Updated: 29 November 2021

Thanks to the Internet, there are plenty of low-cost or free marketing strategies you can implement to build your business without spending a truckload of money.

Many digital marketing strategies boil down to having the time to work on them. They are often free (apart from the time spent), and so it’s a case of setting aside a block of time every week to work on them.

Here are just a handful of free or low-cost ideas to help reach existing clients and attract new prospects:

Embrace video

You can attract an audience by creating video tutorials or talks and post them on video-sharing sites. Most of you will have seen the great Will It Blend? video series — they reach out to millions of viewers for a tenth of the cost of a television advertisement.

Creating short and clever videos is one of my favourite low-cost or free marketing strategies. You can literally just use your smartphone on a tripod to record it, and then edit the video using iMovie or another low cost video editor. It could be a vlog, or a well scripted short video.

Share screenshots

If you’re a web designer, you could try posting screenshots of your work on photo-sharing sites. A good way to show off your design work is to post screen grabs on sites such as Flickr and the like. You can even make your username your business name or URL. Be careful though, you don’t want to look like you are just spamming, as they all have strict terms of use.

Use email

Nowadays it is trivial to build an email subscriber list and create a regular email newsletter. If you’ve yet to do so, I recommend creating an email newsletter to distribute to your clients.

Crafting good content and adding forward to a friend tools means they are more likely to be read and forwarded to prospective clients. Sign up to Campaign Monitor and try them out.

Write guest posts

Other blogs are always looking for well written expert content to share with their audiences. For these website or blog owners, it is free valuable content, and for you, a link back to your on website can pay off in SEO signals and new audience clicks. Guest posting really is a win win.

Try a small budget PPC campaign

It really doesn’t cost very much to try your hand at pay per click advertising. Services such as Google Ads allow for low budget, short-term advertising campaigns, which you can trial and then track the results.

Optimise your content

If you are writing blog posts and web pages, than you really must spend some time so you get to learn and understand SEO. Spending time on search engine optimisation can dramatically increase your ranking and have a considerable effect on prospects making contact with you.

Then there are plenty of offline low-cost or free marketing strategies that you can try your hand at, as well. Here are just a couple of options.

Try asking for (and rewarding) referrals

Ask existing clients for leads, and reward them with a bottle of wine or movie tickets. Simple gifts like these make your clients feel appreciated, and helps to maximise your marketing efforts.

Start public speaking

Offer your services to local business and industry groups, or hold your own talk at the office or nearby conference facilities, and invite everyone you know to attend.

In Summary

The above low-cost or free marketing strategies have all been tried and tested, and work a treat for so many small and medium businesses across the globe. Give a couple of your favourites a try, and see how well they work for you.

Best of luck with finding your best low-cost or free marketing strategies, and I wish you plenty of success!

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