Starting a business online is not always easy. It takes a lot of hard work, money and time to build a reasonable business. the frustration comes when you have invested your initial capital, set up your website and no one seems to care about your business.
In a few instances, some businesses are able to secure some funds and spend on advertising to get visibility and drive the traffic they desire to get them started.
If you are among those funded businesses or have been able to save enough to start ad campaigns at the launch of your business then lucky you. If you are not among those then you are left with only one option to organically kick off your digital marketing.
Digital marketing is the only way you can start growing your business and give your business the visibility it needs.
So how do you market your business online? well, there are a couple of things you can do to start your business online and here is how…
How to market your business
Marketing your business online requires both paid and free methods, in this post, I am going to highlight and discuss those free methods you can advertise your business.
After setting your website, here are the following things you need to do to start marketing your business for free
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Implementing SEO on your business should be the first step to kick off your online marketing process. This involves doing the right things to get search engines to crawl and index your website.
This step is first and the most important because you can’t afford to miss all those millions of people who are searching for your type of services or products online every minute, every hour and every day.
Getting search engines to find and index your website will be a great opportunity for your future organic traffic strategy. Here are things you need to do first
- Write the title of your business in the header section of your website, use one or two keywords and make sure it’s less than 65 characters.
- . In the same header section, write a description of your business. See the image below for an example.
3. Create both XLM and HTML Sitemaps for your website. These two site maps are important. The XLM sitemap is to enable search engine to understand your content better.
While the HTML sitemap helps your users navigate your site easily and better. They both have their value and is advisable for you to have the two if you can.
4. create and verify your Google my Business account.
5. Create both Google and Bing webmaster’s account and add your site. Having these accounts will enable you to claim your websites, it will give you up-to-date information about how your website is performing.
Information such as the keywords you are ranking for and pages that are bringing traffic to your site.
These platforms will simply give you access to tons of valuable information about your business.
The webmaster will alert you when there is an issue with your site or some of your pages.
Content marketing (Blogging)
Content is the mother of SEO and having a blog that will be updated regularly with valuable and quality content will help you rank for your niche or business-related keywords.
Content is one of the most successful ways of marketing your business for free if you are creating the right content. Content targeted at solving other people’s issues.
Your blogging strategy should include relevant keywords. use tools like Google keyword planner, LSIGraph Keyword research. In the beginning, use keywords that are less competitive to enable you rank.
Formulate a blogging strategy that will enable you to write blog post regularly and consistently. Your blog is your ultimate source of organic traffic.
Once you have a reasonable amount of blog posts, you can start sharing on social media platforms and other content marketing platforms.
Directory listings
While many will tell you that it does not favour your business in terms of SEO, it still a great source of traffic for your business.
The fact is that many people still use business directories to look for services, products and professionals. Having your business or website listing on these sites will definitely help boost your traffic.
Business.com in their blog post listed 50 places you can list your business. These are all great places with zero harm to your website.
Social Media marketing
Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to market your business for free. The fact that there are millions of people using these platforms every minute, day and night, you should look at it as an advantage.
You can’t deny the fact that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest has endless opportunity and possibly house your potential clients.
The first thing you need to do on these social media platforms is to create well-optimised business pages with the same name. Then claim those pages and start posting content on those pages every day.
Community participation
Another free way to market your business for free is through online community participation. These platforms have a lot of people participating in while contributing to various topics.
By registering and contributing to these platforms will get you noticed and will give your business so much visibility. Platforms such as Quora, Reddit rank among the most popular websites.
It will all be for your good to answer questions and get your questions answered in those platforms which will create value for you and others.
Another benefit using those platforms is the value of SEO, your contribution on those platforms can get you so much visibility and increase your search engine rankings.
Free Advertising Sites
There hundreds of free advertising sites to advertise your business and grow without spending money on advertising. These sites are not sites that will allow you to place display advertising but will give you the opportunity to list your business and start selling on the getgo.
The good thing with these free advertising sites is that you don’t have to pay money yet you get a lot of traffic and sometimes start making sells immediately. Here are some of the site you can list your products and services and start selling immediately.
eBay
eBay should sound familiar to you if you have ever tried to buy something from any classified Ad site. It’s super popular and number one choice for many sellers and buyers.
eBay currently rank 24 among websites globally based on its has over 809,979,836 monthly web visitors.
This is massive if you would ask me. If you are into eCommerce, you should list your business and products on eBay today and thank me tomorrow.
AdPost.com
It all started in 2000 and now has over 30,000,000 page views per month. That’s a lot of traffic and you can benefit putting your business on this classified site.
Just imagine having your business listed on Adpost to tap into that massive traffic. Don’t wait anymore. get a share of that 30,000,000 pages views and list your business today
Craigslist
One of the most effective free advertising platform for businesses. It enables you to reach millions of buyers online for free while giving your business the visibility it deserves.
Craigslist allows you can list your business in sub-categories specific to your niche which means your ads are targeted to reach only people who are interested in your business.
It works best in the US but also helps global businesses have some presence in the US.
Conclusion
I would have gone on to list more free advertising but will stop here for now cause I believe the three can give you are a lot of free traffic. The list will be updated later to give you the opportunity to choose from more classified sites.
We believe some of the information in this post will help you get started in order to market your business for free. We all face these challenge and it’s one of the reasons why many businesses quite after a year or two.
Be determined and you will surely grow your business even if you don’t have money for display advertising.
4 Responses
Thank you for your informative article. I will definitely be passing this information to my Creative Director/Husband/Business Partner!
That is very kind of you and thanks for sharing. Love is sharing.
I never thought that with community participation my business can gain such a viewability.
I read this post and I started contributing to the designers community with tips, like… a month ago and I have already noticed a small but steady increasing volume on my website.
Thank you!!!
Thanks for reading and hope these tips help you grow your business for free.