No two disagree on the importance of marketing in the success of projects, but sometimes companies have incurred so many costs to establish and operate the project that they no longer have a budget to use for promotion. Fortunately, you can promote your business in the world of digital marketing, as many marketing ideas can be implemented without having a budget. You just need to put in the effort and put in the right strategy for implementation.
1- Create a blog
Creating a blog for your business is one of the most important marketing techniques that you can use for free, as it helps you spread like never before. Statistics show that for companies with a blog, the average subscriptions they collect from potential customers are 67% more than companies without one.
Although many promote the blog through paid advertising campaigns on search engines, you can produce many marketing ideas that will help you collect traffic naturally. By using search engine optimization techniques “SEO”, and maintaining publishing constantly, while providing high-quality content. All of this will make every new article boost your chance of appearing more in search results without any advertising budget.
It is important to focus in every article you write on providing an opportunity for marketing ideas that contribute to converting a potential customer into an actual customer, whether by providing an opportunity for a free trial of your product or service, or by offering certain discounts, or any other measure that can contribute to increasing sales. Here are some ideas that you can use to produce content on your blog:
Topics that interest your audience
Always be careful to provide content that suits your audience, so that they want to visit your blog, and then have a good blog traffic rate. Examples of topics that might interest your customers include answers to questions they have in mind, a discussion of their interests, or even an explanation of tools they can use, or skills they can learn.
In this case, it will benefit you to rely on evergreen content, which is the type of topic that the audience reads for its benefit, as it is not related to the need to publish it on a specific date, or its relevance to a specific situation. Thus, its presence ensures that more visits to the blog will be achieved with the extension of time, as a result of the public’s interest and search for it at any time.
Conversations with influencers in your field
People love to follow people who influence their communities. You can take advantage of this by compiling a list of influential people in your niche, and interviewing them in interviews that capture the audience’s interest. Keep in mind that not having a budget will make you choose people who aren’t interested in getting paid for the conversation.
On the other hand, it is preferable to use this type when your blog has started collecting a good rate of visits, so that you can show these numbers to the person before hosting him, ensuring that you will give him a degree of interest that makes him accept the dialogue, with marketing ideas to take advantage of this dialogue on sites Social networking increases the benefit for both parties.
Host people to write on your blog
You can dedicate a part of your blog to visitors’ articles, this ensures that you are constantly publishing on the blog, especially when you are busy and unable to produce content. Through these articles, you will get new visitors from the audience who follow these writers.
If you decide to use this method, you will need to add the conditions for publishing on the blog, such as the type of topics that will be accepted to be published, so that you make sure that they fit the nature of your business, so that you can get visits from potential customers for your business already.
2- Shooting marketing videos
Now, the use of video has become a major part of any marketing ideas businesses use, with statistics showing that almost 50% of people prefer watching videos from the brands they follow more than any other type of content. What is distinctive about the use of videos is that they can be adapted to produce different marketing ideas, due to the possibility of using them in various promotional channels, whether by creating a YouTube channel and profiting from it in the future sometimes, or by publishing videos in the blog, or on various social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram and others.
Also, this strategy suits you even if you do not have a large marketing budget, as you can use your smartphone to shoot videos, as many phones produce videos of suitable quality for customers. And if you want to shoot with modern equipment, you can borrow it from one of your friends who work in the field of photography, or you can even work together and give him a percentage of the profits in the future.
There are many videos that you can include in your marketing strategy, so it is important to determine which one suits you and what you need right now, and with time more genres can be added or switched between them so that it is not cumbersome to produce, and you can do it alone or with the team. Various marketing ideas appear from the videos that can be shot and suit the different stages of your project, such as:
Promotional videos
You can start with this type of video if your project is in its early stages, then the goal is to increase the awareness of the audience about the brand, and to attract potential customers to the project, as you can show in it details about your vision, mission and products or services you provide in general.
educational videos
In this type, you can build a good relationship with your audience, as even if they do not decide to buy, they will follow what you offer if you help them learn new skills, so you can ensure that they are with you. And by indirectly employing marketing ideas for your product in some of the videos, you will ensure that your visitors become actual customers over time.
Demo videos
This type is used to provide followers with details of how to properly use your product or service while showing the features and benefits that they will receive when purchasing. You can rely on it in the late selling stages, as it is used to persuade customers who are thinking of making a purchase decision soon.
Customer testimonials videos
One of the most powerful marketing ideas that you can implement while not having a huge budget. You will do nothing but ask your audience to shoot videos in which they provide their reviews and opinions on your product, and then you will not cost anything to prepare the content, potential customers always like to know the experiences of others before buying, because they see it as honest and therefore can influence their final decision.
Live broadcast videos
This type is very popular in the world of visual content, because it puts you in direct contact with your customers, and enables you to generate multiple marketing ideas, whether it is interaction by receiving and answering questions from your customers, or using it as an entertainment method. It is always important to inform your audience of the broadcast date well in advance, and you can ask them about the topics they are interested in, as their choice of what you want will make them follow you eagerly, and the desired spread will be achieved with it.
3- Create an account on Fiverr
One of the inexpensive promotional ideas that may have a great impact on your project is to join the Fiverr community, which allows its users to put up some topics for discussion to exchange ideas, and through which you can follow many communities in different fields, or build your own if you want to that.
Before you start, it will help you to carefully read the frequently asked questions and instructions for using the site, and you can follow the following steps to make the best use of the site:
- Create your account on the site, add a profile about you and your business, and add your blog link for all to see.
- Follow the areas that are most related to your work, as there are many communities on the site, for example, if you work in the field of entrepreneurship, it will be useful to follow communities such as entrepreneurship, money, business, and self-employment. There are also specialized communities that are created by individuals, and it may be useful to keep an eye on them.
- Start interacting with the communities that interest you, whether by creating your own contributions, or responding to the contributions of others, this will help you appear more, and you can benefit from useful articles in your blog to be presented to the appropriate community, but provided that you are in the context of the discussion, not the promotion because this Violates the terms of use.
- Build your own community, but in order to ensure a follow-up to it, try not to allocate the name to express your project, but rather to express your field of work. If you specialize in training, you can build a community that talks about the science of training.
4- Presence on social networking sites
Presence on social networking sites is a must for any project, to be able to produce many marketing ideas, some of which can be implemented without incurring any cost.
Ask for support and help from friends
One of the simplest ideas that can be relied upon in promoting your business is to ask your friends to invite their friends to like your various accounts on social media so that you start building your community of customers through this method.
They can also write posts on their pages about your project and the services you provide, because this may draw the attention of their friends to interest in you, and whoever happens to have tried your products, ask him to write his experience so that everyone can see, this contributes to more spread.
Organizing contests and free giveaways
Organizing competitions and providing free gifts contributes to achieving a widespread, and is part of marketing ideas that any project can do, regardless of its nature. All you need is to find a suitable idea for the competition or win the gift, and then set conditions for participation, such as Participants liking your project page.
Or invite their friends as well, or mention them in the comments on the contest post. You can see the difference in engagement and the increase in your page likes during the contest period, how this helped you spread, and if the idea is effective, you can repeat it from time to time.
Being in important groups on Facebook
Do a search on social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and you will find many groups that include people interested in different fields, and you can request to join any group that you believe will help you. You will find that some of these groups provide opportunities for those who want to make advertisements to sell their products on specific days, by communicating with those responsible for managing these groups and coordinating the publication of advertisements, thus you can guarantee a free promotion for your business.
You can also, with time, make a group on Facebook and link it to your page, and then add those interested in the above, because the advantage of these groups is that it gives you the opportunity to communicate directly with people and interact with them better, but this requires you to create marketing ideas so that there is no Duplicate between your Page and its affiliate group.
Attention to asking customers about their experiences with the product
Don’t let any sale go by without asking your customers about their experience with the product and their opinions about it, whether positive or negative and be sure to ask them to share these experiences with the rest of your audience. This contributes a lot to more confidence in what is presented because potential customers like to know about other people’s experiences before buying.
The more positive experiences your product has, the higher the chances of selling. It is helpful to create an incentive for people to be interested in writing about their experience, such as offering a discount or other suitable offer to encourage participation.
Connect with influencers
There are many ways you can collaborate with influencers, some of which require a large marketing budget, while others depend on the nature of your offer and your ability to negotiate with these influencers. One of the marketing ideas that you can use is to send them a set of your products as a gift, and then these influencers share their experience with their followers, which helps you spread and reach new customers in the project.
It is important that your criterion in choosing any influencer to deal with is the similarity of the target audience between you, even if it specializes in a field other than your field of work, what matters to you is to reach the right audience.
Submit press releases
You can search your network and try to reach people working in the field of journalism, and ask them to publish press releases about your project, or about one of your new products, and it won’t cost you anything in most cases. Then take the link of the statement when you publish it, and put it on your accounts on various social networking sites, this leads to more confidence in the followers of your project, as well as the possibility of reaching a new audience who will be interested in knowing the content of the statement, and their confidence that it is worth following.
use stories
The use of stories is one of the most important methods used in writing ads because people always like to read stories because of their great impact on them, as it is a method that costs you nothing but the ability to tell. It is important that the story you use is similar to the life of your audience and is drawn from the problems they live in their lives or the situations they encou
Through this, you can ensure their interest in it and the possibility of its impact on them, and the stories also enable you to produce many marketing ideas for your project, by talking about his idea, and highlighting how he contributed to solving their problems, and then the customers’ ability to be convinced and buy increases.
5- Using Google My Business
In 2013, Google released an important update in the world of algorithms that caused a big change in the world of business search, as it gave the first positions on the search page to results close to the searcher’s location. This has maximized the benefit of Google My Business, which gives you control over how your business appears in searches and on Google Maps.
It is a powerful promotional idea for your project, and it does not cost you anything, all you have to do is add information such as your business name and address, phone number, and opening hours. With the ability to add photos or videos, this information appears to people who search for you, to reach potential customers to you without making any effort.
Having an account on My Business also improves your visibility in search results, as it helps search spiders understand your activity more and the nature of the products and services you offer and link them to your geographic location. This increases your visibility in search results that may be relevant to you. Then it ensures more visits to your blog or social media accounts.
6- Create a podcast
During the past periods, podcasts, known as podcasts, began to spread among Internet users, due to the ease of listening to them on transportation, for example, or while performing some other tasks. So it has become popular to use it as an important marketing tool for commercial projects, it does not need a budget because there are many free podcast hosting services. It will cost almost nothing but to buy a microphone to use for recording, or if there is no possibility of purchase, you can use voice-editing software.
As with blog content, you can produce similar marketing ideas that benefit you in reaching your customers, by presenting topics that suit your audience so they want to listen to them, or trying to host experts and influencers and discuss with them. It is also useful to transcribe the audio of the interview, and then publish it in an article on your blog, so that you can double the benefit of the interview.
7- Organize free webinars
With a webinar strategy, different marketing ideas can be implemented, but they need good planning and preparation. So, you can organize one webinar per month, so that you don’t get distracted during the marketing process, and at the same time, you can make the best use of the strategy. You should be interested in asking your audience what ideas are important to them, for which they might want to attend a seminar. Whether you will present the content yourself, or by relying on an expert in one field to participate in the seminar.
You should also think about the potential customers you want to reach, what content can attract them to follow the seminars, and then the potential for them to turn into actual customers over time. One of the ideas that can be implemented in webinars is to be presented as a continuum of topics, provided that you always record each seminar and upload it on your blog to keep it constantly available, so that the follower will be able to follow the past seminars.
8- Free trial of services
One of the most important means to help you promote your business is to activate the free trial of the service, and this idea is suitable for entrepreneurs who provide services, such as training, professional advice, business organization tools, and others. Many sites often do this, giving their customers free use for 14 days, after which they can decide if they want to continue and pay for the subscription, or if the service is stopped.
This encourages customers’ decision to use the service, as the customer knows that they will not lose anything from the free trial, and they can cancel the trial at any time he wants without paying any money. The topic may take another form, for example, the owners of training courses use the free trial temporarily, as they make the subscription to the platform completely free at first, and after a while, the registration becomes a fee, this encourages many interested in the field to register so that they do not miss the opportunity, and this achieves for the platform you want to spread.
9- Create affiliate marketing programs
Affiliate marketing programs are one of the marketing ideas that are used directly to increase sales, as the company allocates unique links that it sends to those wishing to participate in these programs, to carry out sales through them, and for every sale made through this link, the individual receives a commission.
You can also benefit from this strategy, by creating an affiliate marketing program for your products, through which you can expand your marketing team, and hire people who will get paid only after making successful sales.
It is important to study the subject well if you want to use this strategy so that you can create programs that are accepted by marketers, and the specified commission is suitable for both parties, ensuring the success of these programs. You can advertise the program through social media, or by hiring professionals in affiliate marketing by adding a project on Fiverr.
10- Email marketing campaigns
Email marketing is one of the most important digital marketing strategies, because it gives the company the opportunity to communicate with the public, and thus the possibility of attracting more potential customers to purchase, as well as maintaining existing customers and continuing their purchases.
You can use this strategy to promote your business at no cost, you need to pay attention to the way to collect emails from individuals, and develop marketing ideas that create the motivation to give you an email to communicate with them, and you can do this by requesting registration of email addresses to attend webinars that you organize or even through social media.
It is good that there are free tools that can be used to create marketing campaigns using email, including the MailChimp tool, which helps you segment the audience into categories that suit you, to determine your target audience in the implementation of your marketing campaign accurately.
In conclusion, not having a huge marketing budget should not hinder you from marketing your products or services in any way, but it is important that you always think about adding marketing ideas that fit this situation, because you may be exposed to it sometimes as a result of any circumstance. So, you must be prepared for it, all you need is to employ these ideas in a specific strategy, with commitment and effort to ensure that it is implemented with the required efficiency.
