The best places online to maximize your marketing
Ready to get your small biz out there and bring customers to your store? Here are five of the most powerful places to market your small business online.
Why marketing your small biz online brings in customers
Are you struggling to increase your customer base or grow your sales? As of 2022, more than 74% of US shoppers search online before making a purchase. Cut through the noise with these proven, no BS organic marketing strategies.
Five places your small biz can show up fro free online…
Social Media
Its no secret, social media can boost your brand visibility. Whether you’re in a small town or giant city, social media is an insane tool to boost your marketing.
How to get the most from it for your small biz?
Choose one or more social media platforms and post consistently about your products or service. Make the content interesting, entertaining, and audience focused. I take a deep dive into maximizing social media for small businesses in this article.
How effective can this be? For reference, the first social media account I managed was for Low Store, my family’s general store and restaurant in rural Hawaii. As I built a social media presence, I regularly had customers come to our store who stated they had found it on Instagram. How regularly? Weekly, and sometimes daily. Here are three big reasons social media works for small businesses.
Review Platforms
Yelp, TripAdvisor, and local review sites like the Local It app currently in Colorado and growing. The upside of review platforms is that people use them SO MUCH. In 2022 Yelp was the 44th most visited website in the US, with 92 million unique users each month. That’s a huge chance for a free user to reach customers.
How to get the most from it for your small biz?
Use the free profiles available to all businesses, fill out all the important details to make it as simple as possible for a customer to choose you. Not just find you, but choose you out of the line up. I go into depth on how to market your business for free on Yelp in this blog.
Google My Business
This deserves its own mention. Google sees 8.5 billion searches each day world wide. I tell any small business client that works with me to set up a GMB account yesterday. This is free, its evergreen, and it takes 15 minutes of your busy day.
How to get the most from it for your small biz?
Set 15 to 30 minutes aside and create a GMB account. Just like review platforms, make it as easy as possible for customers to choose you, not just find you. Add any and all contact information, directions, address, and product information you can.
When I managed my family’s marketing, we received 10,000 to 15,000 organic searches on Google each month. In retrospect, I could have leveraged this tool so much more by 1) adding photos 2) creating monthly updates. These two strategies would have kept our content fresh. I did implement these strategies with later marketing clients.
You will likely receive reviews on Google, and I found that Google reviews could be more generous and meaningful than Yelp and Trip Advisor reviews. I have been considering writing more about GMB, let me know if you’d be interested in a deeper look at how to market here for free.
Blogs and Business Partnerships
I love businesses supporting other businesses. Here are two productive ways to make this happen.
How to get the most from it for your small biz?
- Reach out to local bloggers who fit well with your business and discuss their terms or fees for writing a blog about you, or mentioning you. This can be powerful because their audience is niched down to customers who would be interested in your business. Also, the blogger is motivated to grow their audience, therefore content with your business will be marketed wherever they are placing their blogs online.
- Partner with complimentary businesses, or businesses in your area to create a promotion or giveaway. Making business connections is one of my favorite ways to grow community and credibility, and there are opportunities to be creative. Maybe you can start a referral program?
The key is that the end product should support your goals, and be equally beneficial for any blogger or business you partner alongside. This builds longterm relationships where the possibilities are sky high!
Business Website
Websites are not a one-size-fits-all marketing solution. As a location-based business, a basic, well built website can be powerful. As a food truck with a cult following, maybe it isn’t necessary. How do you decide?
If you’re looking to cover every marketing base, offer online ordering, or expand, this might be a sign it is time to invest in a website.
A website should be built with intention, and hiring a website designer can make a huge difference.
There you have it, five places to market your small business!
As always, where and how you market your business is entirely dependent on your goals, time, and type of business.
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