate marketing, you must identify established businesses within your industry. As a result, you ensure that the material you present is relevant to the audience.

Invest In Infographic Creation

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to convey information quickly and clearly.

Typically, they use visual elements to convey complex ideas to the audience in a way that is more digestible.

HubSpot statistics show that infographics can increase website traffic by as much as 12%. They’re also liked and shared more than any other type of content.

Therefore, infographics are a great form of content for promoting your small business.

Because they are able to generate higher engagement, you can create one of them to drive interaction and share, which will increase visibility and sales for your small business.

Organize Raffles And Prize Giveaways

Giveaways and raffles have always proven to be the most effective methods of generating engagement and visibility.

Through social media, they have become even easier to organize and manage, so they are being recognized and taken advantage of by more and more people and businesses.

In order to drive more engagement, you need to offer something valuable to participants, such as free trials or products as prizes.

Before you start a raffle or giveaway, make sure you do proper promotion by posting regularly about it.

Run Informative Webinars

In the aftermath of the pandemic, businesses have re-thought how to conduct promotional events for their products or services, and simply talk about certain topics.

This used to take place in person, but now there are webinars. It resembles in-person conferences but occurs entirely online and is attended by online audiences.

In the past few months, their popularity has grown rapidly as small businesses have found that they are a great way to market themselves.

Since they are economical and accessible, webinars are powerful promotional tools.They can accommodate large audiences without incurring enormous expenses that an in-person conference would otherwise require.

You can use social media and your website to promote your webinar and attract as many attendees as possible.

With webinars, you can get closer to your potential clients, remove any doubts they may have about your products and services, and explain how your product or service can solve their problems.

Collaborate With Other Small Businesses

As a new business you might not be able to gain the exposure you desire. Therefore, you may wish to consider alternative ways of promoting your small business.

Collaboration with other companies, regardless of size, is the most effective means to accomplish this. Co-developing a product, creating a service, or holding a webinar are all examples of ways to collaborate.

Collaborations will lead to maximum results in terms of visibility and engagement.

In order to maximize its effectiveness, you should find companies that operate within the same niche or one that is similar to yours.

Employ An Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

An omnichannel marketing strategy involves integrating and coordinating the various channels that organizations use to engage with consumers online (websites, apps, social media, email, SMS, WhatsApp) and offline (retail stores, events, call centers) to create a consistent brand experience.

The importance of omnichannel marketing lies in its ability to create a positive customer experience throughout the customer's lifecycle, reduce churn, and establish and enhance your brand's reputation.

If you provide such a positive customer or shopping experience to your customers, you'll enable them to promote your business by sharing their experience through reviews, with friends, and so on.

Conclusions

Sometimes small businesses find it difficult to gain exposure and drive the engagement they desire. Several reasons are behind this, such as having a tight budget, which makes it difficult for them to advertise their businesses effectively.

Luckily, it is easy to overcome this problem today by considering alternative promotion strategies.

In this blog post, we’ve listed the best budget-friendly ideas for small business promotion. The implementation of one or more of these will surely produce the results you expect in terms of visibility and sales.

We appreciate you taking the time to read this blog post. We hope it was informative and helpful to you. If you want to read more, please check out this article on the best online merchandising tips for SMBs to skyrocket sales.

Author

Flavia Silipo is a skilled SEO copywriter and digital marketing specialist with over two years of experience. You can find her on LinkedIn.