How to market a small business in an inexpensive way

How to market a small business in an inexpensive way

When you think of marketing your company what instantly springs to mind? Well if you are only a small business with a lower end budget, cost is going to be at the forefront of the equation. You may think that promoting your business has to be a costly affair but the truth behind this is that it does not. In the last few years as the internet has become more and more advanced, ways have emerged to make yourself known and promote yourself for free. Yes you did hear me right, i said FREE!
You and your small business can now potentially keep up with the much bigger businesses doing the same thing as you, as long as you put a bit of time and effort into the promotion of your company. Here are some completely FREE ways of marketing your business...


Writing Online Articles

If you wanted to publish an article in a local newspaper or trade magazine, you are looking at paying a substantial amount of money to buy the space in the magazine, get it published and maybe even pay a professional writer to suit the style of the magazine. Sure, if you have a big business with a large budget, this would not be a problem but for you small businesses out there this may not be an option. So why not write an online article? You can submit your articles for free to article sites and share information about your company and even give advice and expertise. If you then create a link somewhere in the article to your website, people that read it and decide they want to know more can be transferred straight to your website with no hassle whatsoever. Increasing amounts of people are using these websites to promote their businesses and look for inspiration and they really do work.

Blogging

Blogging is a relatively new and upcoming way to promote yourself and your business. It began as quite a popular thing with young people as you can blog about absolutely anything you want and the writing style can be fairly loose and conversational. However as the blogging craze has caught on more and more, people have realised that they can use blogging as a way of marketing their companies and potentially create business. Blogging works in a similar way to online article writing, it is completely free to submit your blogs and you can add in links to your website. It also is best if you submit articles on a regular basis as people can begin to follow your blogs and this in turn creates more of a buzz round your business.

Twitter and Facebook

If you have not heard before (which is highly unlikely) Twitter and Facebook are social networking websites which have in last couple of years, took off on a grand scale. What started off as a way to locate old friends, Facebook has turned into perhaps one of the most popular websites and one can now advertise themselves and their businesses on it. Both Twitter and Facebook are excellent free platforms to promote and market your business so set yourself up a business account today and get networking!

All the marketing tools I have discussed above are very useful and effective ways of promoting your company for free. They may be slightly time consuming but believe me, when you see the results that putting in a little time and effort produce, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Obviously there are many other ways to promote your company if you do not mind spending a little money. A perfect way option being Promotional Gifts. If you are interested, read on in my next article...