As the internet has grown, it has become more and more challenging for businesses to make an impact. People are creating new sites and new start-ups every day and so you are wondering, how can one business stand out from the crowd? While money can buy valuable ad placement, not everyone has the cash to burn. However, a lack of funds doesn’t mean that a business is doomed to fail. There are a number of affordable online marketing strategies with a proven track record of success. If people employ smart techniques, they can save themselves a lot of cash.
Develop a Diverse Social Media Marketing Strategy
While every marketer knows that using social media is advantageous, few stray from the tried and true. Most people set up a Twitter and Facebook account, hand them over to their social media expert, and call it a day. However, more and more social media platforms are popping up each day, and many of them are developing a strong audience. Instead of stopping at the basics, business owners should branch out, using Pinterest, Instagram, and even LinkedIn to connect with their customers. In addition, marketers should use social media tools so that they can manage all of these accounts themselves.
Craft Image-Heavy Blog Posts
Content marketing has grown in popularity in recent years. It’s easy to add a blog to a website, and those blog posts can boost a site’s SEO exponentially. Regular updates mean that search engines crawl a site more often, and a variety of blog posts mean that a site can hit on a wide range of keywords. Unfortunately, most marketers don’t have the time to write lengthy blog posts on their own. They can hire writers for the job, but that content will cost money. Thankfully, there’s a simple and affordable solution.
Instead of scrambling to create long, well-research posts, marketers should write brief, light posts that are full of images. Most successful blog posts are image heavy, and pictures can help mask a lack of content. In addition, the alt tags of images are an excellent place to stick keywords.
Develop Audience Profiles
Major corporations can afford to contract companies that can do extensive research on their target demographic. They can figure out what they like to drink, what music they like to listen to, and even what they watch on TV. While a small business can’t afford to hire experts like that, they can gather a lot of the same information. One of the primary advantages to social media is that it gives businesses more insight to their customers. Any business can click over to the social media profiles of their followers and gather all kinds of basic information. With the usage of certain tools, developing a customer profile is even easier.
Online marketing strategies don’t have to cost a fortune. There are a number of options that companies can explore that won’t put them in the red. Instead of pulling out a checkbook, companies should try to figure out how they can get noticed for free.
