Small businesses often find themselves in difficult situations, especially when times are tight and the economy hits everyone hard.
While it’s generally acknowledged that small businesses are the backbone of the economy in most countries around the world, they are also least likely to have the resources to ride out a slow down in business.
Because of this, it’s even more important to have small business marketing strategies that are both effective and free or very low-cost.
All Businesses Should Have An Online Presence
These days, any small business must have an online presence, including their own website, as part of their basic and essential small business marketing plan.
While a website is not a free marketing tool, it is quite low-cost compared to the many benefits a business can enjoy by having their own website.
For a website to be effective, it must look professional and it must load in the visitors’ browser quickly. A site that is ugly, disorganized, hard to read, and out-of-date will turn website visitors off and you will lose any potential new customers.
Current customers that see and badly designed site might even start looking for a more professional business presentation from among your competitors.
You also need to ensure that your site can be viewed on mobile devices as this market is now claimed to have 60% to 70% of the market place in business searches and is only going to grow bigger each year.
Once you have a good-looking, easy to navigate site, you can embellish your site to attract more visitors and gain a wider audience which translates into more potential business for your company. One of the first things you should do is offer an online newsletter to your customers and visitors to your site. You should incorporate an “opt-in” box that allows them to enter their name, email address, and birth date.
Collect Your Customers Details Using Newsletters and Free Offers
With a list of email addresses of your customers, you can send them a regular newsletter keeping them abreast of the things that might interest them and benefit them that your business offers. Many restaurants make excellent use of this by sending out menu updates and coupons for a free appetizer or dessert in celebration of the customer’s birthday.
Just about any type of small business can implement these ideas once they have started to gather this customer list. This is another low-cost way to make the most of a small business marketing budget.
Taking The Time To Create Informative Videos
These days website visitors are very attracted to videos. If you have a video camera, you can make videos of different products or services your company offers.
You will get a two-fold benefit from this.
First, you can show customers how they can benefit from what you company offers in a clear, visual, and hopefully interesting and entertaining way.All you need to do is visit YouTube to see how videos are now being used by many companies to not only promote but brand their business across the internet.
And before you discount this strategy you might want to consider this, YouTube is the third biggest search engine on the planet making it a very effective and free marketing tool for any business whether online or not.
Second, you will gain even more visitors to your website if you post your videos to sites like YouTube in addition to posting them on your own site.
Using The Many Free Tools Online
With an interesting and effective website, you can also help local customers find you by registering your site with Google My Business (Google Local Searches) which is a free service they offer. This will help your site be found by customers using Google search.
In addition, you can write articles about your company, your products, and your services and submit them free of charge to article directories or other relevant blogs with authority to further the reach of your small business marketing plan.
