There are plenty of free advertising ideas for small businesses out there – it’s just a matter of taking advantage of them. And because there are so many ways to advertise for free, it’s incredibly easy to slim that marketing budget down and make sure that you’re maximizing your profits in a way that companies with bloated marketing budgets aren’t.
Here are some of the best free small business advertising ideas that you can take advantage of without spending a cent.
Table of Contents
Use Social Media
When it comes to small business freebies ideas, you simply cannot beat social media. It doesn’t cost a penny to set up accounts on the big social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) and they are a huge source of free exposure for your business.
More than that, though – organic social media advertising doesn’t come across as advertising to the consumer, and that’s worth its weight in gold. Paid advertising is instinctively distrusted by consumers because it’s seen as disingenuous and a naked attempt to separate you from your money. A social media account that posts funny pictures and engages with its audience and shares useful information? That’s legitimate and trustworthy. And wouldn’t you rather buy from a legitimate, trustworthy business?
There are many small business free advertising ideas to take advantage of on social media. Let’s look at some of the best ways.
Make a Facebook Business Page
You cannot go wrong with a Facebook business page. They’re free to set up, free to use, and a great way of engaging with potential customers on Facebook without coming across as ‘advertising’.
Make the most out of your page by fleshing it out with all relevant information. Include your address, business website, contact information (email, phone number etc.) and other socials so that people can check you out on Twitter, Instagram etc.
It’s also important that you regularly interact with followers. Post updates, questions, surveys, memes, infographics, and anything else that’s guaranteed to elicit responses from followers. Be sure to invite people who like your posts to follow your page in order to increase your exposure, and use Facebook’s built-in analytics tools to see how your various posts are performing.
It’s a good idea to make use of Facebook’s post scheduler to have new content going up at least twice daily (or even more if the engagement warrants it). By posting on a regular basis, you’ll increase your engagement not only with followers but potential followers.
On the flip side of the coin, don’t oversaturate your followers with too many posts. A max of four daily is recommended – and even then, only if your posts are getting a lot of engagement. Facebook’s algorithm will bury your posts if you’re publishing too many too often, so don’t overdo it.
Set Up a Twitter Profile
Twitter is a great small business free advertising idea. If you can master this ubiquitous social media platform, the viral marketing potential is off the scale – and it won’t cost you a thing.
Companies big and small who have mastered the use of Twitter have seen their engagement rates skyrockets. By Tweeting, replying and Retweeting on a regular basis, you can quickly gather large numbers of new followers and reach people that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
The most successful business accounts on Twitter are characterized by being ‘down to earth’ in a way that people don’t expect official corporate spokespeople to be. This requires a certain amount of internet and pop culture literacy, specifically when it comes to memes and memetic phrases. It also helps to have a sharp wit and the ability to engage in ‘banter’ both with followers and with other business accounts. It’s not always easy, but ‘free’ doesn’t always mean ‘easy’!
Check out our extensive guide on Twitter marketing!
Sign Up for Instagram
Instagram is primarily a visual platform, and so it’s a really good way of advertising with nothing more than a few striking infographics or photos. By staying relevant and timing photos with big cultural events and holidays, you can ensure that your content reaches a broad swathe of Instagram users – even those who would not normally engage with your content.
For instance, throwing out Christmas-themed photos during December is a great (and organic) way of promoting your brand in a way that doesn’t immediately strike people as advertising. And as we’ve seen, stealth advertising is very much the way forward in the digital age, where consumers are sick and tired of having paid ads forced down their throats.
Make a Pinterest Account
Pinterest is similar to Instagram in the way that it’s a visual platform. It differs, however, in that you can link images from your website on Pinterest, and redirect people back to your own content in a way that’s not intrusive or leading.
Some companies are straddling the boundary between physical and digital shopping by incorporating the Pinterest experience into in-store shopping; clothing giant Nordstrom, for interest, allows customers to scan QR codes that open the product on their Pinterest page. This can lead customers to consider products that they otherwise might not have.
Ensure that your Website and Offline Content Links to your Socials
Every single piece of advertising that you have (including your website and your real-world store, if you have one) should have links to all your socials plastered everywhere – and they should be easy to use. QR codes are a fantastic way of doing this, as they’re convenient and no hassle at all for people to quickly scan with their smart phones. With just a simple scan and a press of a button, you’ll have a new follower on all your main socials.
Be Creative with Free Content Marketing
Online content creation is not only free; it’s a fantastic way to build brand awareness and establish yourself as an authority within your business’ field. For these reasons, it’s one of the primary tools in your arsenal when considering the question of how to advertise small businesses for free.
Online content comes in many forms, of course. Here are the most effective forms of content that you can produce without spending a penny.
Blogs
As free advertising ideas for small businesses go, you simply cannot beat the humble blog. It costs you nothing to sit down and write a 500- or 1000-word article on a subject that falls within your area of expertise, and it establishes you as an authority within your field.
Your website should have an area dedicated entirely to blogs, and you should be producing content regularly (at least twice a week). Make sure that you’re answering questions that people are asking – for instance, if you’re an electrician, you should make it your business to find out what people are googling regarding electrics in their house. Do people want to know how to wire a plug or replace a fuse? Write a blog on it.
A good rule of thumb is to look at what people are googling and the blogs that come up as top hits for that search. What is the writer doing right? Why is that blog more successful than others? Don’t plagiarize that article, obviously, but there’s no harm in using it for inspiration.
Be sure to go back and update/touch up old blogs. Google likes seeing content refreshed a little, and so you’re more likely to rank higher if you update your content regularly.
Last but not least: share your blogs on your socials! New blogs are great fodder for social media engagement, and they drive organic traffic to your website.
To drive organic traffic to your website, you will have to invest some time and resources into SEO. There are many great tools out there that can help you with SEO. A firm favorite is Semrush – the leading all-in one SEO solution on the market. It makes it incredibly easy to find the right topics and keywords, and write SEO-optimized content.
Guest Blogging
You don’t have to stick to your own website when it comes to blogging. You can guest blog for businesses that have overlapping interests, and in doing so boost exposure for both of you. Be sure to include backlinks to your own website – this helps build your website’s domain authority, which in turn makes you rank higher on Google.
You can also invite people to guest blog on your website, for the same reasons. You shouldn’t necessarily invite direct competitors to blog on your site, but again it could be a business whose goods/services complement your own. If you’re a tailor, for example, you might invite a fashion store to write a guest blog on summer trends, thereby boosting both of your profiles. Both parties can share the blog on their socials, leading to even broader exposure.
Collaborate with Influencers
This one is a little trickier to get done for ‘free’, but it’s a popular tactic to offer an influential blogger/vlogger/IG influencer free products/services in exchange for their documenting their experience on their account. Again, this isn’t technically free (you need to give them something), but the exposure is well worth it.
Check out our complete guide on influencer marketing to get started!
And speaking of vloggers…
Create a Vlog
Vlogging is literally ‘video logging’, or creating a blog but with a video. It can be tricky figuring out how to edit such videos, but there are plenty of tutorials out there that mean that once you’ve mastered the process, it’s one of the most effective free marketing ideas for small businesses around.
You can create regular videos on a variety of topics related to your business. Some great concepts to consider include:
- How-to videos that fall under your area of expertise (to continue an earlier example: it’s easier to show someone how to wire a plug than it is to describe it in writing)
- Interviews/reviews with satisfied customers (or sometimes dissatisfied customers, if you can spin it the right way!)
- Tours of your shop/workspace
- Behind-the-scenes videos showing what you do and how you do it
If your vlogs are successful enough, you might consider making a YouTube channel. This can further drive exposure and engagement, and is easily linked on your website and other storefronts (digital or physical).
Make a Podcast
Another effective way of boosting your profile and a great free advertising idea for small businesses is to make a podcast. This is a great free advertising idea for small businesses, as you can publish podcasts free of charge on both Spotify and iTunes. It’s also another fantastic way to reach people that you wouldn’t ordinarily reach – your YouTube audience is unlikely to have much overlap with your podcast one.
Check out our complete guide on using podcasts for marketing and how to set up and grow your podcast successfully!
Use Free Mass Mail Tools
Mass mails are a really effective way of getting your brand out there, and as far as small business advertising ideas go, it can be completely free. Companies like MailChimp allow you to open an account without spending a penny, and it’s a great way of reaching your customer base quickly and in huge numbers.
Mass mails can be used to send newsletters, promote events, competitions or sales, and quickly provide your customers with short-notice updates. The good news is that it’s very easy to design mass mails using the inbuilt tools of such platforms as MailChimp, and so you need no special expertise – just write your mass mail and hit ‘send’!
Similarly to your Facebook business page, you can schedule mass mails ahead of time. This makes it easy to queue up one or two a month and then get on with your day.
Use Referral Schemes
Offering existing customers a discount in order to refer friends or family is up there on the list of small business freebies ideas, purely because it’s so easy. It may seem that it’s costing you money to offer discounts to existing customers, but the profit you’ll make from drawing new ones in will more than offset this.
Use Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Marketing to new customers is only half the battle; you need to keep existing customers happy, and a huge part of that is finding out how they feel about previous interactions that they’ve had with you.
Customer satisfaction surveys needn’t cost a penny in the digital age. You can send them out as a mass mail or even just have them as a form on your website after somebody has made a purchase. The key is to make them as easy and hassle-free as possible, otherwise it will only be motivated customers filling them out – and those customers are usually motivated by the desire to make a complaint.
Use Infographics
We live in an age where it’s increasingly easy to put out graphic content without needing the skills of a graphic designer. Making infographics is no different; it’s easy to find software online that can steer you around the curves and take the pain out of trying to design your own infographic.
And once you’ve figured it out, the rewards are considerable. People absolutely love infographics, and they’re something that’s quick to go viral on social media – provided they’re eye-catching and provide useful information.
As with blogs, vlogs and other content, it’s important that you stick to areas in which you’re knowledgeable. You should also be able to tie it back into your business – it’s all very well writing a blog about how Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars film, but how does that link back into your plumbing business? Keep it relevant, and make sure it’s a subject upon which you can speak with authority.
Make Use of 1:1 Marketing
So-called “1:1 marketing” is all about personalized marketing and making a customer feel special. Examples involve sending customers birthday cards (potentially digital birthday cards) or cards for other occasions, or even something as simple as calling them by name in emails.
In an increasingly globalized world, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of the personal touch. People like to be valued, to be seen, and this is a great way of making sure that that happens. The more valued your customers feel, the more likely they are to return – and to tell their friends about you.
And, as with everything else in this article, it needn’t cost a penny. As with many free advertising ideas for small businesses, all it costs is a little time and effort.
Engage in Guerilla Marketing
Guerilla marketing not only sounds cool, but it’s fun for both you and the customer. Most importantly, it’s one of the best small business freebies ideas in existence.
Guerilla marketing simply involves marketing in an unconventional way that may not immediately strike the customer as marketing at all. It’s quite often loud, flashy, controversial, or somehow subversive. One such example was when the movie Deadpool was advertised with a fake Tinder profile for the titular antihero. Although Tinder users are a niche audience, the profile still went viral and ended up all over the internet, generating huge word-of-mouth advertising for the movie.
It just goes to show that, with enough ingenuity, you can market anything – and make it look like it’s not marketing at all.
Conclusion
It may seem like an uphill struggle to come up with novel and innovative small business free advertising ideas, but we hoped that we’ve proven that all it takes is a little nous and elbow grease. Whatever the nature of your company, it’s possible to dominate your industry with clever and industrious social media use, a little bit of the personal touch, and just a dash of inventiveness and creativity.