Creative But Low-Cost Ways to Market Your Products Online

Advertising is a major headache for any company. Customers have to be made aware of new products, how they work, the cost, benefits, etc. This means expenditure and a large advertising budget. This is a part of normal business expenses for a large company but it can break the back of a small business owner. Small business owners usually struggle to establish themselves and financial fluidity is an overwhelming problem. In fact, more than 60 percent of all small businesses shut down in the first three years due to cash flow problems. So what does this mean? Does the small business owner have no way of selling products online cheaply and effectively? Of course not, the Internet changed all that as it opened up an immense field of easy to use but free advertising options that anyone could use at any time.

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If you are a small business owner and are wondering how to utilize these freebies, you’ve come to the right place.

Leverage Your Local Contacts

You don’t have to just jump on to the international market. Start with your local community and leverage the opportunities to promote your product. For example, is there a local softball group that requires help? You can help the team by providing products, advertising and even by sponsoring gifts and freebies. This is a great way to increase awareness about your product in the community. Of course, it instantly provides advertising about your product and will also increase sales. This also works if you are offering targeted products for a specific group. For example, if you want to promote your T-shirt Company, you have to target the local student community or even the local college crowd. The younger age group will be happy to wear your T-shirts about town and this acts as free publicity. Don’t forget to add your website name to your T-shirts or the products you are offering free to encourage customers to shop online as well.

Offer Discount Deals, Coupons, and Freebies

Customers love free or discounted products. As a result, you should offer freebies, discount deals, coupons and promo codes to your customers. Customers love discounted products and if you mail coupons, codes, deals and freebie offers to them directly, they are more than willing to patronize your website. Of course, for established websites, this is easy as they already have an electronic mailing list of customers. However, for new websites this is tough as they need to reach out to customers to buy their products. The best way to do this is by listing the deals with a third-party websites, like couponing websites. These websites are more than happy to list your deals and they usually get a lot of customers. These customers will go through the deals online and come to your website. This type of traffic and customers are a great way to market your products and advertise them online. Customers may not buy immediately but they will definitely remember your site because of the coupons and this does work as a type of advertising for your product and your company.

Give Away Products to Bloggers

Do you like reading blogs? Of course you do and what if you could list your product on such a popular blog? Can you imagine the immediate exposure you would get due to the larger readership base of a popular blog? Most website owners have realized that free reviews by bloggers are an excellent way of advertising. The Mogul Mom website points out that all you have to do is send your product to a popular blogger. For example, if you are a craft supply website, you can send your products to popular craft bloggers. They will use the product and then post a review that will be read by thousands of readers all over the world.

Become an Online Expert

The Microsoft Business Hub says that this is a little difficult to manage but it does work effectively as passive advertising for your product. The best way to do this is by going online and replying to all questions and queries related to your product. For example, if you have a nutraceutical website that promotes health products, having a free consultation section for customers, newsletters, a toll-free number for customers to call-in for questions, answer queries on forums, join discussion groups, etc. can give you a great boost in free advertising for your website. Of course, the website Constant Contact states that you will have to combine this with an active social media engagement in which you reach out to customers and to other major influencers or subject matter experts.

The website Social Media Today posts a word of caution though; all these advertising options might not work for your product and your website but it does help if you experiment. Try as many options as possible and track the effects these advertising methods have on your website traffic and sales. More often than not, you will see an uptick in sales and that is what you were aiming for, right? With the increased sales and business, you can then increase your advertising budget and go all-out to make your company a success.