I know why you’re here.

You’re dead serious about finding marketing tips for small businesses that you can use to grow your company, aren’t you?

And if you’re like most small business owners, I’m guessing that your marketing budget is almost non-existent.

* Sigh… *

It can be tough.

Really, tough.

However, even having said that, rest assured that you are not without hope.

There are effective, yet affordable, marketing tips for small businesses that you can use to skyrocket your web traffic and generate sales.

The good news is, that’s what we’re about to cover in this guide.

Do you like what you’re reading so far? Then let’s hop right in.

1. Repurpose Written Texts Into Graphics

Slicing through the content noise is one of your main goals as a small business owner.

With millions of content published each day, a small brand must go the extra mile in order to stand out from the rest of the pack.

Incorporating visual content into your marketing strategy is a staple way to accomplish this. It allows you to capture the eyes of the online audience, make technical information more readable, and overall improve the user engagement factor of your website.

A tool like Canva can help you design anything from infographics to blog titles within minutes.

In addition to the library of pre-made layouts, it also has a drag-and-drop interface that essentially eliminates the learning curve.

Of course, Canva’s features alone won’t be enough to help you win at visual content marketing. You must also keep up with the latest graphic design trends and strategies to create visual content online users want to see.

Some of the widespread trends today include material design, modern retro, the creative utilization of white space, and so on.

2. Use Social Media

Another benefit of visual content is they increase the shareability of your blog posts on social media.

With networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you get the opportunity to connect with your target audience and bring traffic to your website without having to break the bank.

The key is to participate in the community and initiate contact with users to draw attention to your business. You can follow them, reply to their comments, “Like” their posts, and offer value by sharing content that addresses their pain points.

You don’t even have to develop the content yourself in order to have something worth sharing. With a tool like Scoop.it, finding popular content and adding them to your social sharing queue can be done in one place.  

3. Hold Contests

Once you’ve garnered a decent following on social media, you can accelerate the growth of your follower base by running contests.  

A hashtag contest, for example, can be run without having to use expensive online tools.

You simply need to inform your followers to upload a photo, use a specific hashtag, and pick out the winners yourself by searching for that hashtag.

Apart from the spike in follower activity, a social media contest is also a great way to increase brand awareness. After all, you’re essentially using your audience’s social media reach to spread the word about your business.

4. Use Marketing Automation Tools

Nope. Marketing automation tools aren’t necessarily expensive. (It just sounds like it, doesn’t it?)

However, if you look into tools like IFTTT, you’ll soon realize that not only are some marketing automation tools relatively cheap, but some of them are even free.

Suppose you’re into using IG and Twitter to market your business, you can create an Applet in IFTTT to automate the process of showing your IG photos in your Twitter feed as a full image, instead of a link.

Of course, there are several other Applets you can choose from to automate your marketing tasks.

While IFTTT is an awesome online tool, the web has truckloads of other automation tools that you can use; there are those for drip marketing, email parsing, email follow-ups, and even lead generation.

5. Optimize Your Website’s Performance

Polishing the user experience on your website is always a worthwhile endeavor. For one, a website’s loading speed directly correlates with its conversion rate, which is why optimizing your website’s performance should always be in on your to-do list.

A surefire way to supercharge the performance of your website is to use a CDN service. Short for Content Delivery Network, a CDN utilizes multiple servers to store and deliver cached website data to users — leading to reduced latency and protection against certain cyber-attacks.   

You can also refer to performance optimization tools like GTmetrix for actionable optimization suggestions.

6. Narrow Down Your Keywords List

Because you don’t have much “marketing wiggle room” due to your budget, you can’t afford to build your marketing campaigns around the wrong keywords.

You can get better ROI out of your strategies by targeting buyer keywords that people use when they’re just about ready to make a purchase. These are long-tail keywords that contain commercial or action-based terms like “buy,” “order,” or “services.”

With our keyword research tool, you can come up with truckloads of target-worthy keywords (in minutes) that can bring you targeted traffic to your site. You just need to enter your root keyword in our search box and we’ll do the rest for you.

By checking the “Avg. KC” section, you can see how difficult it can be to rank for certain keywords.

The higher the number, the more difficult it is to rank for the keyword.

For the most part, targeting those within the 20 – 30 (or less) Avg. KC is ideal.

7. Always Work on Producing Quality Content

If there’s one thing that will probably never change in the landscape of marketing, it’s the undeniable importance of content.

Everybody is talking about it, and it’s evident that it’s one of the online marketing trends that are here to stay.

Although writing your own content and using your personal voice are keys to a standout brand, it’s physically impossible to focus on other, crucial areas of marketing and keep a steady supply of quality content at the same time.

That’s when you should consider tapping into the booming freelancer economy and get a hand with the heavy lifting.

Here is a list of ground rules you should follow when looking for freelancers who can help you out:

• Ask for previous work samples
• Look for testimonials and reviews
• Define the way you’ll communicate
• Opt for freelancers who can speak fluent English

Eventually, you will also have to consider outsourcing your SEO efforts, which may be the most expensive move outlined in this post. But before you do, you should make it a point to implement the strategies above first so you can sustain your campaign for the long-term.

8. Establish Strategic Partnerships through Outreach

Just because your business is fairly small, doesn’t mean your brand should look small.

Depending on the marketing strategies you employ, you can somewhat “absorb” the clout of the famous brands in the industry you’re in to make your business look more established.

The idea is you need to be seen were the famous brands are seen.

You can do that a couple of ways, of course.

You can publish a guest post on the sites of renowned brands. Co-author an ebook with a famous person in your industry. Or conduct interviews with thought leaders.

To make it easier for you to find the contact details of your target person, you can use a cold outreach automation tool like Snov.io.

By installing their Chrome extension, you no longer need to check every single page of your prospect’s website for their contact details. You have only to click Snov.io’s Chrome extension to obtain the name and email of your ideal contact.

To show you an example, I went to a random coffee site and clicked on Snov.io’s Chrome extension.

Here’s what the tool came up with.

Pretty neat, huh?

Once you click the “Save selected” button, the details will then be transferred to Snov.io’s platform.

Once the email has been verified, you can start sending your outreach email still via the platform.

With the help of outreach automation tools, you should be able to send your cold outreach messages at scale, increasing the possibility of you connecting with an influencer that’d be willing to collaborate with you.

Key Takeaways

Effective marketing doesn’t always have to be expensive.

WIth the marketing tips for small businesses that we’ve highlighted, you can start promoting your company in the most affordable, yet effective, way.

Here’s a quick rundown of the crucial tips that we covered:

• Repurpose your written texts into graphics-based content.
• Engage with your community using social media platforms.
• Run social media contests to increase brand visibility.
• Optimize your website’s load speed.
• Target the right keywords — those that bring in traffic that converts.
• Produce quality content.
• Create strategic partnerships with the influencers in your industry.