It is a process where you communicate, attract and convince consumers that what you offer is of value to them. It involves research, promoting, selling and distributing your products or services.
Without marketing, a lot of businesses would fail. Even with a great product or service, if consumers don't know and understand its value, no sales will be made. At the end of the day, you want to grow as much & as fast as you can, which is impossible without pulling your efforts into marketing at some point.
As a small business, you will want to find the most inexpensive ways to achieve your marketing goals. There are a number of marketing channels that can achieve this – some are even free.
Here are six marketing channels that can help you market your business at a low cost.
1. Business Website
Building a business website and paying for good hosting is a great way to market your business. A business website can be used as a tool to grow your image and communicate your business’ message.
You can also use a website as an online store where customers can make purchases.
When most people want to know about a business or its products, the first thing they do is go to a search engine. What they find from their search shapes their image of the business and influences their decision to purchase your product or service. According to Google, 89% of Business to Business buyers and 81% of online shoppers use search engines to know more about new products and services.
When someone searches for something that is related to your business, you want your website to be on the top search results and be easily found by the consumer. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help you with this. SEO is a measurable, trusted process that is used to send data to search engines that your website is worth showing in their index.
By having good SEO for your website, you will get the best out of this marketing channel resulting in a respected, well-known brand and high sales.
2. Blogs
Blogs have become a powerful marketing channel. A business blog is a stand-alone web page or part of an existing business website. It is specifically assigned to writing about materials relating to the business’ industry or its subfields.
One of the best ways to bring more customers to your business is by giving them new, original content on a regular basis. A good business blog should have well-researched, thought-provoking blog posts that are also SEO optimized.
While it's good to have a blog that has great content, it is also important that your business is featured on other blogs with links to your business website. You should try to your businesses reach to both fellow bloggers and customers while also increasing your SEO grading.
Blogging also creates one of the easiest, fast and direct ways of communicating with consumers. You are able to tell them about your business and ask them to give feedback and opinions. You can use this information to research your customer's needs.
Blogs also act as customer channels that can be used to communicate with the target market about the business’ value proposition.
No need to say: every entrepreneur should know how to blog.
3. Social Media
With over 2.7 billion social media users across the globe, social media marketing can be said to be the largest and most powerful marketing channel. Social media marketing involves creating and sharing content on social media to achieve your business’s marketing goals.
