When it comes to business and marketing, no matter how big or small you are, the internet should be your best friend.
It is a most excellent tool available to quite literally anyone. With billions of people using the internet, it’s not surprising that this can quickly and easily become one of your highest-yielding marketing tools and tactics.
Of course, with the growing number of potential internet audiences and customers, it means there will be an increase in money spent on ads.
From social media posts to dedicated portions on a popular article, there are many ways for you to advertise your business, granted you have the funds and resources to do so.
However, what if you’re not a Fortune 500 company with millions available to spend on advertising? Don’t worry because, believe it or not; it doesn’t take a large corporation’s budget to become an online competitor.
We’ll be going over various ways to not only improve your chances at attracting more online customers but doing so without having to spend a large amount of money.
SEO Optimization
The first step you’ll need to do is look at the current state of your search engine optimization (SEO) and see how it can be improved.
A fantastic way to do this is by using one of many SEO analyzers available on the internet. It’s so simple!
Simply enter your website or page URL, and you can receive a page-studied SEO analysis.
This tool is great because you can also enter the URLs from competitor sites for comparative analysis. This is good for not only understanding the SEO situation of your pages but potential competition as well.
Once you can see what areas are optimized and what needs improvement, you will have a big step — not only towards improving your SEO but also — towards outshining competition and gaining more traffic.
Look Into Keywords
Keywords aren’t a throw-away topic, especially when it concerns SEO optimization. After all, having the best keywords is essentially the foundation for SEO success, as it will allow you to stay at the top of search results.
Similar to SEO analyzers, there are many keyword tools that you can use, including one that Google itself provides. By either researching relevant keywords or using ones that are most
searched in your analytics report, you can use those to rank your page.
You’re bound to get more potential customers looking at what you have to offer for each keyword you add to your page. With all this talk about SEO and keywords, there is one thing every business can do that combines these two components: create high-quality on-page content!
Starting A Blog
An excellent way to start providing information to current customers is with a blog. Plus, it can help build up a larger audience for the future.
There are over four hundred million readers on WordPress alone every month, with over twenty billion blog posts read.
That being said, to have the largest and most consistent audience possible, you’re going to need a quality blog to get the attention you need. However, this does not mean cramming your blog posts with keywords will automatically put you above competitor pages.
On average, it will take a dedicated writer anywhere from one to three hours to produce a quality blog post. Remember, it is always worth dedicating more time to creating a good foundation for your business and marketing projects.
For that, writing a fantastic blog is one of the best foundations to start on.
Social Media Groups
Not many businesses and marketers may consider having a social media group, such as a Facebook group.
Whether you run a group yourself or become part of one, this is a great way to reach out to people interested in the products or content you provide.
By remaining active, you may eventually decide to start a group of your own, which will raise interest and potential customers.
Another option is to have an active social media presence. Similar to having keywords for SEO, if you use the right hashtags and post consistently, you may find yourself with a steadily growing audience on these various platforms.
Regardless of what you choose to do, this is a great way to reach out to more people without spending any money whatsoever.
Forum Posts and Discussions
Similar to social media groups, there are also websites with dedicated forums and discussion boards on anything you may be marketing.
Some of these websites include Reddit and Tumblr. You can find loyal communities there that would be more than willing to look at what you have to offer.
By participating in these forums and discussions, you can spread your influence. You will also build backlinks that can show up on search results before leading back to your page.
This is a way to build trust with people and gain outside or third-party knowledge and insight that you may never have known before.
Pro Tip: Sites like Reddit and Tumblr are notorious for sniffing out straight self-promotion. You need to make sure you are active in these communities and doing organic engagement before you try to drop any kind of marketing links!
Sharing Knowledge On Relevant Content
You’ve probably seen this countless times before, but many informational sites and posts have a comment section for further discussion.
Often, people still don’t fully understand or grasp the concept, which is an excellent opportunity for you to step in.
By offering a unique solution that works, you will not only start to build up trust between you and other commenters, but you can also capitalize on the opportunity to provide a link to your posts for further information.
While this is another excellent way to share your content, you have to make sure you aren’t forcing the link or spamming it, similar to the other methods we have gone over.
Comments can also be displayed on the top of search results if it provides an answer for a question that Google likes. While your page won’t be the first thing people click on, this will cause more organic traffic to generate for yourself if you provide a link.
Email List
Email lists are a tactic that is easily overlooked. While your list will likely start out small, it can grow to become something extraordinary.
You may not have much of an audience at first, but consistent dedication to building this list will allow you to end up with hundreds and even thousands of people waiting for your next and newest blog post or product description.
There are many email automation platforms available for companies and businesses to use. On average, every one dollar spent on a marketing campaign is returned with forty-four dollars in ROI.
As you could expect, with an extensive mailing list, this is a much more effective method than using social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. On top of that, emails have generally higher click-through rates and are more likely to be read than social media posts.
Automated email platforms such as MailChimp provide message templates and mechanical email services.
The more you may be willing to invest in programs like these, the more value you will be able to get from it. While you can manage a smaller email list yourself, you may need to consider these options if your list grows by a considerable number.
Market through online retailers
Using online markets such as eBay is a perfect way to sell your products and increase your potential customer reach.
You can not only list your products to be sold, but you can also customize your eBay storefront so that customers who were browsing will remember your page and come back in the future to look over your products again.
With millions of active users and billions worth of products sold yearly, it is easy to see why every business should make its name known on this online marketplace.
Some other large internet markets where you can either post listings or ads are Amazon and Craigslist. These are also two other great platforms for you to expand your reach to potential customers.
In this modern world, if you are trying to market your products and services but aren’t taking advantage of these online marketplaces, then you’re already going to be several steps behind the competition.
Affiliate Programs
Finally, we’ll be going over a widely used method to this date, yet many people are unaware of it. This is called an affiliate program.
Essentially how it works is you can form an agreement with people to advertise your content or products on their website. Then, for each customer that follows their link to your site and makes a purchase, you reimburse them with a commission.
This is great for smaller businesses, especially as you don’t need to pay anyone any money until you make money yourself.
As your affiliate program begins to gain more and more traction, you will have influencers and those with a significant presence constantly reaching out, which will inevitably generate more and more future sales.
Wrapping it Up
Due to the amount of media coverage on larger companies and how much they spend to advertise their products and services, you may have developed a false hunch that you need to pay a ton of money for good advertising.
However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
As you just read, with the proper methods and effort, you will not only be able to have your company be just as successful as larger competitors, but you won’t need to spend nearly as much money as them in the process.
