4 Affordable Marketing Channels for Small Businesses

Modern technology has changed people’s lives tremendously and more people are implementing new technology to enhance their daily lives and daily activities. Even in our professional careers the impact of technology has been huge, and marketing is no exception.

Now, there are new and affordable ways to market a business aside from traditional marketing methods like print ads in magazines and advertising on television.

If you are thinking of ways to market your brand on a budget and make it popular, there are new forms of marketing and exciting promotion channels online for small businesses you can use.

Best Ways to Market Your Small Businesses on the Cheap

Here are some of the most popular and affordable ways to promote and market your business online:

1. Use social media networks

Although a website is essential for building an online presence, it is often not the first place your client arrives. Many times, they may discover and know about your brand on social networks, and only then will they go to your website, either because they want to see a more detailed portfolio or because they want to have access to your contact information.

Thus, it is now not enough to have a website only. Having a website is a first step to an online presence, but it is simply not enough. The next step is to find out the social networks that your target audience uses and generate a strategy to get people’s attention there and make them funs and followers. By doing this, they are more likely to share your posts frequently and buy from you.

Another advantage of getting on social networks and promoting your business there is that you can create your account for free. Of course, you need to create a strategy and invest time and possibly money there, so it is wise to select the most relevant social networks for your target audience.

2. Start a blog

Apart from social networks, create a blog on your business website and publish fresh content regularly to keep audiences engaged with your brand. Share news, tips, tutorials and more with your customers and funs. In so doing, you are not only generating engaging content to share on your social networks, but also doing correct SEO optimization that will improve your ranking in the search engines.

Additionally, when you publish blog content on a constant basis you not only improve your website’s SEO, but also demonstrating your expertise and increase your website’s authority. For that reason, it’s recommended that you add a blog to the same business website. Although you can also choose to create a blog in another domain, ensure you have links to the blog on the home page of your website.

Blogging also helps drive more web traffic, because both the people who are your funs and customers and the people who’re not funs but just want to learn about a topic visit your site. If at any point they notice that they need your services, they are likely to get in touch with you and buy from you. With a blog, you can demonstrate your expertise in your niche, and that makes it easier for people to trust you.

3. Create an affiliate program

Affiliate programs can be defined as marketing agreements between two parties in which one of them (the owner of a product or merchant) pays a commission to the other party (the affiliate) each time the latter directs web traffic to the merchant’s sales page and a sale results from the directed traffic.

For example, if you have an ecommerce store or product for sale, you can create an affiliate program so that other websites, blogs and affiliate marketers can promote links to your online store. Payment is made only when a sale is made, where customers directed to your website buy your product.

There are hundreds of affiliate marketing programs available to bloggers and affiliate marketers, including Amazon affiliate programs, ShareASale Network and Shopify Affiliate Program. With an affiliate program, not only is payment made only after a sale, it can be after users perform some other desired marketing action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a download.

Opening an affiliate program for your business is pretty straightforward. Claim a niche market. Don't try to sell everything to everyone. Locate niche partners and websites that have users interested in your products. Provide your affiliate partners with creative and promotional materials and an attractive commission rate for them to earn unlimited commissions from each sale they drive.

This is a powerful way to promote your products and brand, not to mention that it is quite affordable for small businesses.

4. Publish advertisements online

Publishing banner ads and other ads like native adverts on other websites to promote your brand and business on the internet is another great option that works in a similar way to affiliate programs.

Once you have your banner ads ready – designed at the right sizes and to standard specifications of the web, find websites with an audience that would be interested in your products and service where you will place the ad. Depending on your discussions with the website owners for advertisements opportunities and on the price model that the website has set for advertisements, you can promote and market your business quite effectively and affordably with these ads.

To ensure it’s affordable, you can look for options to pay a price for each click on the ad or maintain a fixed rate. You should analyze which model is most convenient for you, as well as check the web traffic of the site you are choosing to know if there really is a high probability that they click on your ad.

Alternatively, join pay-per-click (PPC) advertising networks like Google Ads and Bing Ads for a more streamlined process of placing ads on 3rd party websites. PPC ad networks can be quite affordable if you take care to create strategic ads that are more likely to perform well.

In conclusion

Promoting your business, website, products and brand need not be an expensive affair. Even a small company can start doing effective marketing online for free or very affordably. You only need to invest more on research and planning. It is not always necessary to have a large investment of money to carry out a successful marketing campaign online.

While there may be a monetary cost when marketing online, it is usually much cheaper than placing a traditional ad on radio or television. And depending on where you place your ads, you can get great results when you optimize your marketing efforts for each marketing channel.