8 Cost-Effective Ways To Promote Your Small Business Online

While larger businesses have the financial muscle to beta-test promotional strategies and find the best possible ways to advertise their offerings – SMEs often don’t have that sort of leverage.

In fact, 33% of small businesses start with less than $5000 according to a study from the financial platform Kabbage.

Another research from CB Insights that analyzed 101 failed startups discovered that one of the most prominent causes of their failure was that they ran out of cash.

A lack of financing restricts small businesses that often find it challenging to promote their products and services in increasingly saturated markets.

With such a bleak outlook, how do you support your small business without the fear of making the wrong financial decisions?

This article outlines eight cost-effective strategies for promoting your business even if you are strapped for cash.

Use Flyers To Hype Up Your Business

While traditional flyers are lightweight, easy-to-design and cost-effective – e-flyers are even better since they don’t need to be printed. This gives you the added advantage of saving on print costs, as well as appearing more environmentally friendly to potential customers from your target market.

According to a research study published in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2018, both print and online flyers have a similar effect on purchase behavior and memory. This means that the e-flyers will work just as well as traditional flyers, minus the cost.

You can make e-flyers using online tools like PosterMyWall – it has a minimal learning curve and makes it easy to design your flyers the way you like them. You can find thousands of professional-looking templates that you can customize as you see fit and even add your own logo.

When you’re creating flyers to promote your business, work on the copy and design style. You need to keep in mind the following:

1. Make them easy to read – use a maximum of two fonts
2. Separate the leaflets into heading and body copy
3. Have something interesting and relevant to say
4. Make sure the pictures, headlines and text align properly

Using these online flyers on your website and in emails helps you target your audience with the right message about your business.

Include a CTA that links back to your website with the latest discounts or special offers you have. Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity in your promotions – include your number and email address when designing your e-flyer, so they can get in touch with you.

Become An Expert In Your Field

Building a strong presence online is cost-effective and straightforward, but it’s not easy.

You need to reach your target audience, provide them with value and deliver essential information about your industry for them to consider you knowledgeable.

One of the best ways to do this is through content marketing, especially blogging. Blogs allow you to showcase your expertise and provide high-quality value for the reader, further cementing your spot as a niche authority.

For instance, take The Hub. Led by expert musicians, this group allows visitors to benefit from expert advice on all things music – from how to check an instrument to what to look for when buying one.

Such insight is beneficial for visitors, especially in the awareness stage. Businesses can capitalize on their expertise by producing such consumer-centric blogs, allowing them to experience more leads than before.

If you haven’t created a blog yet, you should – head on to WordPress to build a blog just like thousands of other businesses across the globe. It is the easiest and most feature-packed blogging platform in existence today.

Not only will a blog help you gain traction and visibility as a brand, but it can also help you foster strong relationships with new and existing clients.

Search engines like Yahoo, Google, and Bing are always looking for fresh and relevant content to index. When you post consistently to your business blog, you’re giving them exactly what they need.

Adding to that, once you have at least 21 blog posts added to your website, you can expect a lead generation increase of about 30%, according to Traffic Generation Café.

Blogging allows you to build trust and interact with your target audience by giving them information that they value.

Writing informative blogs, guest posting, and hosting/attending podcasts within your chosen industry niche will make you the go-to resource for information, resulting in more inquiries about your business and higher conversion rates.

Get Social With Your Followers

If you want to promote your business on a tight budget, you’ll have to put yourself out there – get on social media and hone the art of selling.

Social media helps you create a unique voice that resonates with your target audience. It enables you to humanize your company and invites others to interact with you.

Additionally, if you want to build a loyal fan base that advocates for your business, social media is the best way to interact with your target audience regularly and often. You can make online communities around your products and the problems you solve, creating the impression that your brand really cares about its customers and prospects.

Remember, the only way to win is to make social a two-way conversation where you’ll have to listen and respond to your audience – that’s the only way to promote your small business.

Build followership by asking partners, employees and sponsors to like and share your pages and posts – these social shares increase brand awareness and open your small business up to a broader audience.

If you are keen on leveraging social media for maximum exposure, there are specialized tools that can help you organize and align your content for increased impact by using digital signage to inform your audience about important dates and upcoming events.

Stock photos and graphics don’t offer the same personalization as branded graphics where the typography and aesthetics match the overall look and feel of your brand. You also need to adapt the graphics to the right size for omni channel marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and more.

Planning ahead by scheduling posts saves you from last minute scrambling to create engagement - the media you do post on time and according to a calendar, however, provides value to your target audience.

You’re boosting consumer engagement on your social media accounts when people comment, react and share your posts. When they share your posts in their respective social circles, they help broaden your reach and create a favorable first impression about your business in front of new audiences.

Use Your Email List To Get The Word Out

Small businesses can’t afford to lose time with promotional strategies that won’t sit well with the target audience.

While social media is a useful and cost-effective way to establish communications, sometimes it lacks the organic reach that small businesses are looking for. Luckily, email marketing is still alive and kicking – providing you with a direct channel to reach out to leads and customers.

Email works well as a form of permission marketing where you ask users for their email on your website and send them promotional material straight to their inbox.

Apart from that, sending promotional emails is a convenient, personalized, and instant way for your business to inform customers about:

1. Loyalty or Reward programs
2. Contests or sweepstakes
3. Sneak peek at new products
4. Free Content – newsletters & e-books
5. Products or Services
6. Discount coupons and other promotions

Just remember to optimize your emails for mobile; this infographic by Lyfe Marketing reveals that 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices and 69% of mobile users delete un-optimized emails as soon as they receive those emails.

You can use the MailChimp email marketing platform to send out emails in bulk. But if you send those emails without paying attention to aesthetics, they’ll eventually end up getting deleted and the receiver will have a reason to unsubscribe from your email list because of a lack of perceived value.

Remember to design an eye-catching newsletter or a simple email header to appeal to your prospects. Simply create your custom email header in PosterMyWall and then export the design to your bulk email service of choice.

Don’t forget to optimize the text, use a clean and simple email design template and add a button for CTAs to elevate your emails.

Build Business Partnerships For Augmented Services

Partner marketing is fantastic because it not only boosts awareness for your brand but also helps you foster relationships with similar companies in the industry.

Collaborating with other enterprises gives you access to their target market as well – you can bundle up services and products with any company to amplify the reach of your offerings.

This way, you get to broaden your marketing reach and draw new customers in with partnership promotions.

Such collaborations are mutually beneficial for you and your partner firm – for instance, the successful Doritos Locos Tacos campaign initiated by Taco Bell and Frito Lay.

Frito Lay capitalized on Taco Bell’s trademark crunchy taco recipe and gave it a customized look – laced with a Dorito’s shell. The result? Taco Bell sold an estimated 1 billion of these in the first year alone.

When you partner with companies and create co-branded content that appeals to a vast audience, it can establish authority for both companies as you provide enhanced value to the end customer.

Just remember to find a business that shares interests and goals with yours – there should be long-term compatibility in terms of values and vision, financial resources and goals.

This is important because creating a promotional strategy when your interests aren’t aligned can be disastrous for both companies.

Take Advantage Of Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based strategy where you work with partner services to drive consumer action, i.e., website visits, lead generation or conversions (sales).

The affiliated partners are paid when customers successfully perform the required actions – that’s why affiliates are more motivated to drive conversions.

It’s economical because your business only pays out when you get the conversion – so you spend only when you’re confident about the results.

Many times, affiliates also have an established customer base that you can attract without exhausting your current target market.

If your affiliates are online influencers, think of them as an extension to your online sales or marketing team that help you get the word out and establish your online presence.

They will also help solidify your reputation in the market because your target audience trusts them and they’re the ones championing your products.

If you’re new to the market, drafting affiliates for your business is an inexpensive way to generate customers because you’re not spending a fortune to test the waters – you’re getting results.

Get 5-Star Reviews

Small businesses used to rely on word of mouth before the internet; with technology, it has transitioned into online reviews.

Consumers value what other people have to say about your business, so they take to social media and review websites like Yelp to see what others are saying about you. Similarly, they head over to these avenues to leave their reviews, comments and concerns after having interacted with you.

It’s good to get reviews online – the good ones allow others to see that you are a great business to work with, while the bad ones can help you figure out how you are missing out on your client’s expectations.

Not getting enough reviews can be detrimental to your business.

Let your customers know that you hear them loud and clear – recognize them whenever they leave a review, whether negative or positive.

Instead of frowning over negative reviews, find out ways to mitigate their occurrence. Consumers leave negative reviews due to inferior quality of service, something which no business wants to have a reputation for.

As online reviews form the cornerstone of consumer decision making, organizations need to invest in creating a framework to manage negative reviews. Ask the relevant party about their grievances and look to solve them promptly.

Once you have fixed the issue, you may politely ask them to reconsider the review. Chances are, they will leave a positive one.

Above all, encourage them to leave feedback on your website, relevant platforms (Four Square, Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google), and social media channels (Facebook).

Use ‘Bite-Sized’ Stories To Appeal To Younger Audiences

Instagram and Snapchat stories are fun and interactive by nature- they provide small snippets for information that’s on display for 24 hours before disappearing into the depths of the internet abyss. Use these precious hours to catch the limited attention spans of a younger audience and appeal to them.

Provide them with interactivity like scrolling up to find more information about your campaign or new product. You can even use the stories to help them participate in fun quizzes on your website where they’re having fun while providing you with valuable insights.

Videos keep audiences engaged more than images and text and are therefore more effective for conversions. They retain audiences for longer and help escalate click-through rates.

For instance, Barnerbrand highlights the benefits of its computer glasses in Instagram stories to appeal to people concerned about blue light straining and damaging their eyes.

In contrast, Redbull immerses its audiences in the moment with stories from various influencers like Aaron Fitzgerald. They even showed intense scenes of a helicopter flying upside down and engaged audiences through online polls in their stories.

These innovative video strategies not only increase exposure, but their bite-sized nature retains the element of interest – leading to longer consumer retention and increased brand awareness.

Videos were once very expensive and you needed a large budget to make one – plus it was too complicated for small businesses. Thankfully, there are a lot of video templates to choose from that adapt to your business marketing needs.

You even get the freedom to experiment with other types of content, engaging your audience more flexibly while you outsmart the constantly evolving Instagram and snapchat algorithm.

Now we know that even if you’re on a budget, it is possible to promote a small business successfully.