Looking for some fantastic ways to market your online business for free? Then, you are in the correct place, as in this article you’ll learn 13+ ways to promote your online business.
The word “marketing” conjures up visions of pricey marketing strategies and excessive expenditure for many people.
But don’t worry, there are always some free alternatives that can be effective also.
As small business owners, the best way to market any business online is to be found organically.
Through search at the top of Google’s search engine results pages which is obtained by Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
It’s totally free and offers limitless traffic to those who can master this highly-convoluted field of online search.
Let jump and learn some more strategies which you can use to market your online business.
Table of Contents
13+ Ways To Market Your Online Business In 2022
1. Leverage the power of Social Media
Social media is a very powerful tool to market your online business for free if you know already.
Social media platforms remain not only for contacting people but also for using them to market any business.
According to the Hootsuite article, your social media goals should be S.M.A.R.T. means it should be-
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
- Vanity metrics like the number of followers and likes are straightforward to track. Focus on things like engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates and it will really help in the longer run.
It would be best to track different goals for different networks or even different uses for each network.
For example, if you use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website, you would measure click-throughs. If you use Instagram for brand awareness, you might track the number of Instagram Story views. And if you market on Facebook, cost-per-click (CPC) is a prevalent success metric.
Social media goals should be aligned with your overall marketing objectives. This thing makes it easier to show the value of your work and secure buy-in from your boss.
2. Email marketing
Email Marketing is a fantastic way to market your online business. The beauty of email marketing is that you can upsell and cross-sell your products.
To start email marketing, you need some data like people’s email addresses to send them the emails.
And for that, you need a “Lead Magnet“. A lead magnet can be anything, it can be an eBook, checklists, cheatsheet.
It can be a free digital product that you can give your audience in exchange for their emails.
The next step is to start by setting up an account with Convertkit, Mailchimp, OptinMonster and distributing those emails.
You should always avoid being overly promotional and always offer something genuinely useful to the recipients. Keep your emails regular but never bombard, otherwise people will hit unsubscribe button.
3. Market on Instagram
More than one billion people use Instagram every month, and approximately 90% of them follow at least one business.
Brands can easily open shops from their profiles and let people book reservations from their accounts.
Your Instagram strategy will establish what you hope to achieve on the platform.
You can start with your business objectives and identify how Instagram can help you accomplish them. I strongly recommend applying the SMART framework to ensure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
4. Generate website traffic with Pinterest
Are you currently on Pinterest? If not, you might be missing a lot especially now that you can quickly drive traffic to your website.
Pinterest offers a very unique way to market your online business. Unlike other social media networks, it’s a place not only to connect with friends and influencers but also to promote your business.
You can create pins related to your articles on your blog and hence you can drive traffic as well.
Try to create 3-5 pins for one blog post to see any results.
5. Use blogging platforms
The most important thing you can market your business online is to build a blog where you can post and share high-quality content that adds value.
This is a very long-term strategy, and it won’t pay off overnight, but every business needs to understand the importance of embracing this kind of online marketing method.
Not only does building a noteworthy blog in any industry or niche help to drive traffic by ranking the article on Google, but it also leads to creating authority.
If you can become an authority in your industry, you will later garner the consumer’s attention, the media, and business owners alike. Therefore, in turn, it will build more authority, and eventually, enormous amounts of visibility and sales.
6. Connect with others on LinkedIn groups
If you are running a B2B company, ensure to have a strong presence on LinkedIn. It’s also an excellent place for building your network with other people.
The same rules apply to LinkedIn as other social platforms to engage with other people and offer genuine insight.
LinkedIn offers you to connect with only 30,000 people and after that, those connections will get converted into your followers.
So, start putting valuable content on LinkedIn to market your online business.
7. Create helpful video tutorials on YouTube
YouTube is a great tool to market any kind of business whether it is an online startup or an offline store.
It offers a great resource for marketing your business on the internet. It might be challenging to build your audience at first, but if you focus on creating helpful video tutorials, you’ll eventually reach many people.
So, you have to focus on adding value without much concern for generating profit.
YouTube is a great tool for tutorials because you can teach people just about anything in an easy-to-understand format. Whether you are teaching a digital skill or you’re capturing something in the real world, make sure that the quality of the recording and the overall content is high.
Additionally, be sure to drop a link inside the description back to relevant content on your site.
8. Engage with social influencers
Influencer marketing has become an enormous industry. For those unfamiliar and thinking how it all works, a business pays or offers free products to a blogger or influencer who has a high following on social media.
And in return, the influencer shares your product on their social media channels and it works really well.
The more popular influencers can charge costly rates. But those who have smaller followings also called “micro-influencers” have high engagement rates and are often willing to post something in return for a free product or trial.
9. List your business in Online directories
Ensure that your business is listed in relevant online directories because it gives some amount of traffic. There are some most popular directories, such as Google My Business, Bing, Angie’s List, Yell, Yelp, and Thomson Local.
But there is a whole host of other industry or location-specific directories.
Be sure you add your business listing to only the directories which are relevant to your business, and ensure they aren’t too spammy.
10. Join or create a Facebook Group
Facebook Groups are very underrated by marketers.
These user-administrated public forums within Facebook allow like-minded people to discuss and share your ideas with others.
Keep in mind that most group moderators will remove overly spammy posts and people, so only post relevant content.
The trick to market in Facebook Groups is sharing valuable content and this is why a blog is helpful for your website.
Many big groups have memberships that range from 1,000 to 100,000, but some get even smaller or bigger, it totally depends.
To get started, search for groups using Facebook’s search bar, or scroll through its suggestions a few times a month to expand your audience.
11. Participate in forums
Facebook isn’t the only online forum where you can participate in discussions, there are some other platforms available
Getting involved in other forums is a great way to spread the word about your brand and to build your brand.
Besides other social media platforms, you can also use group discussions are held on websites like Reddit and Tumblr.
12. Utilize Facebook Live
You’re already on Facebook with a profile, page, and group, Right? So, why not add Facebook Live to this?
Facebook reports that 20% of its videos are only live videos.
Live-streaming on Facebook has become the latest trend that marketers can take advantage of.
Many new brands are winning at this, but LuLaRoe stands on top for its unique approach to Facebook Live marketing.
13. Register on freelancing platforms
Some popular freelance platforms like Fiverr are underrated resources for marketing your business services.
Also, crowd-sourcing is a popular method of task completion, and Fiverr is a great place for it.
If you have a digital marketing company that excels at SEO analysis, you can focus on selling that specific task.
Fiverr is a fast and efficient marketplace to market your online business quickly.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform is also a great platform for a different type of cheap digital marketing.
14. Market your content on Medium and Quora.
If you’re looking to get some traffic and have a relatively new domain, for example, less than two years old with little authority built up. It would be best if you also worked on marketing your content on sites like Medium and Quora as these are very amazing.
But how does it work? The secret is to write one high-quality piece of content on your website. But be sure it must be, insightful, unique, and adds a lot of value to people’s life.
Ensure that whatever you’re talking about should definitely help people in some way, shape, or form.
You can create one link from that article using a primary or relevant keyword back to the main article on your site or blog.
This is basically called content marketing.
It’s the most powerful method for getting traction on Google’s SERPs, while also reaching large existing audiences through these authority sites as well.
Conclusion
At last but not, it takes some time to get results from these marketing techniques. But once you gain some traction, you will no need t spend your penny on advertisements.
So, apply these marketing tactics to grow and scale your online business.
Hey Nancy, You nailed it very well.
Social media is great way to get the free traffic to the blog. Networking with fellow bloggers on social media is game changer.
Thank you for this post. keep bring such awesome content.
Excellent job Nancy. For me, building bonds by commenting on blogs and promoting other bloggers is a free, powerful way to market my online business indirectly. I help bloggers, ask for nothing in return and we develop friendships. My blogging buddies then promote my work to marketing my online venture. Heck; Richa retweeted one of my blog posts today…..I am here to return the kind act. One hand washes each other and we all prosper.
Ryan