7 Inexpensive Marketing Ideas for Any Small Business

If you are a small business owner, implementing an effective marketing strategy is essential to your business’s success.

In today’s competitive industry, simply running a business with high-quality products and services is no longer enough to remain profitable. Instead, you must take the initiative to improve brand awareness and persuade potential customers to utilize your services.

Digital marketing is the form of marketing that takes place entirely in the digital space, such as across the internet and through mobile devices. Today, digital marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your small business.

Thankfully, marketing your business digitally may not be as challenging or expensive as you think. We’ve created this guide to help you learn seven inexpensive marketing ideas you can implement with little to no marketing knowledge.

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Read on to learn our seven affordable small business marketing ideas.

Online Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

1. Use Email Marketing as a Revenue-Generating Machine

One of the most on-trend digital marketing ideas for 2022 is email marketing. Your small business can utilize email marketing to send targeted marketing messages directly to your customer base, encouraging them to view and respond to those messages.

Ideally, your business should plan to send emails to your customers at least twice per month. However, if you continually have new information to share with customers or become good at crafting engaging, unique emails, you may benefit from sending two or three emails a week.

You can send marketing emails to:

• Remind customers to schedule routine services
• Promote new products or services
• Engage with potential customers who filled out a contact form on your website
• Share about seasonal or special promotions
• Provide essential updates about your small business
• Thank customers for making a purchase
• Invite customers to leave a review of your business

One of the easiest ways to implement an email marketing campaign for your small business is to use a marketing automation platform like Weave. Weave takes all of the work out of sending professional, high-quality emails to your entire customer base.

With Weave, you can easily craft emails from built-in templates and include photos and graphics from the Weave stock library. Weave’s templates allow you to create pro-level marketing emails that attract your target audience and reflect your top-quality services, even if you have no digital marketing experience.

Then, you can send your emails to specific groups of customers, such as those who recently hired your team or those who are due for a routine service. Weave makes it easy to manage your customer base within a simple, unified location.

If you do not currently implement any small business marketing ideas, creating an email campaign is one of the best places to start.

2. Conduct Free Online Webinars

A webinar is an online seminar that business owners use to teach others about their industries or business techniques. Hosting a webinar that provides valuable information about your industry is an excellent way to promote your small business through inbound marketing.

Hosting webinars is also much less time-consuming than attending a local event, but it can produce similar results for your marketing campaign. Depending on your specific type of small business, you can go two directions with webinars: promoting to potential customers or promoting to other companies in your area.

Some small businesses have begun hosting helpful webinars that indirectly persuade potential customers to purchase their services. For example, if you own a dental practice, you can host a webinar sharing dental hygiene tips and inviting participants to schedule a free dental exam with your practice.

However, you may also benefit from hosting webinars about your business practices that other local business owners in your area can tune in to. These webinars can help improve your brand recognition and reputation and encourage these business owners to recommend your company to others.

Overall, you can use several marketing ideas to incorporate webinars into your marketing plan. However, we recommend using Weave to keep your customers in the loop about your webinars. You can send your webinar details in emails and text messages to your customer base, inviting customers to participate.

3. Run Ads and Organic Posts on Social Media

Social media marketing is an effective small business marketing strategy. If you do not currently have any social channels for your small business, your first step should be to create profiles on every popular social media platform: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Once you have created your profiles, you can promote your small business through paid ads and organic posts. For example, you can use Facebook Ads to promote your business to a specific audience. You can also pay influencers to advertise your business with influencer marketing.

However, you do not always need to spend money to advertise your business on Facebook and other social media platforms. Instead, you can create text posts, images, and videos to share on your social media pages for free. Here are a few social media small business marketing ideas:

• Create a weekly series to increase engagement from week to week.
• Invite customers to visit on Small Business Saturday and receive a discount on their purchases.
• Run giveaways that require participants to follow your social media page and share your posts.
• Post “day in the life” videos of you and your staff completing routine tasks within your business
• Create a social media post about updates to your business practices

If you do not have a very significant marketing budget, posting on social media is an easy, free, and effective marketing tactic.

4. Gather Positive Online Reviews Quickly From Existing Customers

Customer reviews are some of the most effective marketing tools your business can use. In fact, around 90% of consumers stated in a survey that online reviews affected their purchase decisions.¹

Online reviews can show your potential customer base that your business is reliable and has successfully helped customers in their shoes. However, it can sometimes feel awkward or unprofessional to ask your existing customer base to leave reviews of your company.

One easy way to increase and manage customer reviews is to utilize Weave Reviews. With Weave, you can send an automatic email reminder to every customer, inviting them to leave a review of your business. This email can also include a link to Google and Facebook Reviews, making it easier for customers to share their thoughts online.

Additionally, Weave can help you manage your reviews to ensure that they create a positive image of your business. Weave will notify you every time you receive a review on Google or Facebook Reviews, allowing you to reach out to dissatisfied customers quickly to rectify the issue.

If you do not currently manage your online reviews, they could be hurting your business reputation. Prioritizing customer reviews is an essential step in maintaining an effective marketing strategy.

5. Make a Google My Business Account or Update It

Google My Business, also known as Google Business Profile, is a free business listing that you can create on the Google search engine. This listing allows you to share your business details, such as your location and services, for potential customers to find on Google. You can view this profile on the right-hand side of the search results when you Google a business.

Creating a Google Business Profile is an excellent way to increase brand awareness and optimize local marketing on Google. Once you publish this information, Google can include your business cards in Google searches, Google Maps, and the Google Shopping tab.

If you currently have a Google Business Profile, you’ll want to make sure that all of the information in your profile is accurate and up to date. If you do not currently have a profile, you can create one by following these steps:

1. Log in to your Google Business Profile Manager by first creating a Google account or signing into an existing account.
2. Enter your business name and select your business category.
3. Enter your business address. If you do not operate out of a physical location, you can select the general area where you provide services instead.
4. Add your contact information, including everything you would include on a business card.
5. Verify your business by entering a physical address connected to your company.
6. Customize your profile. Google ranks businesses with complete profiles higher than incomplete ones.

Creating your Google Business Profile will only take a few minutes, but it can work wonders to reach a new customer base and further your marketing efforts.

6. Build and Maintain a Blog With Content

Content marketing is another effective marketing idea that you can implement within your business. This method includes creating written and visual content online that leads viewers back to your company and persuades them to purchase your products or services. Content marketing typically includes strategies such as search engine optimization and keyword usage.

One easy way to begin content marketing is to create a website with a blog. Online blogs present the perfect opportunity to share an endless amount of written content about your small business, allowing you to optimize keywords that could lead users to your blog.

Here are a few blog post marketing ideas you can use to advertise your business:

• Share helpful tips related to your industry
• Introduce your staff and share your company history.
• Write a how-to post related to your industry.
• Share news and updates about your business.

You should create all blog content to encourage readers to become customers.

7. Create YouTube Videos ( Google Promotes This Platform Well)

While blog posts and other text posts can effectively market your practice, many consumers prefer to watch videos over reading text. According to a recent report, 73% of consumers would rather watch a video to learn about a product or service than read an article, E-book, or view an infographic.²

Thankfully, you don’t need to be a professional videographer to create high-quality video marketing content. Instead, you can simply record videos on your phone, edit them using mobile video editing apps, and post them to YouTube and your social media pages. Creating eye-catching thumbnails and engaging titles can ensure that users notice your video.

If you want to expand your videos’ reach, you can use Google AdWords (also known as Google Ads) to promote your YouTube videos. Once you pay for this ad service, your videos will appear in the video suggestions for your potential customer base, making them more likely to watch your videos and learn about your business.

The above small business marketing ideas only touch the surface of the strategies you can use to promote your business. If you’re looking to jumpstart your marketing campaign, expand your current customer base, and improve your reputation among loyal customers, using the Weave automation platform can help.

Request a free Weave demo today to see how Weave can help you launch your marketing ideas and grow your small business.

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Resources:

1. Survey: 90% Customers Say Buying Decisions Are Influenced by Online Reviews
2. Video Marketing Statistics 2022