21 Ways To Market Your Business Online On A Shoestring Budget

I often hear from business owners who feel they’re too busy running their business to spend time on marketing. This is valid — and to be honest, sometimes marketing is best left to the professionals.

But a problem arises when you simply don’t have the budget to hire a full-time consultant or marketing person. The following will cover 21 ways you can market your business yourself, even on a tight budget.

Online Review Sites

Having your business listed on online review sites is important not just for driving traffic and sales, but for protecting your online reputation. The following sites are some of the most influential, as well as the most cost-effective (free!).

1. Set up a Google My Business page: This listing will get your business on Google Search, Maps and Google+ and enable customers to review your business. Local business reviews tend to receive high rankings in the search results, giving you some great (free!) real estate. Google+ Local reviews also influence the search rankings of people you’re connected to, meaning your business’ reviews may also appear when your connections perform relevant searches on Google.
2. Create a listing on Yelp: As the biggest online review site, creating a Yelp listing is definitely worth the effort. It’s free, and gets you in front of the platform’s more than 140 million monthly visitors.
3. Create a free Angie’s List page: Users pay a monthly fee to use the platform, but listing a business is 100 percent free. Available for service-based businesses only.
4. Get listed on Yahoo Local: Yahoo offers local businesses the opportunity to get a basic business listing in its directory for free. Listings are integrated with other Yahoo products like reviews, maps and events.

Social Media

5. Join industry Facebook and LinkedIn groups: Become a valued member of two or three groups in your business’ industry, offering advice and support. This helps to establish you as an expert in your field, and ultimately builds your reputation and sales.
6. Create your own Facebook group: Create a free Facebook group for customers or prospects to get help or support with a problem related to your niche. (For example, a social media consultant could start a “DIY Social Media Mastermind group.”)
7. Use images to offer discounts on Facebook or Twitter: Using images to offer discounts or coupon codes is a great, non-threatening way to promote your products without being too “salesy.”
8. Promote a free, no obligation 15-minute consult to your followers: Reduce the risk your prospects feel by offering a risk-free consult.
9. Monitor brand mentions: Use a social listening tool like Social Mention to monitor and contribute to conversations happening in your niche.
10. Create and share an original infographic: A tool like Piktochart requires no design or coding skills, and costs start at only $29 per month — much cheaper than hiring a designer to do it for you.

Blogging

11. Contribute guest posts to a well-known industry site: To find blogs to contribute to, do a search for “your niche” + “guest post”.
12. Hold free webinars on your site: If you’ve investigated webinar software, you already know how costly they can be. Not to mention that most require a monthly subscription — not exactly small business-friendly! A great, low-cost alternative is using a WordPress webinar plugin like WebinarIgnition. It has a one-time cost of $97 for unlimited webinars with unlimited attendees.
13. Partner with a complementary business to co-sponsor a contest: Co-sponsoring the contest gives you access to each other’s audience, maximizing your efforts. Submit your contest to popular sweepstakes sites to extend the reach of your contest.
14. Install a free social sharing plugin on your site: Using a free WordPress plugin like Share Buttons ensures all your blog content can be easily shared by your readers.
15. Comment thoughtfully on blogs in your niche: It’s perfectly acceptable to leave your website URL in the appropriate field, just be sure to use your real name or business name, not keyword-rich anchor text.
16. Create an award for businesses or products in your niche: Create a simple badge using a free program like Canva, and then write a blog post of the Top 10 _______ (e.g., Top 10 websites for Web designers). Award each of the winners with a badge that links back to the post. This strategy works best once your site has built up a reputation in your niche.

Other Channels To Get Yourself Out There

17. Join relevant industry forums and respond to questions with helpful advice: I’m not talking about writing spammy, thin comments just to gain links back your site. Make meaningful contributions to conversions to capture the attention of other readers.
18. Sign up with HARO (Help A Reporter Out) to get free PR for your business: Respond to relevant media queries and land free mentions and links in publications like Huffington Post, Forbes and other popular outlets.
19. Email a well-known business or influencer in your field with an authentic testimonial: Businesses love receiving testimonials, and many times will post them on their website (along with a link).
20. Invoice your business like a pro: Make sure that you’re billing your clients on time each month as well as keeping track of everything. I personally love Due invoicing as it’s a free option that invoices clients, and for a small fee you can bill people over PayPal.
21. Answer questions on a Q&A site like Quora: These sites consist of real people looking for answers to questions. Search the site for relevant questions you can answer intelligently.

Over To You…

The Internet has leveled the playing field significantly when it comes to marketing. The reach and visibility that used to only be available to big brands with big budgets are now within the reach of even the smallest businesses.

I want to know: How do you market yourself online? What low-cost strategies do you use to raise awareness of your business and products? Share below.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Steve Olenski

Steve Olenski is truly a unicorn. He has real world experience having worked at such companies as Prudential, Marsh & McLennan to his current role at Oracle. He's also held roles as creative director and senior copywriter at various agencies. In addition to all that, Steve has established himself as one of the most influential writers in the space earning the respect of many CMOs including the former CMO of Walmart who refers to Steve as “The CMO Whisperer" and the CMO of Cadillac who calls his column a "must read." In addition to Marketing Land, Steve has written for Advertising Age, Adweek, Business Insider, Forbes and MediaPost.