6 Ways To Successfully Advertise Your Business With Minimum Costs

Think about this: if advertising your business is not so important, why would Coca-Cola, as the most famous and largest beverage company in the world, spend more than $4 BILLION in 2019 only for advertising campaigns? The answer is simple - if you don't talk about your business, ideas and plans, no one will know what you do and, even worse, why you exist.

Putting Coca-Cola on the side, a lot of businesses nowadays are facing with lack of budget, inefficient information about the target market and target customers but, most importantly, with growing competition. Now the question will be: whose gold shines brighter? In other words, you don't need to pay a lot to make your gold shines brighter than the others, you just need to polish it better. How? Simply use some of the techniques and recommendations below and monitor the changes. It's not happening over night, but the changes would be definitely magical.

# 1 Update Your Website

Your business' ID is definitely your website. The first information customers will look for. Personally, as a sales person, I don't trust companies whose website has no valid address, phone number or, even worse, if the URL they put on their business cards is not working.

You can even create a one-page website, plus a separate contact page where your customers can easily reach to you. But someone really needs to reply to the contact emails and enquiries in a timely manner, because this will give you an extra point and a good customer review. A lot of website builders don't require any coding skills, or a huge investment. You can choose between variety of layouts, even the virtual assistant can help you choose the best visual design based on the industry and product / service you want to present.

# 2 Google Is Still Free, So Use It

Be smart and connect your website to all free tools you can - some of the best monitoring tools are designed by Google and are still free of charge. First of all, Google Analytics will give you a lot of useful insights, such as: who are your visitors, where do they come from, when, how long they stay on your website, which pages they most likely read, how old they are, and many more... Furthermore, you should organize your Google MyBusiness profile, add your location on the map and even post some pictures (ideally from the office or team). Google MyBusiness helps you been reached by your customers through an organic search - which is, again, free of charge. So, you don't need to pay for advertising your business.

Reviews are also very important. Let your customers leave the review about their experience with your business. This will significantly enhance your visibility on Google search results and help your potential customers find what they are searching for - YOU. If you choose a restaurant in a new town you visit based on recommendations and reviews, certainly your customers will do the same. This is why you need also to be responsive in replying to messages, website request and overall communication. A quality business communication is the best branding you can ever have.

# 3 Instead of Writing, Share Trusted Content

Website and social media content is something that every company nowadays needs to have in order to advertise business and attract customers. Genuine, attractive and useful content beats any need to negotiate, explain and sweat in front of the potential customers. People use Internet to search for what they really need or to find a solution for their problem(s). The purpose of good and quality written content is to help people or customers to resolve their problems. Many businesses write content, where they explicitly offer their services. "Buy from us!", "Shop Now", or "We offer variety of services for amazing price!" This is a wrong approach. Content should never include these types of Call-to-Action, because the purpose of content is to attract customers and offer them the solution in the form of advice, example of good practice or a useful case study. If your customers see that you desperately want to sell them something, they will escape.

However, good and quality content can cost a lot of money. First of all, if you already don't have a content writer within your team, then you need to engage a freelancer or someone who will do the content for you. Good writers are usually expensive (but worth!). So, instead of creating a content strategy and trying to find quality personnel, you can focus on sharing the articles from other websites. First of all, these websites need to be trusted (for example: NY Times, The Guardian, Tech Crunch, The Economist, etc.) or should be blogs from industry leaders, depending which industry you belong to. Bloggers will always be happy if someone is sharing their original content, because with link building they also get better traction to their content. On the other hand, you get great visibility and engagement from your clients, who will read this content.

# 4 Become the King of Social Selling

By some definitions, social selling represents a way to connect, engage and nurture potential and current customers by using social networks. Most of us are at least using one of the social networks, where we can easily connect with our business partners or future customers. Of course, there are some rules how and when to endorse and engage your connections over social media accounts.

Rule No. 1: Do not send Direct Messages with business offer directly when you connect. Instead, send a personal message noting that you are looking forward to connecting with your colleague or partner on LinkedIn. Business offers in inbox are annoying and people will often delete the connection or will block you. Other social networks are more for personal connection, so keep them like that. Instagram and Facebook are for building personal affiliation and sharing mutual interests. Not for sharing business offers.

Rule No. 2: Do not over spam your social networks. Be moderate how you will present you and your business. Always share examples of good practice and achievements, or some useful note for your target audience. Don't post "Happy Friday" every day, except it is a special one. Share professional pictures and posts including a thumbnail picture. These pictures should ideally consist of people on them and nice and bright colours around. Of course, based on your brand's identity, this can be different, but try to avoid cold colours.

Rule No. 3: Endorse your network and employees, recommend others, give kudos to competitors. The best advertising is when you give acknowledgment to your network. By liking, making a comment or sharing somebody else's post, you are promoting not only this other professional, but you are indirectly promoting yourself and your business. Like the updates that are shared by your employees, recommend their posts. Don't hesitate to acknowledge your competitors for a good job they've done. After all, we are part of one community and industry and should respect each other.

Rule No. 4: Become a member of specialized LinkedIn groups. This is the best way to advertise your business, because the groups are consisted of your partners and industry members. You will attract their attention by posting useful information, making comments on some topics or sharing your experience with others. Like in rule No. 2, avoid to post your advertisement and promote your business directly.

Social media participation, moderate posting, endorsing others and being involved in communication online will make sales happen!

# 5 Rule Your LinkedIn Profile and CompanyPage

Some business go extreme, either by posting nothing or posting everything on social networks. For example, LinkedIn is (and should always remain) a social network for professional connections. This means that sharing personal updates, news, achievements or private photos is not so nice. Instead, try to post something useful for your followers - an article you read and want to share (with a proper header comment and hashtags), then your company's success (pictures are more than welcome here!) or endorsement of your team (colleagues will love that, and it will definitely influence your company's culture in a positive way). Try to avoid promoting your business directly. It is enough that you have a company description on LinkedIn page. Instead, post useful content, trying to resolve problems your potential customers might have. It is in people's nature to identify with the topic or issue they have. This is how you will advertise your business in the best way.

If you manage to be competitive and post interesting updates on your profile or page, this will attract some of the industry leaders who will gladly share your updates. In this way you get the best industry advertising, completely free of charge.

# 6 Promote Through Voice and Video

It is always nice to have great visuals prepared to advertise your product or service. However, a combination of audio and visual will definitely have much more impact. According to many researches (PubMatic, HubSpot, Statista, etc.), the trend of video advertising is growing every year, and it is really more likely that consumers would rather watch a short and interesting video than read a long article or analyze an image.

With this trend we go back to the beginning of this article, to confirm the statement why Coca-Cola keeps investing in advertising so much. But, if you don't have or are not willing to invest a lot, what else you should do? First of all, there must be a team member that is completely in love with making videos or likes public speeches. You can ask your team to create something, so you can make a nice and spontaneous video footage and publish it. Moreover, there are a lot online tools to edit video, pictures, and compose them into a nice story. Why not giving it a try? Moreover, short stories/updates from social media or live videos can also be a great material to download and use for professional promotion.

So, which way you found the most suitable for your organization? Or even more than one? Please feel free to share your comments, so we can discuss further and explore even more ways to successfully advertise your business - with, of course, minimum investment.

About the author: Sales specialist in Telecommunications, and marketing professional, specialized for SaaS sales and promotion. Good in website optimization and analysis, bad in numbers.