If you own a small business, you may not have a lot of cash for advertising, especially if the business is new. Ironically, new businesses might need the most advertising, but they usually have the least amount of money to use on advertising. However, thanks to the Internet and your own social skills, there are plenty of ways to grow your business that don’t cost a dime.
Social Networking
Social networking is one of the oldest ways to grow your business, and there are a variety of ways you can do this.
Attend a conference. Attend a conference in your field and take the time to get to know others who work in the same area you do. Before you attend the conference, you may want to do some research about who will be attending and learn a little bit about the attendees you want to connect with so you will have a topic to chat about. True, this option isn’t free, but hopefully you will leave the conference with more connections and knowledge from the seminars.
Volunteer in your community. If you volunteer for an non-profit organization or charity in your community, you will likely meet other business people and make connections. In addition, other volunteers who aren’t business owners may remember you and your business should they need something. If you are an eager volunteer who works hard and is friendly, people will remember you.
If you don’t have a Facebook page for your business, you should get one, right now. A 2011 Mashable report stated that 42% of U.S. adults use Facebook, but my guess is that the number has grown in the 1.5 years since the report. Consumers are on Facebook, and they want to connect with your brand. Here are some strategies you can use to connect with them:
Show them something you produced. Do you have a sewing store? Show them a dress you created and tell them the pattern and the fabrics used. Then include a link directly to those items in your store. If they like what you made, they can follow the link and buy the items themselves. You have made it easy.
Notify them of sales. Do you have a sale on certain items? Notify them by Facebook and include a link to the sale items. The day the sale ends, send out a reminder post.
Make it personal. While many people will appreciate learning about what you produced or being notified of sales, they will also connect with you on a deeper level if you share a bit more personally. That doesn’t mean you should reveal intimate details of your life. Instead, show your sense of humor with a tasteful joke related to your industry or a quote you read on the Web or in the paper. This shouldn’t be done frequently, but just enough to make your posts varied.
Twitter has a much smaller following than Facebook, but those on Twitter are vocal and glad to express their opinions of your business, whether those opinions are positive or negative. Having a Twitter account and interacting with your followers can help create brand loyalty. Consider using these strategies:
Respond to every complaint. If you get a complaint, respond. How you respond is important. Try to right any complaint the customer has. Others will be reading the thread and watching what you tweet. A good response can turn a negative situation into a positive one and can earn you more customers.
Connect with the right people. Keep track of who is following you on Twitter. Delete the obvious spammers. Likewise, follow those who tweet at least a few times a week about items related to your industry. (You can search appropriate hashtags to find this information.)
Engage others. Yes, you are on Twitter to grow your business, but if you only Tweet about business, you will lose followers. Instead, take the time to respond to all comments you get, and comment on those you are following. Engage others, and they will respond and become more loyal as they grow to trust you and your brand.
A new business must do everything it can to attract new clients. Luckily, through social networking and using Facebook and Twitter, this isn’t hard to do and doesn’t cost very much money.
What ways would you recommend to advertise when you are a small business on a tight budget? Have you used any of these strategies?
Nice tips! I’d add a bit of local SEO 🙂 It’s really just getting your Name Address and Phone Number consistent across as many local sites as possible – and best of all, there are cheap services to do that for you.
Conferences are definitely good. Social media is important but it’s hard to grow a business just by having a FB page and a twitter account because everyone in the world already has one. It takes a lot of time and energy to compete in business these days.
Untemplater–That is true; standing out is harder to do now. I think the key is to capture and engage your most loyal customers so they can spread the word virally to their friends.
Interesting post! These days social media is a very powerful tool to grow your business, that is, if you know how to use it really well. And, it is definitely low cost, but not free. You still have to invest some money on adverts if you want to reach more traffic.
The College Investor–Good points. Facebook is especially making it difficult to connect with fans by only selectively showing your posts. Advertising might be helpful to draw more views.
I’d think even on a low budget, using a very small amount on a google adwords campaign helps. It brings diverse customers from all over to the website and is one extra source of traffic that you may not have had otherwise. We use it for our outsourcing business and while we spend a lot each month, we’d get similar results for less, just lower volume.
One can use those $100 free perks you get from your hosting to test adwords. You might have to tweak the bid and the keywords before you get a satisfactory result!
These are such practical ideas. Thanks for sharing. I haven’t started my own business yet but I have thought about doing so in the next couple years. These will come in really handy. I have always found networking to have super high value.
Agree on the super high value of networking, sometimes networking is what it takes for a business to sink or swim!
As I prepare to launch “How to Get Rich; Wealth Building Guide for the Financially Illiterate” I’m going to print this out and follow these suggestions. Very meaty article!
Good luck with your book Barb!
Some great tips here, Melissa! I haven’t been too much into the social networking thing, but I usually follow up pretty quickly over email and other channels, especially if a customer is less than satisfied.