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With a deep marketing budget, you can do all sorts of things to skyrocket your online sales.
You can create an app to support your online business, spend wads of cash on paid ads, or run a content marketing campaign, so you get organic, long-term traffic from the search engines.
Sadly, not everyone has deep enough marketing pockets.
Some businesses struggle with finances and have very little to no money allocated for marketing.
That’s why in this guide, we’ll cover several proven strategies that you can employ to market your business without breaking the bank.
1. Produce excellent content
Create content that helps people find you organically through social media platforms and search engines. Insert keywords that reflect what they’re looking for.
Provide valuable content through blog posts to draw people to your website, connect with them, and establish your expertise in the industry.
Follow these blogging best practices.
- Publish content regularly. Create a content calendar and schedule publishing your content.
This helps organize your content creation workflow, streamline tasks, and meet your posting deadlines.
- Create timeless content. Produce content that will stay relevant for years. This also allows you to repurpose your old content easily.
For instance, turn your previous blog post into an infographic.
Use free tools such as Canva, which has customizable templates and easy-to-use editing tools. This helps you (and your content creation and marketing teams) store and access your visual creative resources more neatly and quickly.
You can also leverage marketing and design tools that won’t cost you a penny, including a free Artificial Intelligence (AI) logo maker. This way, you won’t need to hire a graphic designer (at least initially) to create a professionally-made logo for you.
- Inform instead of selling. Constantly promoting your business can turn off your potential customers.
Talk about your customer’s pain points and how your product can solve their problems.
Doing so helps you build trust with your customers, drive traffic to your website, and convert visitors into buyers.
Then, to help you streamline your content planning, production, distribution, management, and other related tasks, maximize robust project management software. These tools often have automation and other practical features to simplify and speed up collaboration across your marketing team.
2. Leverage social proof
People consider reviews as personal recommendations from trusted sources.
The best part is, they’re free.
Use social proof to enhance your brand’s credibility.
Ask your satisfied customers for testimonials and positive feedback, and display them on your website, social media platforms, and more.
Consider asking your happy consumers to give your reviews creative titles as well. This makes your social proof stand out and be more memorable for your audience.
Poo-Pourri’s reviews on their website are great examples of this.
The brand’s review page shows the positive experiences of previous customers with their products.
Use this marketing strategy to influence your audiences’ purchasing behavior, and, ultimately, drive more sales.
If you use Shopify, one of the easiest ecommerce platforms for online business owners, you can leverage its Product Reviews app to simplify adding and sharing customer reviews on your website.
Try these other tips to use social proof in marketing your online business.
- Leverage user-generated content. Curate social media posts about your brand from other users and share them on your social channel or website.
This lets you showcase your satisfied customers’ love for your products, spreading positive sentiments about your brand.
Utilizing an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) simplifies sharing UGC on your website.
- Collaborate with experts for your social media events. Invite industry specialists to your Facebook live events or Twitter chats.
For instance, host a Q&A with an expert for your “How to Become a Life Coach” social media event.
It’s a perfect opportunity to tap into their following and influence.
It also lets you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, boosting your credibility and trustworthiness.
3. Use social media
Social media platforms are excellent channels to get your products in front of your potential customers, whether you sell retail items or offer services that help clients buy blog articles easily.
Run social media marketing campaigns to engage your audience, widen your reach, and grow your sales. This will also help you build your brand and increase your loyal followers.
Consider these social media marketing tips.
- Use Instagram to share visually appealing content. Sharing photos and videos about your products helps you engage and connect with your audience better.
This helps you promote your business using relatable content instead of hard selling, which can turn-off your followers.
- Utilize Facebook’s in-platform marketing tools. Identify your target market with Facebook Audience Insights.
The tool lets you build your target market’s demographics, discover their interests, etc., to find the right audience for your Facebook ad campaigns.
With the tool, you’ll create and deliver ads that resonate with your target audience.
It also ensures they see content relevant to them, which helps you avoid wasting your marketing efforts on the wrong audience.
Social media networks are also excellent platforms to promote your online events, such as a virtual summit, and other marketing initiatives.
4. Publish videos
Videos are excellent formats to share information with your target audience. Plus, you don’t need to hire professionals to create beautiful videos.
This type of inbound marketing strategy via interactive content helps you educate your audience, answer their questions, and entertain and engage them.
Once you’ve produced several videos and other visual materials (including resources), you can collate them with free or cheap digital asset management software programs.
Make videos your customers can relate to and make them highly shareable.
The kind of content you create will depend on your objectives. Start with these video marketing ideas.
- Instructional videos. Publish How-to videos to provide valuable information to your audience while reminding them of your product.
For example, if you sell sunglasses, you could create an explainer video on finding the best sunglasses design for your customers’ face shape.
- Showcase your products. Create product videos to give your audience a more in-depth look at the specifications of the items.
It’s also an excellent way to demonstrate the best way viewers can use your products.
If you also own a brick-and-mortar store, include keywords for local SEO in your product videos to help boost your shop’s visibility in local searches.
This can help bolster your local SEO strategies and makes it easy for people nearby to find your business, increasing your sales opportunities.
- Bring your testimonials to life. Video testimonials can deliver more impact than written ones. Invite people to upload videos of them using your product.
Interview satisfied consumers as well and create a customer review video. This makes your testimonials more authentic and engaging.
Additionally, attract viewers to watch your videos by designing catchy, descriptive thumbnails. Include the title and even a person’s photo to humanize and make your designed image extra-relatable.
Think you have no time to create these thumbnails, though? Outsource an affordable graphic design service provider to do the work quickly for you. The Internet offers a vast selection of designers fitting your needs, schedule, and budget.
5. Run contests
Promotional giveaways are some of the tried and tested ecommerce marketing methods to generate interest in your products, services, and business.
After all, most people like getting free stuff. Leverage this by running contests for your audience to win your products.
Platforms such as KingSumo, for instance, let you create viral giveaways.
Build your contest by including the giveaway details such as the title, duration, the prize image, add an opt-in field, and more.
Here’s a sample giveaway contest:
KingSumo lets you run contests that help you get more email subscribers. It’s an excellent way to engage your audience, grow your leads, and turn them into customers.
Provide your audience with interactive experiences through giveaways, promote your brand, and ultimately, increase conversions and sales.
What’s next?
Promoting your online business requires resources, but it’s possible to get good results using low-cost marketing strategies.
Follow the tips in this guide, and your limited budget can go a long way to helping you maximize your marketing efforts.
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