As the marketing world becomes more competitive, business owners need to work hard to grab people’s attention. So, for all the small business owners out there, here’s your chance to take a sneak-peak at some effective marketing ideas that are easy to implement and don’t require a big investment, while still having a big impact. Whether you are a business owner, an entrepreneur, a blogger, a content creator or you simply love marketing, these 50 free marketing ideas will help Canadan small businesses stand out in the next year.
Optimize Your Website/ or Create it
1. Mobile-Friendly Design: Your site should be mobile-friendly and responsive to serve an increasing number of mobile users.
2. SEO Optimize: SEO can increase your website’s ranking through keywords, meta descriptions and alt tags.
3. Speed Improvement: Optimize your website’s loading speed by compressing images and leveraging browser caching.
4. Strong Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Make sure that your CTA prominently encourages the action you want visitors to take.
5. User-friendly navigation: Keep your site’s navigation simple to improve user experience so visitors will stick around longer.
Create a Website for Free
A small business needs a presence on the internet for reaching a wider customer base and gaining an edge over competition. Launching a website for free without investing in any paid hosting package or domain name offers a lucrative opportunity for small business owners to satisfy all their digital needs without any initial investment. Axis bank Africa, Angel, Myntra, Get me a lawyer are some of the popular business sites built on Tilda. Wix, Weebly and Tilda are simple to use drag-and-drop platforms specially designed for businesses lacking technical resources that allow them to create a website as per their needs. It doesn’t matter if you are a fashion house or lawyer, there is a template theme to suit every need. Based on the industry, you can pick a customised template and customise it to suit your audience and give your business a distinct look. There are in-built features to make a mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly website integrated with hosting within the platform. These free website builders allow you to initiate an online journey without worrying about the initial cost and deliver a website in no time to catch the attention of customers.
Creating a website for free using platforms like Wix and Tilda is a practical and efficient way for small businesses to establish an online presence without significant upfront costs.
6. Here are some benefits and features of these platforms:
7. Customizable Templates: Choose from a variety of customizable templates to create a site that reflects your brand’s identity and caters to your target audience.
Quality Content
8. Blogging: Regularly publish informative and engaging blog posts related to your industry.
9. Guest blogging: Write for other blogs in your niche to get more exposure and trust.
10. Video: Create and share videos that give your audience a glimpse of how a product or service works, demonstrate how to use it, or share an insight about an industry.
11. Design infographicsThese examples involve presenting data and complex information in a condensed and ‘easily digestible’ format.
12. Podcasts: Launch a podcast to discuss industry trends, interview experts, and share your knowledge.
Case Studies
13. Success Stories: Write complete stories on how your products or services have helped address specific challenges for clients.
14. Customer Testimonials: Collect and publish testimonials from satisfied customers to build credibility.
15. Before-and-After Examples: Use pictures to show how an offer works, with an example of it either before and after it is implemented.
16. Industry-Specific Examples: Tailor case studies to different industries to appeal to a broader audience.
17. Video Testimonials: Record and share video testimonials to provide a more personal touch.
Google Business
18. CLAIM: Claim and optimise your Google My Business online profile to stand out in local search.
19. Customer Reviews Get rave customers to write reviews to your Google My Business page.
20. Post regular updates, offers and news to your business profile on Google If, for any reason, you ever delete your Google My Business listing, there is a chance it will reappear (like in the Lotus case), so having an account will at least give you some control over your business’s listing on Google My Business.
21. Photo and Video: Upload the best photos and videos of your products, service, and premises.
22. QA Returns Here: You can provide information to your customers in either real time or ahead of time by using a Q A feature that captures common questions and answers them.
Email Marketing
23. Build A List: Use your website, social media, or an old-fashioned sign-up form in your shop.
24. Regular newsletters: send regular updates, deals and great content to keep your users excited
25. Segment your email list and send highly-targeted emails that speak directly to the interests and behaviours of different customer groups.
26. Automated Campaigns: Schedule automated email campaigns for welcome emails, abandoned cart notifications, and follow-ups.
27. Writing subject lines that get opened: How to write catchy subject lines to get opened and be read.
Use a CRM System
28. Use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to keep customer data centralised and fully controlled.
29. Track Interactions: Track customer interactions to gain insights into their preferences and behaviours.
30. Segmentation: Segment your customer base to tailor marketing efforts to specific groups.
31. Automate Tasks: Automate repetitive tasks such as follow-up emails and appointment reminders.
32. Improve Customer Service: Use CRM data to provide personalized and efficient customer service.
Explore Paid Advertising
33. Google Ads: 2. If you run an e-commerce site, you’ll want to optimize your advertising spend on Google Ads to appear on the right words or phrases (called keywords). You don’t want to pay for clicks that aren’t worth it just to get your website higher on the search-results page.
34. Social Media Ads Create a social media ad – platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are a sure way to reach more audience, including your target. LinkedIn works too.
35. Retargeting: Implement retargeting campaigns to re-engage visitors who have previously interacted with your website.
36. PPC Campaigns: Run Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns to drive immediate traffic and generate leads.
37. Local Advertising: Invest in local advertising to target potential customers in your geographic area.
Referral System
38. Customer referral system: Design a system to incentivize your current clients’ referrals to your business.
39. Partner Referrals: Collaborate with complementary businesses to refer customers to each other.
40. Loyalty Rewards: As reward for referrals, offer a delightful gift to the customer who refers friends and family.
41. Referral Contests: Host referral contests with attractive prizes to encourage participation.
42. Track Referrals At each step, employ tracking mechanisms to measure the success of your referral programme.
Blogging
43. Writing a blog can be an effective lead generation tool for small businesses to reach authority position and connect with audience. Regular posting of relevant information accompanied with an interesting and attractive article on your niche will bring infinite visitors in your website. Just follow the below mentioned points for a good blog:
44. Improved SEO: Google and other search engines love it when you publish fresh, timely content on your website. If you write about what’s relevant to your business, then you can make good use of keywords, meta descriptions and internal links to improve your blog pages’ search ranking.
45. Content mix: Explore a mix of content, such as how-tos, industry news, expert interviews, op-eds and product updates to keep readers coming back for more.
46. Interaction: By allowing comments on your blog posts, you have a chance to engage in dialogue with your readers – which helps create a sense of community. You could also broadcast the fact that you respond to comments and questions.
47. Demostrate Expertise: You can demonstrate your problem-solving abilities to readers, establishing yourself (and your business) as an expert.
48. Images and Media: Enrich your blog posts with images, infographics and video for extra scope, interest and shareability.
49. Post Regularly: Posting regularly strengthens your relationship with your audience and boosts your SEO score. Plan your calendar in advance so you know when your daily or weekly posts should go live.
50. Share-Worthy: Produce engaging, share-worthy content that your readership will want to post to social media, increasing your reach and bringing in new visitors.
When used like that, your blog can be the perfect vehicle for increasing traffic, earning trust, and interacting with your target market.
Conclusion
These 50 marketing ideas are 100% free and should help your small business grow and improve visibility in 2024. By taking advantage of your website, creating great content, engaging with case studies, taking Google Business seriously, making use of email marketing, using a good CRM, making use of paid ads, and setting a referral program, you can succeed and generate growth and revenue for your business. Be innovative and drive your way forward as new trends crop up and never stop honing your marketing machine if you wish to stay competitive. New trends come up every day and these aren’t going anywhere soon. By using these incredibly cheap marketing solutions you will become a persistent irritation to your competition and bring in new business. Hope your small business enjoys a fantastic year ahead. 50 free marketing ideas for small business to grow and become more visible in the year 2024.
