15 HIGHLY EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS

Developing useful and valuable products and services is not enough, no matter how great your products or services may be, you must get the word out to make sales and gains.

Promoting your business using the ideas below may not cost a lot of money, but it will cost you some time.

Most of the tips I’m sharing here have worked for me in my own businesses and the business of some clients I have served in my work as a web developer and consultant. I believe they will be of great help in promoting your business too.

15 practical and inexpensive ideas to promote your business and grow your customer base

• YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A GOOD WEBSITE

This is the one thing on this list that you may not get for free, but the list will be incomplete without it.

To effectively promote your business at this age, you need to have a website that is Attractive, Functional, User-friendly, and Responsive(mobile-friendly). This will make your business look professional. People can find out a lot about your business from your website on their own.

Tycoon Concept is a website design and development agency offering affordable web solutions to local businesses in Nigeria, they can help get your business online fast without breaking your bank.

Your website is the online epicenter and the hub of your marketing efforts. It must be carefully crafted to effectively communicate the message of your brand to your audience.

Your business needs an effective website, it works for you even when you are asleep.

• START BLOGGING ABOUT YOUR FIELD OR NICHE

Creating a business blog is not so expensive and it is easy to maintain, a blog is an excellent way to engage your existing and prospective customers, your blog should provide them with updates, answers to questions relating to your business, and other valuable and informative content that will be useful to them and make them believe in your ability to provide solutions.

Interviewing other experts in your business field and publishing the interviews on your business blog can be a fantastic networking strategy and at the same time, a means for building credibility among your audience.

From your interviews, you can create insightful and inspiring content that your readers will want to share.

• RECOMPOSE YOUR CONTENT AND ADAPT THEM FOR DIFFERENT PURPOSE

How can your businesses keep things fresh by creating killer content again and again?

The answer is repurposing and recycling, you can make Audio, Slides, and Videos around a single text content and use them on different advertising platforms and increase your reach.

Repurposing and publicizing your copies or blog content to advertise your business in different ways is extremely important, creating content takes tons of your time and energy. SEO teaches us that quality content is significant. Content, they say is king.

• YOU HAVE TO BUILD AN EMAIL LIST

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners aren’t conscious of the advantages of email marketing and fail to leverage their website or blog to grow their list. Having an easy email signup form on your website can yield great results and will be done from the very beginning.

Email signup can be a very fast way of learning more about your customers or subscribers – once they enter their contact details, consider including an optional box asking them how they need to your site, or why they’re here. this may double as active marketing research.

See how to double your email open rate

• MAKE SURE YOU DON’T SPAM

We all easily get offended when unsolicited, irrelevant or boring text messages, voice notes or emails are sent to use regularly. It can be frustrating and you don’t want to frustrate your customers, right? They will block you or unsubscribe from your list.

When you send emails, make sure your emails contain authentic announcement or information about your product, a new feature, an important event, or a contest. the number of individuals unsubscribing from your email list will likely be far fewer if your emails contain highly relevant and interesting content.

• COMMENT ON POSTS ON OTHER RELATED BLOGS

Find blogs in your niche, and post valuable comments on posts that relate to your business, don’t forget to include your URL if it is allowed.

Apart from building links and creating relationships within the community, you’re targeting; this is also great for SEO purposes. If the web site is reputable, Google can notice the link between the blog and your site and index your content and you will rank higher.

Make sure your comments are always valuable, valuable comments are more likely to get approved and they can provoke interest and generate engagement from the general public. Anyone who interacts with you, or maybe anyone who sees your comment, can be a potential customer.

While building friendly relationships with competitors and other bloggers you are opening the door for future collaborations.

• RESPOND TO NEGATIVE FEEDBACKS AND REVIEWS

You are selling, not buying. You need to be friendly and respond constructively to negative reviews and feedback.

Follow up with dissatisfied patrons and try to make necessary amends. Perhaps you may need to offer them a free product or a reduction in cost on their next patronage. Sometimes just a sincere apology is often the difference in losing and keeping a customer. If you’ll make amends publicly, even better – this may boost your company’s reputation and encourage positive reviews on the online

• IMPROVE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

In business, Is there anything worse than bad customer service? Not only are you going to lose individual customers, but they will also tell others about their experience and your business will start having reputation issues. A smart customer experience strategy focuses on prevention. Implement a slick, friendly, and professional customer relationship will make it easy for patrons to fill comfortable sharing their feelings with you when they’re unhappy. And then you can make necessary adjustments and remain in business.

• JOIN AND CONTRIBUTE TO ONLINE GROUPS AND FORUMS IN YOUR NICHE

There is no business field or sector that doesn’t have online communities that are open for interested and or qualified people, you need to find these communities and join them.

Be that as it may, simply joining online groups and posting irrelevant and spammy posts to promote your business won’t do you any good.

Contributing quality content and genuinely answering questions and mentioning your business or a line about what you do after your contribution is enough to build relationships and promote your business without offending other members or users of the community.

• OFFER FREE CONSULTATION

Offering a no-obligation consultation gives you the chance to show prospective clients what you can do and turn them into clients. Find people you think that could use your services and offer them a free visit or meeting. You can provide free online consultation via Audio or Video calls.

This allows you to supply practical solutions to the client and demonstrate the worth you’ll bring them. It’s also an incredible means to explain what your business offers and the way it can help them personally, which can ultimately encourage them to do business with you.

• MAKE AND WEAR YOUR BRANDED CLOTHING

Many people are curious to read what is written on what other people wear.

Branded clothing can trigger conversation and create opportunity for your team members to talk to people about your business.

Encourage your team members to wear them to trade shows, conventions, seminars and other professional gatherings.

A smart way to use branded wears for promotional purposes is to use them in the form of uniforms for your employee. It makes your team look professional and easily recognizable and thus it is easy for people to walk up to anyone wearing your branded clothing and relate with them about your business.

• BE ACTIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Now that the internet is the new market place, Social media is no longer optional for business promotion. Your business is not taking full advantage of the digital space if it’s not available and active on social media.

Social media presents an opportunity for businesses and customers to directly interact. On social media, both parties are able to ask each other questions, share each other’s posts and relationships are formed.

Use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and WhatsApp to promote your business.

Online business directory listing is one of the oldest ways for promoting businesses online, online business directories offer legitimate and search engine friendly traffic redirection.

Listing your business in online business listing directories is a good way to start developing brand awareness, strengthen your business online reputation, increase local visibility and improve SEO for your business website.

Some online business directories offer free listing. Google My Business, Vconnect.com, Finelib.com, Yalwa.com are among the popular online business directories in Nigeria offering free business listing.

• CREATE REFERRAL PROGRAM

Developing a customer referral program can do the magic, this is all about offering rewards to people for bringing customers to your business.  The reward for referring patrons to your business can be in form of cash, free product, free subscription to your service, or some other reward that can be interesting enough to make people invite others to your business.

• ADD FOOTER SIGNATURE TO YOUR EMAIL

Lastly, you can turn your everyday email into a free and highly effective advertising opportunity by adding an email signature containing brief products and services information, links to your business social media handles, your business logo, and contact details.

It works, I bet you have seen at least one email signature in the emails you have opened this week.

Email signature advertising happens to be one of the most untapped promotion and lead generation opportunity that is at small businesses’ disposal.

Thank you for reading this. I believe you find this article helpful. Remember to share it with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe to our email newsletter for more pleasing updates.