Do not assume that spending money is required to promote your business. While it certainly is ONE way it is not the ONLY way. Given the current challenges and the recent Merchant Circle Small Business Economic Stimulus Survey showing 73.1% of respondent businesses are experiencing moderate to severe declines in revenue, we offer here methods to increase your sales that require spending no money (unless you wish to hire someone to implement them).
We will start with ways that are fast-acting and short-lived and move on to those that provide benefits that last grow your business indefinitely. Use the fast methods to bring in cash when necessary and then focus on those that generate long-term benefits from one-time investments of your time.
ONLINE CLASSIFIEDS:
List your business on local classified-type sites that allow you to announce events and/or advertise your business. There are so many free online classified sites that determining which are worth using is a major challenge.
Avoid those that have few ads, only old ads, or contain get-rich-quick schemes or “bad neighborhoods”. Look for sites that are popular with those in your target area and/or market. When you find them be sure to keep the links and make notes on how well they worked for you.
Ideally you will even want to have Web Analytics installed on your site so you can see whether your ads are bringing visitors who become buyers to your site so you can focus your time and efforts on what produces results.
[TIP: You may also want to consider buying inexpensive ads in one issue of your local free printed classifieds because they can be searched for online by anyone anywhere.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CRAIGSLIST:
The most well known classified site is Craigslist. You can advertise business services for free. Ads stay online for 45 days in most cities but in some they expire in 7-30 days so check the Craigslist FAQ to see how long YOURS will be live.
You can repost ads as soon as they expire. If this works for you get a calendar or use your organizer to remind you to keep them live.
[TIP: Log in to place new ads so you will be able to manage them in your Craigslist account.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TWITTER:
If you have sufficient followers (OR your Tweets are Retweeted by someone who does) you can use Twitter to increase visibility for your business or recommend someone else’s. If you create an account at TweetBurner you can track interest in what you share at Twitter by using the Twurl bookmarklet.
[TIP: You can log into one TweetBurner account and send and track Twurls from multiple Twitter accounts.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LOCAL LISTING DIRECTORIES:
Every business – even those that operate entirely online and are NOT local businesses – will benefit from creating the most comprehensive local listings in every decent Local Listing Directory available. This is so important that we feature the link to our Local Listings REALLY Simplified page at the very top in the right sidebar. I encourage you to click that link and go read that page.
We have also created:
- Local Listings Data Form – You can copy and paste or print out that allows you to collect all the information in one place that you will use to list your business
- Links to Verify Your Local Listings – Use these to find out if your business is already listed, review and edit existing listings and verify that new submissions are live and accurate.
- Direct links to the Local Listing Submission pages – So you can list your business yourself.
We’re going to be honest with you. Submitting your business to Local Listing Directories can be very time-consuming and it is NOT much fun; however, it is very important because:
- 67% of people surveyed in Nielsen Consumer Survey prefer using these online directories to using the printed yellow pages!
- Many of these directories have very high Google PageRank (most are PR 7) so they are more beneficial than almost any incoming link your business can easily obtain. Other search engines use similar factors in their rankings.
- Several of the directories provide online reviews and good reviews generate much more business!
- Several of the directories allow you to offer coupons which can be used to motivate potential customers to shop with you.
Some of the major directories are buggy and others time-out while you’re filling out the forms so do use the form we are offering and copy and paste your work before you click submit – especially if you get interrupted while creating your listings. More Tips:
- DO brainstorm all your major keyword phrases and work them into your listings (how much you can fit in where varies between directories because the fields and field lengths vary).
- DO make each listing unique to maximize results
- Do NOT simply copy and paste the same text into each directory.
If you decide to do it yourself and get stuck feel free to contact us at Twitter or leave a comment in this post. We would be glad to offer free advice and answer your questions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERNET ADVERTISING SURVEY:
- Merchant Circle Member Survey on Effectiveness of Specific Forms of Advertising found that Merchants Prefer Internet Advertising.
[NOTE: These tend to be very small businesses and the results show what they believe to be most effective. While some may have measured the results others are relying on their own perceptions of what works best for them. ]
CRAIGSLIST RESOURCES:
- Craigslist for Beginners
- Advertising on Craigslist
- 24 Craigslist Tips, Tricks and Resources – good general post on using Craiglist
- The Disadvantages of Using Craigslist to Make Money – Good analysis of the pros and cons; Why Craigslist is not very useful for selling products unless sales are limited to one geographic area.
LOCAL SEARCH / SEO RESOURCES:
- Local SEO Resource Guide – EXCELLENT
- Local SEO for Local, Niche, and Small Businesses – Covers keywords, tags, and copywriting
- The Definitive List of Local Search Directories – Very comprehensive
- Local Listings REALLY Simplified – Easy explanation plus Our Special Limited Time Offer for Businesses
Gail Gardner
It seems like you have a killer idea about promoting business. Do you know I love your title “Promot your business without cash” Great title? This is also one of the best marketing strategies which you are using by selection best title. Do I want to promote my business which is Dedicated Private Server Do you have any idea how i did it without cash? Thanks buddy keep updating and keep sharing
These are nice ways to promote our business for free .
I would suggest you to add Facebook at top in the list as it is the best source to promote business for free. We can promote using our ID or business page .
Thanks for sharing this post .
John Crooks would love you to read ..330+ Best Free Proxy Server Sites list | Access Block Websites
Hi John,
While you can get limited benefit from using Facebook for free, the real value requires paying for targeted ads.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Product Launches
everyone loves freebies. Good to know this free way.
Triana would love you to read ..Meghan Trainor – The New Rising Singing Star
greetings from camden market!
Quite a nice list. I’ve had a lot of luck promoting my niche site on craigslist. People say it’s dead but there are lots of traffic to get there still.
Julia Albert would love you to read ..Product Key for Microsoft Office 2007
This is a pretty good list actually.
I’ve used craigslist for quite a while however it seems to getting real spammy nowadays. After reading this post I tried Twitter, seems like a valid choice. Already got 171 follower 🙂
Yes, I’ve done Twitter, but Craigslist? One person suggested this from of advertising and I sort of fluffed it off… but, you’re absolutely right. I didn’t give it enough credit. It’s all about grassroots marketing via the computer.
Currently, the most popular is the social media networking sites. These sites are all for free when you do the advertising. You just need to create a fan page for your business where you can give updates or testimonials from previous clients.
I love doing my job as DJ and wedding DJ. It is a passion that makes love my life. Everyone should be dancing at any party. I play only songs at parties that make people dance, and happy al the time. It is very important for me to be there for them while enjoying myself. I love your site. Will come back again ? taking your feeds too, Thanks.
Hi all,
Here’s a good free PR4 business directory to help promote your business.
Free Business Listings
Thanks.
Today they are only showing as PR2 but still could be worth a link.
.-= growmap´s last blog ..MEME: BizLuv in Support of Small Businesses =-.
Hi,
Fantastic post.
I really admire this kind of information.
Thanks for tips and advice.
this one is great .perfectly written. much useful. thanks .keep sharing.
Yeah i really appreciate. Very informative stuff here. you can promote your business sitting at home. There are many ways like directory submission, dofollow links. Put your business at dofollow directory by selecting relevant category. put your business links in relevant sites.
craigslist is by far the best free online classifieds. you just need some patience in posting and reposting coz they’re pretty strict.
.-= Ryan@Pennyfieds´s last blog ..Luxury North GA Cabin Rental =-.
Indeed a great way to promote your business without spending cash!
It is a really a nice idea for promoting our business with no need of cash.I will use it in future definitely.
This is a very good way of promoting the buisness as it does not require any cash for the promotion.
Thanks for all
Hi,
Merchant Circle’s survey credibility is questionable: most of the respondents use MC as their “substitute for a web site”. I know this because I’ve helped several businesses in my area set up their MC pages, and none of these business owners have a domain of their own.
Thanks.
Surveys are always only as accurate as your awareness of what they measure. I agree that many small businesses do not have their own domains and do use platforms such as Merchant Circle, Yahoo! or Yelp as substitutes. That may or may not affect the survey results depending on what specific question is being answered.
.-= growmap´s last blog ..BizLuv MEME: How to Support Your Fav Businesses =-.
For the overall page, no but I’m searching. For comments, you can simply right click the linked name and click properties; “external” means it’s do follow.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Scamming Top Commenter Lists With Threaded Comments
Thank you. I was not aware of that. Very useful.
.-= growmap´s last blog ..Twelve Generous FollowFriday Folks =-.
@Dennis Any other solutions you like besides that toolbar?
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in the Last 30 Days: Our Proven Traffic Improvement Strategy
Nope and support is non existent.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Blog Readers or Twitter Followers – What’s YOUR Preferance?
@Dennis Is that toolbar working again yet? Perhaps it has been updated? I haven’t made the time to investigate it myself yet.
@Alex You are absolutely correct. We have covered only the most widely available traffic sources so far. The very best are those that are widely used locally (if you’re a local business) and those in your niche.
We will cover some of those eventually – or at least how to locate them youself (because there are so many niches that it would impossible for us to cover them all here).
@Matt Thank you so much for your comments. They certainly provide additional insight into whether Craigslist or MC would be worth our time.
To date I have not been very successful with Craigslist for finding potential users of local businesses. It seems to be more useful for finding used items or placing pets.
Like most surveys we have no way of knowing enough about those roughly 1100 respondents and what kind of businesses they have; however, they would have to HAVE some revenue to say revenue is down so they are not likely to be those with only an MC page.
We don’t know if they were primarily brick and mortar (offline) stores (with or without a Web site on their own domain) OR online merchants wise enough to have local listings too.
Your last paragraph is most telling. I know they do focus on their fee offerings and have not yet done sufficient research to verify how effectively their traffic can be converted.
The service I wish was far better known is U.S. Counties http://uscounties.com/ because their founder went to great lengths to make sure it can never be bought out or absorbed. If any Local Search Directory site will forever be independent it would be that one.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Why You Can NOT Rely Solely on Organic Search Listings for Traffic and Revenue
I use craigslist and keywordluv! Both free 🙂
In Sacramento, Craigslist has become a sort of joke among the more intelligent people, as the advertisements are populated by spammers and freeloaders. When they lowered the posting time from 30 days to 7 days in Sacramento (in 2006), that was the end of my CL days! Now, you see all the bottomfeeding lowballer DJs in there, the ones who use Radio Shack equipment, stolen downloaded MP3’s, and have no insurance!
Merchant Circle’s survey credibility is questionable: most of the respondents use MC as their “substitute for a web site”. I know this because I’ve helped several businesses in my area set up their MC pages, and none of these business owners have a domain of their own.
I myself have a Merchant Circle Page, and it gets about 50 visits per month. Before IAC/CitySearch bought MC, my traffic was around 200-300 unique visitors per month, AND Google was crawling the page twice a week. Since new owners have crimped MC in Google SERP, the traffic is down (and this means less new business from MC page visits)and that’s how they try to sell CitySearch Ad Campaigns (with ridiculous PPC of $4 per click).
Nice collection of useful info and I can only add that perhaps Niche Forums should be considered for a FREE and yet one of the most targeted promotional methods.
Go to the people what already search for the info you provide.
Cheers
Alex
Alex Sysoef’s last blog post..Friday Reading And Link Love
The SEOBook toolbar, a firefox addon. http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/ – it has stopped working for me though.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
@Dennis I kept that comment for several reasons:
1) I know that blog and it is related to this one.
2) I wanted to share what I knew about that comment with other bloggers here. I am still surprised at the number of times it shows up in the search results.
3) I wanted to see if he has some automated way of knowing when someone is replying to his comments. (I didn’t expect that he would but you never know for sure until you test.)
I’ve seen ProBlogger on dofollow lists so he probably thinks it is dofollow. I didn’t know it wasn’t until your comment here and haven’t confirmed it one way or the other.
I’ll link my post that contains dofollow lists, tools, and search engines to the main URL in this comment. As we’ve discussed before the lists are often inaccurate because blogs can and do change back and forth. What was that plugin you recommended that checks for dofollow?
@Blogaboutnothin There are bound to be easier ways (plugins?) to do that. The primary reason for listing in directories is to be FOUND by humans in them; dofollow links are a secondary reason.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in the Last 30 Days: Our Proven Traffic Improvement Strategy
Multiple comment…
I would and do delete that first comment. It is automated and used under multiple names.
Problogger is no follow comments so I don’t get his point.
You can find “lists” of do follow directories just like the lists of do follow blogs around.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
@Blogaboutnothin That is a good point. I wonder if links from directories are nofollow. I would not think they would be but have not personally checked.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in the Last 30 Days: Our Proven Traffic Improvement Strategy
The only way to find out if links from directories are nofollow is to check it yourself. Go to one of the directories you submitted your site to, and then once you find where your website is placed in, go check the page source. If there are no Nofollow tag next to your url, then your site gets link juice from the directory.
Blogaboutnothin’s last blog post..Increase Traffic and Backlinks With Blog Comments
@Blogaboutnothin Bloggers who consider their blogs a business that are willing to use a physical address can benefit from listing them in the Local directories too. Where else can you add your own PR7 incoming links?
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..TwtPoll 2: What Local Search Directories Do You Use to Locate Products and Services?
I am currently not listed in high PR directories. I am getting backlinks from high pagerank blogs (problogger.net pr7 , onemansblog.com pr 7, etc.) that do not have a nofollow tags on my link to my site.
Blogaboutnothin’s last blog post..Internet Grammar Police on Blogs
@Matt I rescued your comment from Akismet because I recognized your blog as one I’ve shared in the past. I see that this particular comment has been wildly successful for you as Google shows it appears in 10,900 results.
I suspect this comment is probably automated so the odds of your seeing this reply are far lower than normal; however, I’m still smiling and shaking my head and wondering what my regular commentators would do with it.
We recently had a discussion about deciding which comments to keep and which to delete. I’ve used the link to that post in the main URL box for this comment.
InternetStrategist’s last blog post..REVIEW: Mastering Google Analytics – Easy to Understand FREE eCourse
The only money I’ve spent is $10 on my domain.
Blogaboutnothin’s last blog post..Internet Grammar Police on Blogs
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson