11 Free and Low Cost Ways To Promote Your Business Online

In today’s competitive business environment, marketing online is one of those business activities that can’t be eliminated.  No matter what your budget is you simply have to find a way to include online marketing.  If you are just starting out and have little capital this might not be the best news.  However, the news does get better.  Marketing your business online does not have to cost you a fortune.  In fact, in some cases it does not have to cost you any money.  You are invited to read through the following paragraphs.  They discuss free and low cost ways to promote your small business online.

11 Free and Affordable Ways to Promote Your Business Online

1.        Free:  Register your business online with the three search engine giants.  You can get your business on Google for free.  Go to www.google.com/business/.  Registering here allows you to be found more easily on Google.  It also allows your business to show up on Google maps.  Yahoo local found at https://local.yahoo.com/ is another directory that you can list your business on for free.  On Yahoo’s directory, you can list the information about your business including hours of operation.  Registering your business with Bing is another free way to get your business online.  You can register your business with Bing at https://www.bingplaces.com/

2.       Low Cost:  Try pay per click ads.  The pay per click advertising cost can be very reasonable.  When strategically done it can boost a website’s traffic with minimum investments.  The financial advantage to using pay per click is that you can bid as low as you want for exposure and still maintain control over your advertising budget.  Even with extremely low bids your ads are displayed on websites that use Adsense.

3.       Free and Low Cost:  Begin to invest time and/or money into social media.  There are over 600 million registered Twitter users that you could possibly tweet to for free.  It is worth it to invest time in cultivating a Twitter following that would be receptive to your tweets.  It would also be to your benefit to create a Facebook fan page.  Facebook has over a billion users.  For as little as $5 a day you could get your message in front of many Facebook users.  Of course the more you spend the more users you reach.  But $5 a day is a good start.  You could also network on Linkedin.  There is absolutely no cost to start a basic page.  Linkedin allows you to begin networking for free. 

4.       Low Cost:  Check out blog networks.  A blog network is a group of blogs that are connected to each other for the purpose of promoting one another.   If you become part of a blog network you would earn credits by browsing through the other blogs in the network.  You could then use the credits that you earn to display your banner ad on other blogs.  These networks also allow you to buy credits for a few dollars.

5.       Free:  You absolutely must start a blog free online.  A blog can be started for free using Blogger or Wordpress.  A blog is an absolute must for any size business.  It is the easiest way for a business to gain a good online presence.  It also allows you to engage the consumer and impress upon them that you are an expert in your industry.  Giving free useful information through a blog enables a business to connect with the consumer and to gain the consumer’s trust.  It is easier to sell to the consumer once their trust is gained.

6.       Low Cost:  Stumbleupon is one of the internet’s most revolutionary browsing tools.  When you advertise with Stumbleupon you are opening up the possibility for your website to be seen by many viewers.  The base price of getting in front of an internet viewer is $.10 per view and you remain in control of your budget.

7.       Free:  You can advertise your business with a free video uploaded to Youtube.  The challenge is uploading material that is both relevant to your business and appealing to people.  Nevertheless, once you have met that challenge it is possible to reach thousands of viewers.

8.       Low Cost:  Invest in a sponsored review.  Reputation is important in business.  It is as important online as it is offline.  Paying to have an excellent review written about your company that is posted where thousands of viewers can see it is an excellent investment.  You could have a sponsored review done for as little as $5 per post.

9.       Free:  Make sure your website or blog is optimized for search engines.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is a free way to drive thousands of viewers to your site.  There are plenty of free sources that walk you step by step through the process of SEO.   Moz has published one very recommendable search engine optimization free tutorial at http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo.

10.   Free:  Write a great press release.  If you have not done so yet, write a press release introducing your company.  Reasons to write a press release includes every time your business does something newsworthy.  You could write about your company picnic, awards that are given, sales quotas that have been exceeded, etc.

11.   Free:  Join an online community that is relevant to your business.  Reasons to join an online community includes free networking and advertising.  You could join forums or Facebook groups.  Don’t just join and pitch your business.  Become an active participant in the conversations and offer your expertise.  Advertise your business passively by putting a link to your website in your signature.

Conclusion

Marketing and advertising could be very expensive; but that does not mean that it has to cost you a lot of money.  If you are really strapped for cash then start giving your business an online presence by using the free advertising options that are mentioned in this article.  You could always incorporate some of the low cost advertising options once your revenue begins to increase in response to the free methods.

If you learned anything new from this article then please leave a comment.