There is certainly value in paid online marketing techniques such as Pay Per Click (PPC) and banner advertising. However, while these marketing techniques can work for you to drive more visitors to your website, they can also cost a lot of money.
As a small business owner trying to save money everywhere you can, you must be asking yourself whether there are ways to market and promote your business online that doesn’t cost a lot of money. Well, you are right! There are plenty of online marketing techniques that will save your banking account, but will just cost you time and effort.
Here are some online marketing techniques that have proven to work for other small businesses.
Practice Solid SEO Strategies
Your website can be listed near or at the top of search results without paying for search engine advertising, especially if your industry is not heavily competitive. While the SEO strategies regularly change depending upon Google’s algorithm updates, continuously publishing fresh, sharable keyword infused content (at a natural keyword density of 1%) is the number one key to getting to the top. The more you can inspire others to share your content via the social networks, the better your SEO rankings.
Ask for Email
Ask for a visitor’s email at any given opportunity. While you don’t want to scare visitors away by demanding an email before any further data or information will be shared, encourage visitors by assuring them that their email is kept private and only used to enlighten them with valuable offers and news from your company.
Include Your Web URL Everywhere
Your URL on printed marketing material is important, but include it everywhere online as well. That means including a link in all your email correspondence, leaving a URL link on bulletin board and community site posts, on electronic newsletters, and even on e-invoices.
Get On Directories
There are plenty of directories on the internet. The key is getting on the right ones. That means doing your research to find the top directories who will give you the best “points” on search results such as Google and Yahoo! business directories, DMOZ directory, the Librarians Internet Index (lii.com), business.com, and more.
Get Involved with Online Groups and Communities
The online groups you get involved with can be paramount to bringing in the right kind of traffic. Look for websites, bulletin boards, discussion sites, or anywhere else where your target customer will be and your product or service will likely appeal to them. Don’t forget to leave your URL on messages and posts!
Mistakes To Avoid
While it is easy to find cheap or even free online marketing strategies, it is important that you keep the following in mind so as not to jeopardize your efforts.
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Don’t Spam – This should be a given “don’t”. Spamming has been around as long as email has been used by the masses. Online email users are so weary of the garbage collected in their email boxes that tout the benefits of libido enhancement, investing in unknown startups, or improving credit that they automatically send them to the “trash”.
Your online marketing should be to legitimate recipients who have asked for your material. Never send unsolicited email to a recipient who is not expecting it.
- Avoid Contests – One way that many businesses have tried to use in the past is promoting a contest for a prize. It could be as little as a 50% coupon or even a valuable free product. While contests may attract some visitors, they are usually seekers of free or greatly reduced products/services and are not the type who become loyal customers.
- Avoid “Link Spamming” – As mentioned above, you want to improve your SEO by getting your small business site linked from other popular websites. But major search engines like Google have developed algorithms that detect when a website has “too many” links, and is likely overlinking, also known as “link spam”. This has caused problems when website owners use link-building software and other techniques to put their website link on as many other pages as possible, thus diluting the true value of the link.
