Not every business has the marketing mileage or budget to compete with the likes of Coca Cola or Apple and when it comes devising and executing the advertising campaign for your small or start-up business, it often pays to be creative. In fact, you’ll be surprised to know that some of the most effective and reliable forms of advertising can be completed on a shoestring budget or even for free, boosting business and reaching out to untapped resources and customer bases.
On that note, we have compiled 5 of the best ways you can advertise your business for absolutely nothing, whoever said ‘you put in what you get out’ clearly never had access to these top tips!
Bag Yourself Some Business Freebies
After hours trawling the net, I’ve discovered that there are a number of great business freebies to be had for companies of all sizes and across all sectors. A selection of print companies offer free promotional business cards in the hope that they get secure further custom from commercial clients so take advantage of these great deals. You can also learn how to develop your own website online with a number of free courses and webinars available straight from the experts, meaning you can get yourself online for just the price of the domain and hosting, minus the huge and expensive contract with an award-winning web design company. In addition to this, there are a number of voucher websites offering great discounts for small, growing companies to help curb the cost of everyday business management.
Embrace Traditional Media
As well as using your newfound skills to get yourself noticed online, small businesses should also pay attention to traditional media. Local and regional magazines and newspapers, as well as specialist B2B publications, dedicate a certain number of column inches to locally based businesses so get in touch with the right press contacts and exploit this for free publicity. Journalists are more than happy to hear story ideas for industry professional, plus company milestones and charity work within businesses always provide popular, topical features.
Become Multimedia Savvy
It’s not just your website and social media channels that can offer excellent promotional opportunities for next to nothing, why not use other forms of media to get your business ethos across and connect with online customers? Vlogging is a handy and interactive combination of blogging and video, these short yet informative videos can be uploaded to your YouTube channel or similar sites and promoted via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. You could even share your own experience of small business marketing with the masses or offer advice to customers to promote your business with sharable snippets of all-essential information.
Give Your Own Freebies
Offering your own freebies either in person or online can be an excellent and budget-friendly way of drumming up business and building the customer loyalty you need to get repeat orders and keep business booming. After all product freebies or discounts on services will come at little or no cost to you but the profit from these freebies will be immeasurable with countless returning customers and heart felt, positive reviews that entice newer ones.
Get Involved
The oldest promotional tool in the book – why not spend your free time getting involved in local charities, clubs and events? Develop relationships with the people on the ground; who knows the friends and professional partnerships you make now may just become long serving and faithful customers in the future!
This post was written by Brittany Thorley, a business management expert at Forsyth Office Rental. As well as assisting growing businesses in her day job, Brittany also spends most of her free time supporting small to medium enterprises from the grassroots up with the latest industry advice. Image courtesy Ken Hawkins
A ton of great ideas about free promotion!
I’d also say that networking is another important free way to advertise your business – proper networking can easily be done at no cost, yet can lead to powerful relationships and leads by making solid connections and mutually beneficial relationships.
You’ve come up with a great product idea. Maybe you’ve even designed a prototype. But if your product is too complex or expensive for you to produce in bulk, it’s time to start working with a manufacturer.