Whether you’re a marketing expert or you’re taking the first step into the digital marketing world, it can be daunting considering the amount of time and money you will need to spend in order to get your business off the ground, and in front of your customers. But you don’t need to invest in expensive marketing strategies in order to promote your business.
Keep reading to learn ten low cost digital marketing strategies that are easy to incorporate into your marketing strategy to help give it a boost.
1 – Start a blog
Starting a blog is one of the most low cost ways of advertising your business. If you don’t already have a blog on your website, you’re missing out on a seriously easy and effective marketing strategy. A blog is fantastic for several reasons:
- SEO – Regular updates of content to your website are something that search engines look out for. They value websites that are regularly updated, as this indicates that the website is relevant to users. In addition to this, a blog allows you the chance to target more varied keywords, using each post to target a different set of keywords related to your business.
- Relevance – As with search engine bots, users are more favourable towards websites that are relevant to their search. Posting regular blogs shows that your business is current and up-to-date. There’s nothing worse than finding a website that hasn’t been updated for years.
- Knowledge – A blog enables you to show off your knowledge about your industry to customers, and they’re more likely to come to you when they’re looking for a service or product within your industry. It’s one of the core principles of content marketing.
- Engagement – Engaging with your users is very important, and a blog is a great way to start this interaction. Add a comments section or share to your social media channels, and reply to your customers. You’ll be on your way to building a loyal customer base.
2 – Utilise social media
As well as being a great place to share your blogs, social media is a great place to keep the conversation going and get it started, as we’ve mentioned. And the best thing is, it’s totally free! Well, organic social media is free at least. If you’re using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you can invest in paid advertising and keep to a budget that suits you. Whichever route you choose, having a social media presence is a great place to represent your business, as well as providing customer support.
3 – Get creative with infographics
You may have already heard about infographics and thought the best infographics that are online took hours to craft and cost companies a fair bit of money. Well, this is not always the case. There are a variety of free tools out there that will allow you to do this yourself. The most popular design platforms are Canva and Piktochart.
They’re incredibly easy to use, and will have you creating your own infographics in no time. It’s said that users are up to 600 times more likely to interact with a piece of content that has a visual element, which makes infographics one of the most inexpensive marketing strategies to grow your audience. Check out these design tips if you’re planning to use Canva.
4 – Get onboard with videos
As with infographics, you may have thought creating videos can be expensive to make as well as time-consuming. Also like infographics, they increase the chance of interaction with your content from your audience, so are a great marketing strategy. There are also some great free tools out there like Animato and Rawshorts, that let you create your own videos.
Again, these are both really easy to use, and come with a wide variety of templates for you to drag and drop images, videos, and desired text into. Both do have additional features which you can pay for if you choose, but the free versions are great.
5 – Don’t be afraid to recycle content
If you’re stuck for ideas for content, you can try recycling something you’ve done previously, which helps you get more out of your content. This particular low cost digital marketing strategy is actually favoured by Google following their Helpful Content Update last year.
You can recycle content by changing the medium (e.g. turn an infographic into a video), return to an old subject but cover it from a new angle, or add to previous content to enhance and update it.
As well as recycling your own content, take a look at some of the things your competitors are producing, and build upon it. This is a great tactic if you need a little inspiration, but it’s extremely important to never copy content. Duplicate content will have a negative impact on your search rankings.
6 – Run a competition
A great way to raise awareness of your brand, gain interest from potential customers, and collect first-party data, is to run a competition. Other than offering a prize, this easy marketing strategy is pretty low cost.
You can set up a landing page on your website and include a form to collect data such as name, email address and phone number. Then you can promote your competition on social media – whether you do this organically or through paid means is up to you.
7 – Show off your awards
Awards are another great low cost way of advertising your name, as well as being a great thing to show off on your website and email signatures. They also add credibility to your business, meaning people who visit your site are more likely to approach you when looking for your service or product. You can scour the internet for any recognised awards within your industry, and submit an entry.
Of course, there are a couple of things you need to consider. Firstly, there’s normally a small entry fee for some of the more prestigious awards (this may be different for other industries). Secondly, you need to be at a level where you feel you stand a chance of winning the award.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, it has been known for some companies have gone down the route of hosting their own awards in order to increase exposure. If you’re feeling a little creative, and think you’ve got enough knowledge within your industry to judge an award, why not make your own? As with a competition, you can set up a landing page for people to enter, and share it on your social media channels.
8 – Begin email marketing
There are so many options available with email marketing, and it’s a relatively inexpensive marketing strategy to get on board with.
Most businesses go down the route of paying for a designer to create them a beautiful mailshot, but there are other options available. For example, you could try creating your own email template using some of the design softwares we mentioned above.
There’s only one expense you need to consider with this marketing strategy. You’ll more than likely need some kind of email marketing software, which normally comes with a monthly fee (or a credits based system). You can always weigh up the prices of different email marketing softwares against your budget before going ahead with this practice.
9 – Go old school with a business card
Believe it or not, most people within a business have business cards, and these are a great way of creating brand awareness, building relationships and gently reminding customers you’re still here. They’re also a great tactic for lead generation because you can easily swap them back and forth at events, meetings, and any other business encounters.
Getting the design right on your business card is important and you can use one of the free design tools we’ve mentioned above to create your business card. Take a look at our top tips for designing a business card that won’t be thrown away.
10 – Try and encourage customer referrals
It’s a well known fact that customers trust other customers’ opinions over anything else. You can use customer referrals to your advantage, and turn it into an easy marketing strategy that has been used by companies for years.
A simple tactic you can utilise is to offer your existing customers a nice reward for introducing a friend to your product or service, and they’ll help bring in new customers. You could send out a simple email with a promotional code for each customer, and watch the new customers come in.
Want to learn more about low cost digital marketing strategies?
We hope our top ten low cost digital marketing strategies have proven you don’t need a huge marketing budget in order to promote your company. If you’d like to find out more about how to get the most out of your marketing budget, or you’d like help with any of the above easy marketing strategies, get in touch with one of our experts today.