Top Free Tools & Features to Market Your Business

Running a business comes up with a lot of extra cost and marketing is the one which is often mistaken as a cost to the business. Marketing is a word that people always connect with money and expensive expenditure. However, it depends entirely upon the business whether to choose the pricey marketing strategies or the free ones.

Earlier there were only limited options to market the business like brochures, flyers, ads in the local newspaper, or a postcard. But now because of digitisation, we have plenty of marketing features or strategies that cost absolutely zero money to the business owner and are equally effective as compared to the priced one.

Today, we are going to discuss some of the free/no-cost marketing strategies that will not put pressure on your wallets.

1. Create and Verify Your Google My Business Profile

For local businesses, creating a Google My Business profile has become one of the most effective ways to market yourself online. This free listing will allow your business to show up on Google Maps, Google Search, and the right-side knowledge panel for branded searches.

The most important and the only key to market your business profile is to verify the ownership of your listing through your free Google My Business account. Once you have the ownership, you can optimise your business profile to rank higher in search results. Also, through the business profile, a business can upload updated posts, events, and offers in front of the audience at a time when they have high intent.

To gain deeper knowledge about the benefits of Google My Business, read this.

2. Engage on Social Media

Social Media is a huge platform and there are numbers of paid as well as unpaid marketing options available for any business. Today, there are a number of platforms on which a business can open up a free account like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and many more. Once you have set up an account, you can start expressing your brand personality and build brand trust with your audience.

Posting regular and engaging content for the target audience or your followers on social media platforms can keep your engagement high and can help you express your brand voice. Also, businesses can promote their blog posts through social media handles which can help them increase traffic towards their website. Moreover, there are several features like live streaming, or engagement through stories or short videos, which gives businesses an opportunity to convey their vision and message to the audience and promote their business for free.

3. Engage Through Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to get new users to engage with your business as well as maintaining relations with existing users. Since more than 90% of email users check email every day, it is the most reliable place to engage with your customers. Moreover, through email marketing, you can also promote special deals or offers, encourage consumers to sign up for the newsletter, build quality leads, and drive traffic towards the website.

Mailchimp is one of the leading and free email marketing service providers through which businesses can plan their promotional email campaigns hassle-free and conveniently. Also, through email marketing, businesses can slowly pursue their subscribers via email until they become paying customers over time.

4. Do Some Local SEO

As we all know Google Algorithm ranks the websites or businesses higher on SERPs which contains accurate, high-quality, and relevant content for the searched query. Every small business has a chance to utilise the benefit that reaps from SEO and compete against the big players in the industry.

Local SEO is free of cost but might take some time to perfectly implement it and get used to it. Although there are many ways to do local SEO, here are some local SEO must-dos for you: 

• Use relevant keywords like local location, service offering, etc. (for example: Plumbing Services Sydney) and use it in titles, headings, or body content of your main website pages.
• List your business in online local directories and make sure all the information is accurate among all the platforms.
• Publish pages or blog posts specific to the regions you serve.

5. Engage with Social Influencers:

In today’s generation, influencer marketing holds a huge significance in the marketing world. It means a business offers free products or trial products to a blogger or influencer with a huge following on social media and in return, the influencers then market the product on their social media handles.

People think of it as a costly method of marketing but it entirely depends upon the influencer and how famous he/she is on the platform, for instance, micro-influencers (influencers with a small following) have high engagement rates and are often willing to post something in return for a free product or trial.

6. Tag Brands or People on Social Media

The most prominent way to market your website is through tagging your loyal customers, brands, or suppliers on social media posts. This allows the business to broaden the organic reach, acquire a new potential audience, and potentially help you grow the following. Also, encouraging followers to tag your business on their posts can help you reach to wider audience group and increase your brand awareness.

7. Write Blogs on Your Business’ Industry

Blogs are a great source to engage with both your current customer group and potential customers. Regardless of the size of the organisation, big or small, blogging plays an imperative part in your online content marketing strategy. Writing a blog is a way of educating your customers about your product or your industry expertise. Additionally, it shows your customers how competent you are in your industry and how much knowledge you actually have about it. Blogging not only increases your SEO and search engine rankings but also helps you build better customer relationships.

Conclusion

So there you have it. These are some features any business can implement in their marketing plans or strategies and achieve effective results without losing bug bucks. Hence, utilise these free features/tools and cut down the cost of your marketing budgets today.

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