5 Alternatives to Running Paid Ads to Promote Your Business

Promotion is the secret of the most successful small businesses.

Good products are the cost of entry, but promotion will bring you the money. Unfortunately, most owners overlook promoting their business. They assume it’s expensive and time-consuming, which encourages an “if you built it, they will come” mentality.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

A lot of promotional advice you find recommends pouring money into ads on Facebook, Instagram, or Google. But you can’t put all your eggs in the advertising basket—diversification is key to avoid diminishing returns over time.

You need to create a foundation for your online presence and focus on getting in front of the right people, quickly and efficiently.

This guide will walk you through free and low-cost ways to promote your business, with examples and resources to put them to work for you today.

Free and low-cost ways to promote your business online

Business promotion is more than just publishing images on social media or buying ads. It’s a process to help you achieve measurable success in your business. Here’s how you can promote your business for free to drive traffic and sales for your store:

Guest post on blogs

Free traffic—as opposed to paid traffic that comes from things like purchased ads—is often hard to come by for new websites. You can start blogging to drive traffic, but it takes time before you start seeing results. While you grow your own audience, guest posting gives you a way to get in front of someone else’s. Not only does this drive traffic back to your website, but the links to your site will help with search engine optimization.

Find and connect with bloggers who have the type of audience you want to reach. Offer to write a guest post that their audience will love. Make sure the topic you write about is also related to your business or it won’t drive any traffic.

Get Reviews

Getting your product reviewed can be a great way to spread awareness and drive sales. Instead of waiting around for someone to review your product, use a blogger outreach campaign to get the ball rolling. You may end up landing a product review in outlets like Buzzfeed, like Shopify merchant RT1home.

Start email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to attract and retain customers as a small business. You can ask potential customers to sign up for an email list on your social media profiles or ecommerce store. Email is one of the most cost-effective ways to market a new business, with an average return of $42 for every dollar invested.

Get found in Google Search

When it comes to promoting your online business, SEO is one of the best ways to get traffic and sales over time. Research shows that online businesses receive 35% of total traffic and 33% of revenue from search engine results pages.

The goal is to get to position one, so when shoppers type in a specific keyword, they find your brand first. These shoppers are considered “high-intent,” which means they are more likely to buy your products compared to people who watch an ad or find you on social media.