Advertising Your Business For Free

How To Advertise Your New Business For Free

You’ve started your business, now what?! I remember watching a television ad when I started my business and it played over and over again. Super annoying, but I caught onto the message. He was a big time lawyer in SW FL and mentioned that if you do not advertise your business, there will be no business. Now, many of us only have enough money to get supplies and/or products for our new business when we’re just starting out. We’ve all been there where we get discussing the budget and finally realize that there’s none left over for advertising. No worries my boss friends. We’re talking how to advertise your business for free today!

Get Your Business Listed For Free

Google My Business– get your business on the maps and advertise your business daily almost immediately. This app is super easy to use, allows you to post offers, services, photos and more. It’s crucial that you have all of your ducks in a row ( speaking in terms of past experience ) because you don’t want to keep changing your business info: Google dings this as spam!

This app is not only for brick and mortars! You can have a business working out of your homes and list it on Google for better search results. I’ve honestly come across graphic + web designers, virtual assistants and more on Google. I’m assuming some even put their blogs on there. What if I don’t have a website yet? Google has a FREE website option as well. It’s not bad at all. I’ve used it several times and even received more clients this way. I do notice that when you keep changing things, your results go down so you want to stick with keeping things the same as much as you can. For example: if you know you’re going to be getting a website, hold off on adding that until you have it all set.

Google My Business Offers-

• Create a post- this is much like social media posting but for your business. You can add a photo, title, description and even add offers, link buttons, and tags.
• Photo uploads- these photos will be published so potential clients can see your work. So, utilize this feature often. BONUS TIP: go to Google Maps once your business is listed on Google My Business and find your business. Now upload some photos there.
• Insights, Reviews and Follows- they now allow people to follow your business account. They also encourage you to offer a welcome deal to anyone that follows. Reviews are important. Google wants you to respond timely and be as professional as possible. Look at your insights often to see where your business is. This reveals how many people are searching for your type of business and keywords to help you boost your business to the front page of Google.

Ways To Advertise Your Business For Free

Pinterest- This is important even if you don’t understand why! And we’ll discuss how this platform benefits you and your business. Pinterest is a search engine much like Google. This is the place that EVERY business should be listed because it’s almost more powerful. I was able to skyrocket my Coffee Addict Mama account in less than 2 months. If you need some help getting started, I share + edit TOP tips to growing your Pinterest account often because it’s extremely crucial no matter what kind of business you own.

Whether you have content to pin doesn’t really matter at this point ( if you’re new to the platform ). All you need to focus on is getting a business account set up ( if you haven’t already ), creating a killer bio, using a professional profile pic, and starting your boards. You will need to start pinning daily ( I recommend manual pinning but you can use an App such as Tailwind ). The more you grow your business, the more content you’ll create to start pinning. WHICH will then lead to your website or even your social media accounts. Yes, people pin photos and graphics to their Instagram, YouTube and even FB. It’s a little tricky to understand but the more you get used to it, the more you’ll understand. Just know that you need to create graphic photos or original photos to upload to Pinterest and then be sure to link it to your website. If you don’t have a website, link to the social media account where you want business.

You can also make money on Pinterest if you create a passion for it! I will be posting more about Affiliate Marketing coming soon.

Facebook- While FB and IG offers amazing ad options, I still think they’re only good for specific niches. Most businesses don’t see results unless you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads. There is definitely a FREE way to promote your business on Facebook. Creating a page for your business is important. Although many small businesses use their personal FB accounts, I don’t recommend that.

1.) Keep your personal and business accounts separate on Facebook. You can certainly share your business posts from your page on your personal accounts but for the most part, don’t overwhelm your current account with business posts because well, it’s just not professional. I have an album on my personal account for my work portfolio because I like to share it from time to time but 98% of my business posts are on my business page. You can set up a page rather easily.

Click on the pages button and then CREATE. If you already have a page you can start using it daily to start promoting your business. The key is to utilize this social media platform. Don’t think that starting a page and neglecting it will bring you in customers or clients. You have to POST and post relevant, attractive content to earn business.

2.) Join local groups. This is where many people go to ask for recommendations and your business should be recommended. You can either comment on posts or create posts ( if those groups allow you to ) and introduce your business to those group members. Encourage people and friends to share your new business page and do as much as you possibly can to utilize this amazingly FREE way to advertise. If you’re a local business you can search your city in the search button and groups should pop up. If you’re a global business, join groups in those niches.

Word Of Mouth- This may seem silly or even mostly, common sense but a lot of business owners do not know how to gain customers this way. Sometimes it’s the ONLY way your business will survive. When I first started my cleaning business I was able to draw in new clients by offering a FREE cleaning with every 5 referrals. So a fantastic way to get the word of mouth flowing is by offering a deal to those existing clients. Also, remind everyone to leave you a Google review. This boosts your ratings fabulously.

When I was learning about promoting my local business, there were posts upon posts telling everyone that they had to be on Manta, Bing, Yahoo, Care, LinkedIn, Yelp……and every other business website that wanted to really just hassle you for money to show up on Google’s front page and while that works for some, it DOES NOT work for many. For most of these, it’s a scam. If you list your business for FREE, they somehow make it so that they hurt your business rather than help it. So if you don’t need to be listed there, steer.

Live Videos and IGTV only works for specific niches. If you’re in the fashion and beauty biz, get those videos going. If you are posting LIVE videos just about anything in hopes to earn your MLM partners, it doesn’t work for everyone. Most the time, it’s a waste of time. You really gotta know your business, your products and yourselves. It’s a tough game out there. If you are doing what everyone else is doing……it may not work for you because the game doesn’t work that way.

• Passion- build it, create it. If you want to grow your business naturally, you need to have a passion for it. Doesn’t matter if it’s MLM or not…..if you’re not passionate, the money doesn’t exist.
• Show Up- just because you created the page, the account, etc…..doesn’t mean it works for itself. You MUST show up every single day and promote your own damn brand. You are your brand. Treat it as such.
• Don’t Give Up- that shit’s for the birds! If you are passionate ( there’s that fancy word ), then you drink, sweat and breathe that shit daily! From early morning, noon and late night. This is your business. This is your life. Make it grow.
• Trial + Error- you have 6 months to a year to figure out if these FREE ways to advertise really works. If for some reason they are not; re-organize, re-focus, and re-tackle. Evaluate what it is that’s not working and research new ways to create.

An experienced salesman once told me that if you pay for advertising it has to be something that you invest in for the life of your business. If you only advertise every so often, it’s a waste of time and money. Customers become customers because they see something all of the time. If you promote free or paid, it doesn’t matter. The key is frequency. You’ll gain business when you find the value in the business yourselves. Until next time, more coffee please.