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Are you a company or
individual that has a low advertising budget? If so, there are a variety of
fairly new low-cost advertising and promotional tools that you can use. If you
have a business and you want to expand your territory but cannot afford to plant
stores all around, you can take advantage of the Internet's many free or
low-cost tools. Nearly everyone in business is on the Internet now, and they
enjoy the convenience and ease of buying from or learning more about your
business online. Give your customers what they want by having a sound presence
online.
10 Ways to Use Internet to Promote your Home Business
1. SET UP YOUR OWN WEBSITE OR BLOG
You can either set up your own website or a free
blog (www.blogger.com) or you can pay someone
to set it up for you. You can usually have a nice website designed by yourself
for as little as $5.00 per month plus yearly registration of your domain name,
the website address. Most importantly, your website needs to have easily
navigated layouts, be filled with useful and interesting information and be
free of junk or unhelpful things. Avoid using anything that will discourage a
customer from lingering; this is one time when some upfront paid advice from a
web designer can be well worth it and will pay itself back in no time.
◦ Besides just information about your business and your
sales basket, what else can you offer? Think of adding articles, individual
stories about staff and company events, how-to information using your products
or services, lessons learned anecdotes, freebies such as downloadable craft
tutorials or a free ebook, etc. Be generous and your customers will be
impressed, checking back regularly for more.
◦ Submit your website name to many website directories.
You can search the Internet for free website directories and you will find
quite a few links to places where you can advertise.
2. USE PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING
Advertising online has a large reach and is the way
many sites thrive or even survive online. You can set a price that you would be
willing to pay every time someone clicks on an ad that you write. You only have
to pay this when someone clicks on your ad. If no one clicks on your ad, you do
not have to pay. These ad formats allow you to set up a daily advertising
budget and you have the freedom to cancel and restart your ads any time you
want.
◦ Use 'sidebar ads'. These display ads while people are
playing games. Consider also expanding into ads on apps for smartphones and
electronic tablets.
◦ Use Google ads on the side of your Google bar. If you
type in something, then it will come up on the right side of your search
results as small ads.
◦ Be considerate about placement of ads on your website
and be careful about the types of ads you're willing to have shown on your
website. Do you really want your competitor's ads showing up?
3. USE YOUTUBE TO PROMOTE YOUR BUSINESS
Perhaps one of the most popular and creative ways to
show more information about your business is to use videos. Some examples of
how to do this include:
◦ Upload a video of your company, and put on as many
links as you can from all sorts of topics so as many people as possible see it.
◦ Videotape launches and other public events promoted by
your business so that clients who couldn't make these events are still able to
catch up on what happened.
◦ Video how-to information related to your business, so
that when someone is looking how to solve a problem your business has knowledge
of, they find your video answer and learn more about you. Self-help videos on
common, basic problems can be a great way to show your business's sharing side
and to garner interest from potential new customers.
◦ Create an ongoing storyline showing customers using and
enjoying your products or services. This may require a little more work but
stories rope people in and they're far more likely to remember your business if
there's a regular mini soap opera to tune into!
4. PARTICIPATE IN FORUMS
This is one way to help promote your product or
services, showing you as an expert and as someone who genuinely wants to help
resolve people's problems. Often you can do this for free. However, this option
has one huge caveat––be sure to post in forums that are website promotion
friendly if you intend on using your URL or emblazoning the post with your
business details. Not all blog sites or forums allow promotion blog or forum
posts and breaching this could see your business blocked and even badmouthed.
In some cases you may have to pay a fee to advertise on their sites but usually
you do not. In many cases, simply stating that you're the
founder/owner/director/community manager, etc. of a certain site can be
sufficient to alert people to the good your company is doing online. Let them
do the rest of the adding up and finding of you––consumers are intelligent.
◦ Make use of user pages on sites that allow this. It can
be a great way to promote your business, especially if you contribute
information to the website that in turn leads readers back to your user page
for more details.
5. USE EMAIL MARKETING
You can create lists of customers, or potential
customers that you can keep in touch with on a regular basis. However, be aware
that many recipients regard this as spamming and may complain. Always seek to
get the agreement of customers to be emailed first, and always take into
account spamming laws, which detail that you're not allowed to send people
information they do not want. It makes good business sense to only send
information to people who want to hear about your products or services and not
to those who do not. These e-mailings can all be sent out in bulk, as if you
were sending them through postal mail.
◦ Spend a lot of time making emailed information worth
the recipient's time. Prepare a newsletter filled with useful information about
living life in general, or with humorous anecdotes, etc.; don't just email
updates about your business and marketing pitches. Be subtle!
6. GET ON FACEBOOK IF YOU'RE NOT ALREADY THERE
Even if your business does have a Facebook account,
make sure it is optimized to get the most from it. Use Facebook ads, updates
and Fan pages to keep fans posted on your business happenings.
◦ As a business, just be careful to get your business a
Facebook Page and not a Profile; profiles are for individual people only and
they are limited in what you can do as a business. Moreover, if Facebook
discovers you using a profile as a business, you stand to lose the whole
profile and all the friends your business has accrued.
◦ Keep updates relevant and interesting. Don't just talk
about your business though; share anecdotes, news items, comments about things
seen on fan's pages, images, etc.
◦ Hold little competitions for customers to win small
prizes. For example, if your business makes eco-friendly items, have fans
answer a quiz or send in photos of themselves doing something sustainable in
order to win one of your eco-products. Follow up with a photo of the winner
holding your product; make use of every opportunity to interact with fans
online. Do not involve Facebook buttons such as "Like",
"Share", and "Tag" as part of any contest though; this is
against Facebook terms of service.
7. TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO TWITTER
Get a good Twitter handle for your business and
start tweeting updates. However, remember that Twitter is a conversation, not
just a place to push your products or services. Be sure to instruct employees
to interact with online fans.
◦ For a small business, the best policy is to cover
what's expected of online interaction, then ask your employees to use their
best judgment when using an aggregated Twitter account. This builds trust and
self-monitoring and will help to keep the flow of conversation going well for
your business. The only exception to an aggregate Twitter account is for an
employee you don't trust. In which case, why don't you trust this person? Does
this person really belong on your team or is it simply a case that they've a
lot to learn yet? Be honest with yourself.
◦ Seek insight from those following you. Ask them
questions to find out what they want from your business, whether it's more,
something different or for your business to stop doing something. These
insights are invaluable information and are part of the conversation flow.
◦ Encourage sharing of your Twitter information by making
it interesting and worth people's while. As well as business information, share
a few random fun things too, like photos, inspirational messages and charity
efforts your business is involved in.
◦ Add tweets to your website so that customers can see
real time what is getting tweeted about your business.
◦ You don't need to be sitting around tweeting all day.
Use a tweet schedule service like TweetLater or Hootsuite to schedule your
tweets to appear when you'd like them to, all while you're doing other things.
This lets you take advantage of different time zones around the world too. If
you ask for email digests, you can check these in good time and respond to
someone who has tweeted, sooner rather than later, if needed. Moreover, email
digests allow you to track trends and topics on Twitter that are of importance
to your business.
8. BECOME A PART OF PINTEREST
Pinterest has created an platform for visual social
media input and your company can make the most of this by feeding in well taken
photos of your business products and other relevant images. Make them
interesting, compelling and shareable though; some creative effort will need to
be put into the photos to make Pinterest users want to share the photos around.
As with any advertising, focus on what makes your products interesting and
desirable and try to capture that in photographs.
◦ Crowdsource using Pinterest. A creative way to get the
crowd to promote your products for you is to ask your Pinterest followers to
pin pictures of themselves holding, using or standing near a product of yours.
Repin these onto your "beloved customers" (or some such) board. This
gives your customers the chance to feel that they've been noticed and cared
about and it also tells future customers that people use your products––and
love them!
◦ Encourage your employees to pin pictures from your
website or of official events to spread among their friends. Ask that they
include a socially relevant comment to help engage others looking at the pinned
photo or image but don't direct them; they're more likely to know what to do
innately than any directives could ever establish!
9. GO ON GOOGLE+ BUSINESS PAGES
A more recent stream of consciousness in the world
of social media, your business really should be here as well as on Twitter and
Facebook. It's still unfolding and this is a niche time to establish your
business' presence. Join groups, share photos and information and link up with
your customers in Google Hangouts.
10. KEEP SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS MEANINGFUL AND CONSIDERATE
Social media is a great
tool for businesses but it can also be misused and create follower fatigue,
unlikes and unfollows and general annoyance if misused. As part of this:
◦ See your fans and followers as people first, customers
second. Make that vital connection as human-to-human because this is what
online social media acolytes expect and they're far from impressed from a
business that assumes superiority. Befriend people, follow them and take an
interest in them as much as you expect the same back. Interact and talk the
talk with them; don't simply assume that because you're selling something that
they want that that is all you need to do online.
◦ Provide meaningful content that matters. What you
share, say and produce online must have resonance for your followers and not be
a slavish reproduction of "buy our product". Link with people and
organizations that your brand should be linked with and share their content
around too, and converse with them openly online.
◦ Be knowledgeable rather than jumping on bandwagons.
Hashtags on Twitter and Facebook campaigns can be compelling. But do they match
what your brand is trying to say? Often it's better to wait until all the facts
are out before throwing your weight behind a cause that simply springs up
online overnight.
◦ While it is important to trust those of your employees
who are representing you on social media, be sure that they "get"
what it means to connect and interact with others online. Don't force employees
to do it if they're uncomfortable or show any signs of irritability or
cynicism. Your business cannot afford rudeness or faux pas caused by lack of
motivation.
◦ Learn from errors made using social media and online resources.
Mistakes will happen and your business will recover from them. Learn the
lessons these incidents teach you and don't repeat them.
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