Best Free Ways To Advertise/ Promote A Business

What most of us know about advertisement is the traditional ways which cost’s money and not everyone can buy TV ads, FM Radio ads, Newspaper ads, Google ads, Physical Banners, Notices, Audio ads by vehicle on street. when they are just starting up the business. Don’t worry it is possible to successfully promote your business without spending a lot of money.

Free advertisement means what 1^st comes to our mind is by word of mouth (i.e.) asking neighbor, telephone calling of friends and promote our products, finally approaching the shops directly and promoting. But, there are other ways also.

I developed a list of 8 free ways to promote your business. These marketing ideas would not cost you money but requires your time & energy as investment.

Promoting strategy (A) – List Your Products on B2B, B2C Marketing Websites.

Buyers search for vendors in popular business directories. If you sell B2B products, add a free or paid listing on IndiaMart, Trade India, Mandee and Indian Yellow Pages. B2C products list on Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Swiggy, Zomatoo, These are popular virtual marketing websites for business.

If you sell directly to customers, list free on Just Dial, Ask Me and Get It. These services offer mobile apps and attract huge traffic. You can list services as well on these sites for free.

Promoting strategy (C) – Optimize Your Website For Search Engines

What is the first thing that people do when they are planning to buy something? Well, they search for that product or service on Google. First they try to collect as much information as they can about the product and then they search for vendors who sell that product. So, if your website is not appearing in Google search, that means you virtually are not exist.

How can we fix this? Easy way is to hire someone who can optimize your website for search engine but even in that case you need to be aware of the process, otherwise you might end up getting penalized by Google. It’s not very difficult to learn these techniques. Following is couple of links to get started.

Beginners Guide to SEO.
Comprehensive Guide to SEO

By reading these guides, you can tweak your website and rank higher on Google and other search engines. Even there is no need to hire an SEO agency, if you are aware of the process.

Promoting Strategy (D) – List On Google My Business (Local Business Listing)

Google is making search personal and now displays results that are tailored for your location. For example, if you search for a McDonalds, it will show you the one in your city with a map. So, it has almost become mandatory for a business to get listed on Google Local. Best and important strategy is to give away coupons, discounts on products which you sell in your website.

Google has made it easy to add & manage your location on map. People can also manage their Google Plus profile from the same place. Just head over to Google My Business and add. Even if you don’t have a shop, because some are doing business from home they can add their house location and give details about their business.

Promoting strategy (E) – Use The Power Of Social Media

To start with, you should create profiles on Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, instagram and Linkedin. This will not only help you get more customers but you can engage them and get quality feedback from them about your products or services.

Twitter & Face Book alone amounts for 20% of our total traffic.

There are many good guides to get started with social media marketing available online.

Active and regular posts are the key here. If you post regularly, your products gain popularity. So, there will be regular viewers or followers who can be your customers at a later stage. You can share your business updates or articles related to your industry. One other way is to follow the best in your industry and monitor their activity. Posting frequency depends upon you but at least twice a week on social media will keep your viewers busy.

Promoting strategy (F) – On Forums

When people are stuck and looking to solve their doubts, they turn up to specific forums or search on Internet. Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers are popular sites which catches top 10 places on search list here you can find new customers.

So how can you benefit from it? Signup on these sites and start searching for questions related to your product or services help them with your answers and promote your products. For example, my product is Jaggery powder so, search using that key word. You will get lot of questions related to your product. People might be asking about the top companies that sell this product or comparisons between different products and so on.

Start answering to those questions. In our case, we got hundreds of questions around this topic. Then, I simply started answering and recommending our Jaggery and spices products to questioners. We get a good amount of traffic every month via Quora.

You may do the same on Yahoo Answers. All these 2 networks are very influential to online users. Best part is these sites get top listings on Google search. So, your answers will appear in Google search whenever anyone searches for it. Isn’t that great? Just make sure to answer with an intention to help

Promoting strategy (G) – Attend Networking Events/Meetups

Events/Expos/Meetups are the great places to expand your network and find new customers. I got this idea and inspiration from “Mr. Jack Maa” owner of very famous “Alibaba” B2B business. Who at his earlier stages used to attend meetups, expos to get new ideas and customers?

Just search for “business events in your city and Google search will come up with list of upcoming events. Check AllEvents.in for events in various categories. Most of these events are free and attract customers as well as Distributors/Wholesalers/Retailers.

Slowly, you will start to realize that people you will meet there can turn into your customer. I got one customer from one of these events.

Another site which one of my friends absolutely recommends is Meetup.com. In his city lot of entrepreneurs, startup owners meet frequently using this site.

You will get an amazing experience from these events, so make sure you start attending these events on regular basis.

Promoting strategy (H) – YouTube channel promotion

Did you know every day billions of videos are watched on YouTube daily? This number is growing every year. So, it makes lot of sense to upload a video about your product or service right away! Best part is, this video will appear in search results as well giving your product more visibility.

How to get started? First decide what you are going to record. For products, a short 2 minute demo will work great and in case of service, you can record a testimonial by a client and upload it. YouTube offers nice tools to edit the uploaded video. For example, you can add narration or music, trim video and do much more.

Remember, keywords do an important role in search engine make sure to add related keywords in the title and description of the video. Once you have uploaded multiple videos, you can create a channel like one we have created for.

Final Words

There may be more than just 8 free ways of promoting your business. All you have to do is, be open minded and be creative. Some of the tactics mentioned above will yield results instantly and some of them might take weeks or months before you start seeing results.

If you have any other ideas you are most welcome, Feel free to share it with other readers in the comments below.

Disclaimer: This article should not be interpreted as an endorsement for any of the views mentioned. You should never make an investment into any online program if you do not know what you are doing. Please do your own research before considering investing money.