Customers are necessary for your business to survive and develop. You must market your business in order to attract clients. It used to be a simple matter of choosing between a flyer, a brochure, a postcard, or a classified ad in the local newspaper.

However, in today’s digital age, the options are limitless.

So, if you’re having trouble deciding how to advertise your business or even what alternatives you have, you’re (a) not alone and (b) in the correct spot.

Whether you have no money, a limited budget, or some wiggle space, I’ll explore the most efficient strategies to market your business in this piece. We’ll talk about ways to spread the word about:

Search Engines (namely, Google Search and Maps).
Channels on social media (including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest).

There’s a lot more to online directories than you would believe!
Your immediate neighbourhood (events, sponsorships, and press).
If you want to stand out from your competition and reach out to your clients, you’ll need to promote your business, therefore let’s start with the most common channel: Google.

How to Use Google to Promote Your Business

It’s a no-brainer to use Google to market your company. It’s one of the finest methods to get in front of customers who are actively looking for answers, with more than 90% of the market share. Here are some of the most effective methods to utilise Google to promote yourself:

1. Make a Google Business Profile and validate it.

Your Google Business Profile (Google’s term for your Google listing) is what allows your business to appear in Google Maps results, the local section of Google Search results, and the right-side Knowledge Panel in Search results when someone types in your business name (ideas for creative business names here!) and location. This free listing should be a key focus as Google becomes better at tailoring its results to the searcher’s location.

Verifying ownership of your listing using your free Google My Firm account is critical to using your Business Profile to advertise your business. Once you’ve taken control of your listing, you may optimise it to appear higher in search results and for more relevant queries.

2. Create a web page

No matter how old-fashioned your business or clientele are, they all require a website. For existing and potential clients, your website is the go-to resource. Even if they find you on social media or through Google, they’ll want to visit your website, which, like your Google page, works to advertise your business 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A decent company website is vital for assessing and enhancing the performance of your other promotional strategies. It conveys the narrative of your business and what you provide, offers contact information, and displays your brand’s personality and unique qualities.

One of the most effective strategies to market your company is to create a website.
When you run advertising, for example, you’ll need landing pages that are hosted on your website. When you provide useful material on social media, make sure it links back to its original location on your website. With all of your marketing channels directing traffic to your website, you can utilise analytics to determine which methods are most effective and gain useful information about your target demographic.

Although there are fully free options for setting up a website for your business, if you are serious about marketing your company, you will almost certainly need to upgrade to a paid website. For growth, you’ll need your own domain name, a professional appearance and feel, and the capacity to extend and add features as required.

3. Use search engine optimization techniques.

It’s one thing for you to advertise your company; it’s another another entirely for Google to do so. SEO is a collection of tactics that align your company’s ranking system with Google’s. However, because this algorithm has developed to employ machine learning and user behaviour to provide the most accurate and high-quality results for searchers, optimising for search engines is actually just optimising for searchers—especially those looking for what you have to offer.

SEO isn’t just one approach; it’s a collection of them that work together to boost your ranking. Also, because Google’s location-based results are so good, you have just as much of a chance as huge shops to appear on Google’s first page— without investing a dollar! (With the exception of the costs to get a website, of course).

Small companies that appear on SERPs are the finest approach to market your company.

The following are some SEO strategies for promoting your business:

Adding relevant (industry and location-specific) keywords to certain areas of your website.

Regularly creating original, high-quality material with tagged photographs.
Keeping website load times and security high.

When your business appears high in search results, Google is essentially advertising it for you—and not just to everyone, but to those who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Is your website search engine friendly? With the free LOCALiQ Website Grader, you may get a quick audit.

4. Create a company blog

We touched on this briefly in the previous strategy, but content is such a key driver of SEO that it merits its own promotional strategy category. For companies, a blog is not the same as a LiveJournal. Sure, you may write about anniversaries and events, but a successful business blog is one that publishes instructive material in your brand voice, based on queries and phrases that your potential consumers are looking for on Google.

The following are examples of excellent blog posts:

Instructional articles and how-tos
Strategies and resources lists (top 10, 5 best, 3 crucial, etc.)
Write-up of a Q&A session or an interview with an industry expert
Posts of thought leadership
Posts that serve as examples or templates
Posts by visitors
Testimonials from customers or case studies
Posts with a seasonal theme (such as this one)
Check out these sites for help discovering keywords and writing SEO-friendly blog posts:

The Free Keyword Tool from WordStream
What is SEO Content, exactly? SEO Tips for Non-SEOs: A Guide to Creating Material for SEO Blog 5. Share your content

A blog that demonstrates your knowledge, approachability, and genuine desire to assist your readers is the ideal advertising tool for a company. So don’t just submit articles—promote them! To help you acquire leads, use social media, email newsletters, or even make them into downloadable manuals. Better still, if you create material with shareability in mind, your blog entries will likely be spotted by other trustworthy websites, which will mention and link to your site on their websites or social media feeds, effectively advertising your business for you.

6. Use Google Adwords

While SEO may help you reach the top of search engine results pages, it is a long-term approach that can take weeks, if not months, to see results. If you have the funds, Google Ads is the way to go for more instant visibility. Above organic and local listings, Google Advertisements ads appear at the very top of search engine results pages. Google is by far the most popular search engine, not only because it has the highest proportion of search engine traffic, but also because of its high degree of flexibility, ad creating options, and precise performance analytics.

Google Ads are one of the most effective ways to market your company.
Though understanding Google Ads takes time and a lot of trial and error, a well-optimized campaign is definitely worth the effort. Text advertisements on the Google Search Network and customised banner ads on the Google Display Network are two ways to advertise on Google. Follow our step-by-step instruction on how to run Google Ads if you’re ready to get started.

If you’re already advertising on Google, use our Free Google Ads Performance Grader to assess how well your campaigns are doing.

How to use internet directories to advertise your business

Consumers use web directories to find and assess businesses that meet their unique requirements. These are often high-traffic, long-standing websites with strong domain authority, therefore it’s not unusual for your profile page or business name to appear on Google’s first page via one of these domains. It doesn’t take long to create an internet listing, and it may help you improve your online presence by advertising your business to local, high-intent clients.

Local listings on the SERP are the finest strategy to market your business. 7. Create entries in the main directories.

Lesser directory sites use data from larger ones, so if you create entries on the major sites, you’ll very certainly start appearing in smaller directories as well. To begin, below is a list of the most important directories. They’re all free, although there are typically paid choices for enhanced functionality.

Google is a good place to start.
Yelp
Facebook specialised directories such as TripAdvisor, Angie’s List, and others
The Better Business Bureau (BBB)
Glassdoor
Foursquare (Even though it’s no longer active as a social network, its data is used by tens of thousands of others.)
Yell.com
Bing