5 Inexpensive Marketing Ideas For Small Businesses
Small businesses can build effective marketing strategies with inexpensive marketing ideas and tactics that build brand awareness and achieve marketing objectives. Marketing is possible on a small budget or, in fact, no budget as you can adopt marketing strategies and ideas that will reach and engage your target audience.
Marketing is a great way to improve your bottom line, increase sales, and introduce new customers to your business. Every small business can implement marketing, and with the right strategies and marketing plan, your business can expose its brand identity and build stable relationships. Ensure you are following the proper steps to jump-start your marketing and exceed your expectations by commencing some of the following inexpensive marketing ideas for your small business.
1. Social Media Video Content
As we live in a highly digital-savvy world, all businesses should have active social media accounts. Social media has the power to develop meaningful relationships and attract new customers with engaging regular content, and best of all, it’s free. Social media, in particular, video content, is an inexpensive marketing idea to connect and reach a vast majority of users quickly.
By using video content, your small business can catch the attention of your target audience with creative and exciting topics that can be informative. Your business can use gifs or short ‘how to’ and demonstration videos to educate the audience as to why they should purchase your product/service.
2. Hashtag & Tag On Social Media
Another marketing idea that embraces the digital age and is completely free is to optimize your social media posts and content with hashtags and tags. Your small business can tag particular followers, companies, partners, and even employees on social media to immediately increase the post reach and attract attention. By tagging other companies and influencers affiliated with your brand, you can enhance brand awareness and reach a larger audience.
Additionally, you can incorporate hashtags in your captions to reach accounts that follow a specific hashtag. Ensure that you use relevant hashtags to your business and products/services to target your desired audience and reach stakeholders interested in your industry.
3. Build LinkedIn Connections
Although LinkedIn may be less exciting than platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, it is an essential tool to use in your marketing strategy and to reach your business objectives. LinkedIn allows you to form strong connections with potential customers and network within your industry.
LinkedIn ensures your brand can be recognized by other professionals in your field and boost sales through connections and positive word of mouth. LinkedIn additionally provides you with the ability to form an alliance with other professionals and help your small business build creditability. It’s imperative to interact with professionals in your industry and, importantly your customers on LinkedIn. You can do this by posting regularly or through direct messages about your workplace, services/products, company news, and updates.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great inexpensive idea that markets directly to existing customers and can improve your bottom line. Your customers are aware of your brand, have purchased your products/services, and therefore you have the opportunity to turn them into repeat customers. Email marketing is used to send a direct message to customers and is one of the most reliable ways to achieve a strong return on your marketing investment.
Reaching out to existing clients can streamline sales while creating a strong brand connection with customers. They can keep up to date on company news, gain access to exclusive deals, and view your business benefits. Each email marketing campaign allows your small business to maintain a strong relationship and communication with customers while enhancing website trafic. Often customers enjoy maintaining a strong brand connection, and effective email marketing can help you achieve this.
5. Create Blog Content to Boost SEO
It’s vital that you promote your small business in a way that drives traffic to your website and generates leads. This can be done through blog posts on your website and SEO. Your small business should create a blog page on your website if you already have one or update your existing one with regular blog posts each week. Blogs posts are the ultimate marketing tactic that enables your business to write about your product/service insights and benefits, industry news, company updates, client case studies and your workplace. It’s critical to remember that blog content should be engaging, creative, and diverse with specific hyperlinks and subheadings to hook the readers and effectively reach your desired audienc.
These five inexpensive marketing strategies when performed consistently will help your small business boost sales, increase brand awareness and achieve marketing and business objectives. You can immediately develop a strong brand identity by utilizing social media and the other marketing ideas listed above while connecting with customers and encouraging two-way communication.
If your small business requires a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes more inexpensive marketing ideas and an in-depth analysis of your brand and competitors, contact the team at Robotic Marketer today to learn more.
Image: Shutterstock 1157182405
Top 6 Free Courses for Digital Marketing
As the world becomes increasingly digital, the role of the traditional marketer is near dead. Digital marketing is taking over, and companies must embrace its offerings. Digital marketing brings significant opportunities for business growth and the ability to reach a wider audience, coupled with its cost-effective and easy to learn methods. To remain at the top of your business game, you should maintain an intricate understanding of the marketing opportunities.
Here are the top six free online courses to expand your digital marketing skills:
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Google Digital Marketing Course
Google is currently offering a free digital marketing course via the Google Digital Garage, which aims to teach the fundamentals of digital marketing to participants. This free course is targeted towards beginners in the field who are looking to expand their marketing knowledge. The course consists of twenty-six modules totaling forty hours, which will result in an authentic digital marketing certification from Google. With practical exercises and real-world examples making up the majority of the content, this course offers an accurate insight into the benefits and applications of digital marketing in a technological world.
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SEMRUSH Academy Digital Marketing Course
SEMRUSH Academy is offering a free online course providing participants with the opportunity to learn the basics of digital marketing for small and medium-sized businesses. Prominent industry expert, Greg Gifford, presents the course via eleven one-hour lessons, hand-picked readings, and quizzes, all available online. The course covers a range of different areas within the industry, including the basics of SEO, display advertising, email marketing, competitive research, and much more. This course is specifically designed for business owners or new marketers who wish to expand their knowledge of digital marketing.
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HubSpot Academy Digital Marketing Course
HubSpot Academy is currently offering a digital marketing course that will resonate with marketers of all levels. The free course consists of nine lessons, made up of both videos and quizzes, each designed to build upon your digital marketing knowledge. An array of HubSpot experts will focus on explaining how you can optimize your website for SEO, to create a non-paid strategy to build and grow a following and develop an advertisement strategy to amplify your business message to a targeted audience.
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Optinmonster Digital Marketing Training
While Optinmonster will not teach you all the specifics of digital marketing, this course will intricately explain how you can attract and convert website traffic into customers. By participating in this course, you will learn how to create your customer list from scratch, how to get targeted subscribers to invest in your product/service and how to turn traditional one-off buyers into loyal fans. Optinmaster focuses on step-by-step explanations of the benefits or best way of applying email marketing to achieve such heights. As the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered how digital marketers operate, placing a greater emphasis on the importance of email marketing, as there is no better time to continue to grow your business.
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Social Media Quickstarter Digital Marketing Course
The benefits of focusing on social media for the success and growth of your business are exponential as social media can engage a worldwide audience. In 2021, 91.9% of US marketers in companies more prominent than 100 employees were expected to use social media for marketing purposes. The exponential growth in the field is undeniable after this year. The Social Media Quickstarter Course will provide step-by-step instructions that outline how you can build your social media presence across all top social networks. This course includes glossaries and how-to-guides, coupled with practical examples of the lessons at hand in action to ensure that you are well versed in the intricacies of the world of social media.
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WordStream’s PPC University
Additionally, Wordstream’s Pay-Per-Click (PPC) University is a free resource that aims to help build both your PPC and digital marketing skills. Brought to you by an array of experts at Wordstream, this site offers an organized, manageable framework of courses that will effectively teach you how to advertise on search engines and social media. This course provides a variety of basic and advanced strategies to suit marketers at all manner of levels. With access to webinars and white papers to expand your digital marketing education, this course is ideal for anyone on the go, given its mobile-friendly options.
With many free digital marketing courses available, there has never been a better time to build your knowledge in marketing. The direct benefits to you and your business will be anything but marginal, with lower marketing costs and expanded consumer market lists being only a few of the enticing results. Whether you’re a marketing whiz or simply dipping your toe into the field, there is a course that will directly resonate with you.