Small businesses often have a tight marketing budget to work with, which can make promoting your business a challenge. There are many ways for small businesses to market their business to customers without spending much money. Here are the marketing ideas for small businesses:
- Post (and engage) on social media
Increasing social media engagement and building a community online is a free way to grow your small business while expressing your brand’s personality and building trust with your audience.
- Tag people and brands on social media
Tagging your loyal customers, brand evangelists, or even neighboring companies and vendors on social media can broaden the organic reach of your business to a new potential audience, help you grow your following, and potentially even attain more clients
- Use hashtags!
Another free marketing tactic that can broaden your reach is to incorporate hashtags into your social media posts on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok for sure but also for Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Do some local SEO
The best part about Google’s algorithm is that it is designed to serve up the most accurate, high-quality, and relevant content for any given search query.
- Develop an email marketing plan
Email marketing is a great way to get new visitors engaged with your business, as well as maintain relationships with your existing customers.
- Claim free ad promo credits
While massive ad campaigns may be out of your budget, there are often discounts and coupons floating around for Facebook or Google Ads
- Apply for business awards
Most industries have business awards you can win, providing you with an online badge you can place on your website. Badges like these can boost credibility, and as a result, increase sales.
- Publish great content
Content marketing, if done with care, is a highly effective tactic that doesn’t require a huge budget
- Turn employees into brand ambassadors
For many small businesses, word of mouth is an important marketing strategy to boost sales.
- Host a social media contest or giveaway
Running a social media contest or giveaway is a smart and effective marketing strategy requiring minimal resources.
These strategies don’t require a big advertising budget, but you will likely need to put some resources into them such as by subscribing to a platform or purchasing tickets to events.
