Owning your own home business places a lot of responsibilities upon your shoulders; one of the biggest being marketing. The marketing budget for many home businesses can be a wide range of expenses but if there's one thing in common with most home businesses: the marketing budget will never compete with big business.
These smaller marketing budgets doesn't necessarily mean that home businesses can't compete with big business, it just requires a few tips and tricks to take advantage of existing platforms and try new marketing tactics which will require work and often push home business owners out of their comfort zone.
The biggest concern with marketing for home businesses is the inherent expenses due to traditional advertising platforms. It's true, advertising on radio, print and television is often out of the reach of most home businesses but there are actually more ways you can imagine that are either absolutely free or come at rock bottom prices in comparison.
What am I talking about? A hybrid of marketing on the web and offline utilizing bum and guerrilla marketing tactics. Don't be fooled though, these tactics can often out perform even the largest of marketing budgets form big business.
Go through each of the following marketing methods to find which can be applied to your home business. Take advantage of the web and most importantly, don't forget to continually evolve while doing so.
Article marketing is a free method to drive visitors to a home business through the creation and distribution of articles in print and on the web. The easiest method to utilize article marketing for home businesses is to write content related to the business' niche, products or services.
There are dozens of websites available on the web which offers free hosting and distribution for articles, such as:
The important thing to remember when article marketing is to provide great content which users will actually want to read, share and click through your links to come visit your home business website or landing page.
Perhaps the easiest way to begin marketing a home business is to take advantage of the free local listings provided by search engines and services such as Google, Yahoo and Yelp!
Local search has seen a dramatic rise in popularity because of the simple setup and exposure many home businesses can encounter by just a few hours of work. Once listed locally, any person searching for your products and services within an allotted area will automatically be displayed local search results for businesses such as yours.
Although each search engine and service has its own listings, the easiest way to check and claim your listings is to use the website GetListed. This website will automatically track down if you have previous entries and will guide you through the process of setting up local search for your home business - that's free marketing!
Although you can easily find free templates or designers willing to create a website for your home business, a proper business website should be worth the investment.
A simple website is often all you need to begin marketing your business on the web. With a website, you can drive search engines visitors to your website which can lead to conversions, more sales and building a community around your products and services.
Of course creating a website doesn't stop at the design and coding process; throughout the entire development time, use keyword and market research to help craft each page according to your products and services. Continue to build backlinks and improve your search engine ranking through various search engine optimization tips and tricks.
EBay is the largest auction website on the web with millions of visitors and transactions each day and hands down one of the best places to sell your items online. Chances are if you own a home business, your marketing budget can only last for so long. Instead of running out of marketing funds, consider selling many of your items and services on eBay.
EBay does require fees to list items but due to the sheer size of the marketplace, you'll often find a buyer for your items if you offer the right price, description and customer experience.
Giving away information is a quick way to build authority and drive free traffic to your business. Installing a blog takes only a few hours to setup but the long term benefits are unmatched to many different marketing methods.
Using your blog as part of your business does require work to produce great content but for those businesses that want to drive an everlasting wave of free traffic there's no better way than blogging. Search engines love blogs and often index blog posts high within search engines. If you craft each new blog post to include the main keywords you plan to rank for you'll continue to creep to the top of search engines and soon bring visitors to your business website and blog.
It's surprising to see that many home based businesses aren't taking advantage of the cheap flyers and sign designs offered by many print shops locally. These small signs and flyers could be the small edge to drive additional customers to your website instead of your competition.
To take it a step further, you could even begin designing and printing off your own flyers and signs. Slap these print marketing items all across town and sit back for that call - it's worth a try.
Throughout this article, you have learned a few inexpensive ways to market your home based business. These low-cost methods only require a small amount of time and passion but you continue to build upon each of these platforms you will see a gradual rise of traffic pointed toward your website. As the traffic keeps flowing, your home business will strive and make a profit - don't miss out on taking advantage of these marketing methods.
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