Aside from providing quality products and services, marketing your home business is one of the most critical activities to ensure its future. Without marketing, you won’t have many customers; it’s that simple. Even if you have a steady group of return customers, growing this can be difficult without an effective marketing plan to increase awareness and interest in your product or service. The great news is, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to market your home business.
Here are five easily affordable methods of marketing your home business:
1. Online Video
Videos can be made cheaply by using online platforms and services to hire a freelancer from anywhere around the world. These videos can be anything from short animations to SlideShare-style videos. The aim is to segment and target these videos at your target market getting them edited and customised for their purpose.
The great thing about video marketing is that platforms show a bias for video content. As more and more people consume video content and platforms try their utmost to provide this content, businesses can benefit from low-cost video advertising. Video campaigns can run on a meager budget, with thousands of views costing a pound or two.
Videos are an excellent way to get attention for your brand and what you offer.
2. Quora
Quora is a good lead generation source. Answer questions that relate to your company, the services you provide or the industry you’re in. It’s an excellent way to market your business and get it on the radar of potential clients, partners and publications.
Posting this content on Quora may seem counterproductive as you could be placing it on your website, however, answering on Quora is a great way of cannibalising some of their domain authority and getting content you’ve created to rank well. You should of course always link back to your business blog or a relevant service your offer; this is where the value in using Quora is found.
Building up your presence on Quora can also help to attract attention and get some positive PR.
3. Case Studies
You can create these case studies with video interviews that you carry out yourself, or by asking customers to record themselves. The end goal of creating these case studies is to showcase your product or service and how it has helped existing customers and how amazing their experience with you and your business has been.
Creating case studies does not have to be expensive, as everyday tech like smartphones and a reasonably cheap lapel mic can be used to create them.
There’s no requirement for these case studies to be recorded, though a video will add credibility to what is said and video content holds viewers’ attention more than any other type. Voice-recorded and text-based case studies can also be created and used to market your business.
4. HARO
‘Help a Reporter Out’ (HARO) is a popular sourcing service for journalists and bloggers to find relevant sources for interviewing, quoting and other activities. The service is free and not very time-consuming as requests come in three times a day. Your role in this would be to answer any requests you find relevant.
There are no restrictions on the number of requests you can answer, and as a general rule, the sooner you respond the better, as you are competing with answers provided by any number of other respondents.
HARO is a great way to build a persona both for yourself and your business. The trick is not to be overly promotional unless a promotional tone is being requested.
5. Upsell: Send offers with your invoices
You can offer promotions aimed at either new customers or existing ones to capitalise on their buying spirit and their trust in your business, which will be at its highest.
Once you’ve completed a sale, you’re in a stronger position to make an additional one and upsell, so it’s a great time to offer a complimentary service or product that shows your awareness of their current needs and a nice gesture in light of them being a customer. Offering promotions for their friends are a great way of providing a reason for a referral and growing your customer base with minimal resources needed.
As a home business, affordability will be a crucial factor in deciding what’s feasible for your marketing campaigns. But with any of these strategies, or even better, a combination of these strategies you will be able to grow your business.
