Internet Marketing with a Low Budget: How to Promote a Business Cheaply?
Promoting a business on the Internet requires large costs, so Internet marketing with a limited budget causes increased interest during the crisis.
Internet marketing has become an effective modern trading lever, so every entrepreneur who has a website or store should promote his business and win the recognition of potential customers. What if you have limited financial resources? Learn how to promote a business online cheaply and efficiently.
Internet Marketing on a Budget: SEO Matters
Search engine promotion of sites is a profitable investment for both large and small businesses. With a properly planned SEO strategy, you can make your website visible online, increase traffic, and increase revenue.
What's more, search engine optimization can become a cheap marketing tool: with the same tools you used to allocate to print or other advertising, today it is real to attract more and more customers, and the conversion price is constantly decreasing.
So, what SEO activities to take if you have a limited budget?
Local SEO Promotion e for Small Businesses with Low Budget
Local SEO promotion is a great internet marketing tool for small businesses with limited financial resources, especially if you work purely in the regional market. Less competition means you'll notice satisfactory results faster without throwing away thousands of dollars on global promotion.
To make your business more visible, you can add it to Google My Business. It's a free tool that allows you to provide basic information about your business. Your company will be visible on Google Maps and, with the appropriate positioning, will appear in the so-called Local Pack.
Thanks to local positioning, you will be found by users near you. Local SEO is the perfect strategy for restaurants, bars, shops, pharmacies, clinics, and hotels.
The list of establishments in Google My Business also gives you the opportunity to get customer reviews without having to engage any resources. It can be set up for free, so it's a great option if you want to bet on low-budget internet marketing.
All you need is to actively inquire about the opinions of your customers and keep in touch with them. Don't know how to do it? Contact the specialists of the Vyacheslav Denisov Studio and get advice on promoting business on the Internet.
How to cheaply promote a business with a blog?
A corporate blog is a proven low-budget strategy through which you can make significant strides in promoting your website or store.
If you can write interestingly, you don't need to hire a copywriter. You also do not need any specialized tools – the Google search engine allows you to find out which topics are of interest to users, and select relevant key queries.
You can also make extensive use of customer questions and concerns to prepare interesting content for your corporate blog. Read what competitors are writing about and look for topics that spark live discussion on social media.
Key marketing effects that a blog gives to a business:
- Promotion of goods in the online store.
- Creating an image of an expert in the industry through the exchange of knowledge.
- Increase search visibility and traffic with long-tail keyword queries that are more competitive and give higher chances of conversion.
Remember that content should be original: duplicate content is detrimental to the SEO strategy of website promotion, and also violates copyright. Also take care of the content aspect. If a blog post is not only interesting, but also useful for the user, you will increase attendance and time spent on the site.
Don't forget to analyze the performance of the content that you can measure with the free Google Analytics tool. You'll learn, among other things, what traffic your content generates, whether users click through to the page from organic search results, and how much time they spend on the website.
Low-budget Internet marketing for online stores
One of the ways to promote a low-budget business for online stores is to create a variety of content for e-commerce yourself.
In the online store you can use:
- Product descriptions.
- Descriptions of product categories.
- Thematic publications for the blog.
- Photos, especially contextual ones.
- Customer-generated content (user-generated content).
Remember that the content should contain keywords, as well as be useful and interesting for the user. If you create content that meets customer needs, you increase the traffic and time users spend on the website. The latter will certainly be marked by Google's algorithms rewarding your store with higher positions in search.
What's more, content in internet marketing allows you to build internal links. With these links, Googlebots can navigate the site efficiently.
How to place links in the online store yourself:
- Use internal links in product descriptions: You can direct the user to the category page as well as other related products.
- Use internal links in blog posts: You can use blog content to redirect users to the described products or product categories on the online store site.
Remember that links should be in the main content, not in the footer. Make sure the links are natural. Products and categories should be related to the content of the page from which the link goes - then you act in accordance with Google's recommendations and will not fall under the filters of the search engine.
Content Recycling for Businesses on a Tight Budget
You don't know how to add new content to your blog? Use the content you have! Updating old articles or expanding them can be an inexpensive and highly effective solution for promoting a business with a low budget.
You can use ready-made content in different ways. Translate an article or report into an infographic and share it on social media. Thus, you can create popularity on different channels, as well as attract new users interested in this type of content (for example, graphics).
Guest posts help promote a business
Do you want to get links to the site from valuable sources without attracting financial resources? Establish an article-sharing partnership. This way, you will get a link leading to your website and also publish content on your blog that your users may be interested in.
With guest posts, you can improve your website's link profile strategy despite having a small budget for marketing activities. Getting valuable links ultimately affects the results of business promotion online.
Optimize site metadata
Metadata, such as the title and meta description, are elements of your website's HTML code that are visible to users in search results. They inform Google's algorithms about the content of the page, but they also play another important role.
Metadata affects, among other things, the number of visits to the site and the CTR ratio. Therefore, it is worth taking care of their optimization, focused on attracting new users. The more attractive the title and description of the page, the more likely it is that the user will return to the site.
Technical Optimization in Internet Marketing with a Low Budget
If you are looking for an opportunity to engage in Internet marketing cheaply, first of all pay attention to the technical aspects of your website or online store.
Technical optimization of the site is one of the key aspects affecting the positioning effect. Therefore, even if you have a limited budget for marketing activities, you should take care of the following aspects of optimization:
- Implement the secure HTTPS protocol (SSL certificate).
- Internal linking and implementation of redirects to eliminate 404 errors.
- Appropriate content structure (headings, lists, paragraphs, and spacing).
- Use of business-related keywords.
Optimizing your site for mobile devices
The Mobile First Index algorithm, introduced in 2016, required the adaptation of sites for mobile devices in order to achieve better promotion results. This means that the site on a mobile device should be 100% functional, load quickly and automatically adapt to the size of any screen used.
Google has announced that from March 2021, it will completely stop indexing sites intended exclusively for desktop devices (Zero Desktop Content Update 2021). Therefore, it is important to urgently optimize your website for mobile devices, even if you are engaged in internet marketing with a low budget.
To check whether the site or online store is adapted to mobile devices, use the free Test Mobile Friendly tool in Google Search Console.
Load time is important for website promotion
Website loading speed is one of the critical aspects that can affect the promotion of a business online. Even if you have a limited budget for marketing activities, you should ensure optimal load times. To test this aspect, you can use free tools like PageSpeed Insight, Pingdom or GT Metrix.
Thanks to these tools, you will not only learn the page load time, but also get information about the main problems that need improvement.
Measures to increase the loading speed of the site include the following:
- Compressing images, that is, reducing their size.
- Limiting the use of Javascript and shortening the HTML code of the site.
- Limit media items that take a long time to load.
Appearance and structure of the site
For your website or online store to generate conversions, it needs to be transparent and easy to use. To do this, you need to perform the following activities:
- Improve the visual aspect: place on the site eye-catching images, tables and infographics that are useful and interesting to customers.
- Plan an intuitive structure of product categories: your users should clearly understand where to look for the desired section or product.
- Think about SEO-friendly and user-friendly URLs: Include keyword phrases in URLs, avoiding characters that say nothing (e.g., periods, commas, dashes, question marks) and try to use hyphens instead of underscores.
- Provide a positive user experience when interacting with the site.
Even with a limited marketing budget, business owners will be able to create visually appealing graphics. To do this, use free design tools such as Canva, Gimp or Piktochart.
Increase conversions on a tight budget
Activities in the field of Internet marketing are aimed not only at improving the visibility of the site and attendance, but, above all, at achieving higher incomes.
Search engine optimization is an investment that should pay off in the form of more conversions and a higher shopping cart value. When conducting marketing activities with a limited budget, it is worth implementing improvements that will encourage customers to complete a purchase, sign up for a newsletter or contact the company.
Cheap ways to increase conversions include:
- Providing the widest possible choice of shipping and payment methods.
- Shorten the path to completing a transaction and conversion: the fewer steps a user needs to take, the higher the chance of achieving the desired effect.
- The ability to make purchases without registration on the site.
Activity in social networks
Activity in social networks does not require large financial costs, but can significantly strengthen your marketing strategy. For effective promotion of sites or stores, as well as to create an image of an expert, it is not necessary to use paid advertising campaigns.
Businesses can opt for cheaper marketing solutions, including:
- Maintaining a social media profile: Sharing content, infographics, posting regularly, and sharing knowledge.
- Create a Facebook group if you already have an interested audience.
- Organization of competitions in which the prizes are own products.
Cheap Internet Marketing Doesn't Mean Bad
A low budget for Internet marketing does not mean that events will be ineffective and should not be counted on. The business needs to choose the best strategy that can bring sustainable results and will be the most profitable in the long run.
Such expectations correspond to seo promotion of the site. The cost of attracting one customer through organic SERPs is constantly decreasing, and the percentage of conversions is growing compared to alternative tools.
Local SEO business promotion is especially attractive for small companies as it gives the fastest results even with a limited budget.
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