8 Effective Ways to Market Your Business Online Without Spending Money

As we all know, marketing your business to potential customers is a necessary part of having a successful business.

The issue with traditional advertising, such as newspaper, radio, and television ads, is that they can be expensive and may produce little or even no return on investment.

Advertising online is often a better option. You can track the effectiveness of each advertisement. Then you focus your marketing strategies on the techniques that are the most profitable.

But there are also options for marketing your business online without spending any money at all!

Here are some free online marketing methods that you may want to consider for your business:

1. Partner up with another expert in your field. Consider joining forces with another brand. You can then offer a more substantial product together than either one of you could offer alone.
   • In addition, you’ll automatically get the attention of both audiences, resulting in more sales and adding more leads to your email list. In the future, these new leads can drive more sales of another one of your products.
   • Partnering on even one marketing campaign can bring long-term benefits to both of you.
2. Encourage user-generated content. If you can acquire user-generated content, your website will grow without you having to create your own content. This type of content also increases your website visitors. Enable comments on your website and contribute to the discussions.
   • Allow visitors to submit their own articles and encourage guest posts from other experts.
   • We can help make it easy for visitors to submit content to you for approval and ease of publishing. Contact us to learn more!
3. Affiliate marketing. When you create an affiliate program for your business, you will be getting other experts in your field and the public to send business your way. This can be mutually beneficial, and you will only be paying commissions (after the sale) if the affiliate makes a sale.
   • As with the partnering technique, many of these new visitors will sign up for your email list, even if they don’t buy something right away, bringing you long-term benefits and sales.
   • We can help you setup an affiliate marketing platform. We will handle the tech, and can even help with the creatives for your affiliates.  Contact us to learn more!
4. Be active on social media. There are millions of users visiting the various social media platforms daily, so it makes sense for your business to have a presence there.  Or better yet, post the following to your Blog first, then share that blog post on social media to drive traffic to your website!
   • Share funny or interesting images or videos that are relevant to your business.
   • Post insights and valuable information. 
   • Let your audience know when you have a sale on your products. Give your social media followers coupons or discounts.
   • Encourage engagement by participating in discussions. Ask questions and answer theirs.
   • Run a survey, poll, or contest.
   • In turn, these will then be shared by your followers, increasing your reach and ultimately resulting in more sales of your products or services.
5. Use free online tools. There are plenty of tools online that can help your business. You can sign up for websites that will enable you to create free surveys, or you can use a free online service to send emails to your customers. You do not have to pay a premium to receive top-notch service…. but you also get what you pay for. If just starting out, free is good.
   • TIP: Did you know that in a Prebuilt Website you can easily create surveys with the built in form builder?  No 3rd party tools needed! Contact us to learn more!
6. Change and reuse old advertisements. Rather than going through the expensive route of creating new articles with every marketing campaign, try reusing parts of an advertisement that worked well. This will save you time and expense.
   • Don’t reinvent the wheel!  If it worked before, just refresh it and run it again!
   • Plus, keeping consistent brand imagery through every ad will help with brand recognition too.
7. Build an email list. If people are visiting your website, chances are good that they are interested in what you have to offer. Make a form available for them to join your email list and be kept in the loop about future product releases or special offers.
   • Once they’ve signed up to this email list, you can send emails to these prospects with news and further information about your products. Let them know whenever something goes on sale.
   • Building an email list is so important that we include an email capture/subscribe form in every website from Prebuilt Sites. We will even connect it to your emailing service for you (Like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Infusionsoft, etc.)
   • Email marketing is one of the best ways to drive sales. Treat your list members like gold, because that’s what they are to you and your business.
8. Create some video content. Video content is incredibly important nowadays as the younger generation would rather watch a video than read a blog post. If you can create interesting videos, you’ll create interest in your brand.
   • Create your own free YouTube video channel. Embed those videos into a blog post and share that blog post on your social media accounts.
   • Videos help your websites SEO (search engine optimization) by reducing bounce rates, increasing time on page, and increasing engagement by website visitors.
   • Did you know it’s as easy as copy/pasting in a YouTube (or Vimeo) video URL into a blog post to embed it into a website from Prebuilt Websites?  It couldn’t be easier!

It’s certainly possible to do online marketing without spending money. Some of these methods might take some time and effort to implement, though, before you see profits.

For example, it can take a while to build an email list. However, once you have a list, making sales can be as easy as sending out an email to your list. Once you’ve built a social media following, making sales can be as easy as making a post on your social media accounts.

If you want to see an immediate ROI, like for a special promotion, you want to consider paying for ads online.   Online advertising is the surefire way to get an immediate jump in website traffic. But if funds are tight, be patient as you put these free strategies into place, and soon you’ll have plenty of ways to make immediate sales for free.