Free Marketing Ideas For Your Small Business

Easy and Free Ways to Market Your Business

During a time of uncertainty, some business owners are forced to close their doors for the coming weeks and months. Especially in Seattle, we are seeing mandated closure of non-essential operations like gyms, theaters, restaurants and more. 

We know we have a lot of proactive business owners out there, so we wanted to share a few ways for you to keep working on your business even when your doors are closed. We wanted to gather a few of our favorite ways you can market or build up your marketing at little to no cost. 

Blog!

We say it a lot, but seriously - blogging is a great way to build your organic SEO, tell more about your business, and provide helpful content to your consumers. Consider the questions you get asked most often and take that starting point and consider 

Create Social Media Posts 

Does your business have social media accounts? Brainstorm ideas for future posts and begin gathering content for them! Whether it’s photos or making assets, thinking of funny captions - whatever it may be, take the time to gather some content now for when you are busy again in the future.
You could even use a system like Hootsuite or Planoly and schedule posts for the future.

Produce a Video

It may sound daunting, but videos are a hugely popular way to market, and more recently, they’ve become much more casual. From a selfie video to a webcam feed, videos can be produced with just a smartphone. 

Here are a few topic ideas to get you started: Why you started your business/practice/firm, what your mission and values are, and what makes your business different. Depending on your industry, there are also tons of helpful videos you can produce, answering questions, walking through a complex process in your business, and more. 

Bonus: Those blogs we were talking about earlier? They can provide a great start for the content you can cover. You can use a video to summarize a blog or share the high-level points. 

Build Out Infographics 

Almost all industries have statistics or facts that can be shared and helpful with their customers and clients. Infographics are a hugely popular way to share that information, although they may seem difficult to produce.
At efelle, we’re happy to produce custom templates for our clients, but there are also free templates through systems like Canva that can get you started. 

A few ideas in each sector: 

Law Firms - Industry Statistics about your practice areas, timelines, and processes. 

AEC - Number of projects finished last year, how many were done on time, average turnaround, etc.

Restaurants - Infographic about your business’ story like how many years in business, how many customers served, etc. Or an infographic about your signature dish - ie what’s on your “house” burger. 

Ask For Reviews

It might seem strange, but many of your regular customers and clients may be working from home or less busy than normal. Kindly ask for them to take some of their free time to provide a review of your business so that you can learn from them. 

Listen to Podcasts to Help You Grow

The world of podcasts provides an insane amount of knowledge right at your fingertips - here are a few of our favorite podcasts to get you started. 

Indie Life Hackers is for small businesses/entrepreneurs that are pretty heavily catered towards online businesses. Here are their weekly interviews that provide a wide range of business topics. 

For Lawyers, one of our own clients has a podcast. On The Lawyer Who Rocks, Joleen chats up fellow entrepreneurs about what they do, how they do it, and what they’ve learned along the way. It’s entertaining but informative at the same time!

Marketing Over Coffee is a great podcast that shares a marketing concept in quick and easily digestible ways. From digital marketing to social media to old school marketing tactics, they cover it all. 

Need inspiration? The RISE podcast from entrepreneur and New York Times Best Seller Rachel Hollis is an inspirational podcast that shares tips, tricks, and tools for both life and business and is sure to inspire. 

During these times, no business is immune, but we hope for the best for your business. Hopefully, you can use some of these tips and tricks to build up your business in the future, so as soon as things are back to normal you'll be ready to rock and roll. 

Have a question? Not sure the best strategy? 

We're happy to help. Fill out our contact form here and one of our digital strategists will be happy to guide you.