The question has been asked by many people and businesses – How to get free advertising for your business?

Luckily, there are a lot of free ways you can advertise your business. Please note that it’s recommended you do this even if you’re already doing paid advertising. Free advertising can still be good advertising if you’re doing it properly.

Here are 5 ways to get free business advertising.

1. Utilize Social Media

You probably already use social media for your personal needs and you know it’s free. It’s also free to create an account for your business, a page, a group, and more.

When you create a page or group for your business, you can post content so your customers and potential customers can engage with you and form a good relationship. This is exceptional for building trust with your customers and in a way, strengthening your brand.

By posting relevant content that is interesting to your followers, you can drive more traffic to your website, and as an end result increase your sales.

Social media might just be the best place to get free business advertising.When you hear the word advertising, another word immediately comes to your mind. That word is expense. Most people connect advertising with huge expenses, which isn’t always the case. You can do free business advertising, you just have to know where and how.

Advertising can be especially frustrating for small businesses that don’t have large marketing budgets but still want to promote their business.

But that’s not all you can do with social media. You can also do paid advertising on social media. If you have some funds aside and you see that it’s performing great for you for free, it might be a good idea to invest in paid advertising. It’s usually cheap and fully trackable, meaning you know where your ad-spend goes.

2. Start Blogging

Blogging is another free business advertising strategy that’s also not very hard to do. Regularly posting engaging content on your website will definitely drive more traffic to your sales pages and lure more people to your business.

If you already have a website, setting up a blog will cost you absolutely nothing. But if you don’t have a website, you’ll need to spend a minimal amount of money, which you should spend.

Having a fast website supported by a reliable web host is one of the more important things for a blog. For every second your blog takes to load more and more customers get tired of waiting and close the website.

It’s also important to state that Google prioritizes fast websites in its search results because a slow website could end up being bad user experience.

With a website, you will also get a professional email (info@mybusiness.com) which is a huge plus when you’re using email to communicate with your business contacts.

But there are other things to consider in order to have a successful blog:

• Targeted keywords. These are search keywords your blog post will be targeting. Your goal is to appear on google for the keywords you’re targeting.

• Relevant topics. When you’re posting to your blog, you need to make sure the topic is relevant to your business and at the same time interesting to read about.

• Internal links. In order to maximize the efficiency of your blog, it’s a good idea to implement internal links that drive more traffic where you need it most.

• Guest blogging. This is a strategy lots of blogs use. It consists of getting one of your posts published on a different blog from the same industry and getting traffic from its network.

3. Sign Up For Google My Business

Google My Business is the best way to get free local business advertising. By signing up for a Google My Business account you can optimize how your business appears on Google Search and Google Maps. This includes phone numbers, website, address, reviews and more. If you own a local business, you can’t skip this.

Most people use Google to find what they need, whether that’s a car or directions to a restaurant. It’s fair to say that it has become the prime application we use for most of our needs.

Other than getting your business listed on Google Search and Google maps, this free local business advertising tool also lets you add photos and post regular updates that any searcher can see. You also a free website and although it’s very basic, it might fit your needs perfectly.

Google My Business is trackable, which means it provides insights as to how people found your business and more. This really is a tool you shouldn’t skip on.

4. List your company in business directories

Websites like TripAdvisor and Yelp can be a great way to reach people who are searching for what you offer. On top of navigation to your local business, these websites offer a lot of insight for your customers.

This method of free local business advertising is very similar to Google My Business, but make sure to get listed on as many as you can, because they might have different visitors.

Even though they have a similar function to Google My Business, these websites sometimes offer more features for your listing. It’s mostly a different kind of experience and it’s why sites like TripAdvisor are still functioning.

There are probably some business directories that aren’t very popular worldwide but are popular in one or a few countries. You should also try to get listed on these as they might provide you with more customers who are traveling within the country.

Some of these listings are free, but some aren’t. In the end, try to list your business on all platforms that are free and optionally choose one or more paid platforms.

5. Plug your business wherever you can

You probably have more than a few ways in which you interact with people online. These are online profiles that are always accessible, even when you’re not online and people might click to check the profile when you’re commenting or liking something.

This is where you market your business for free. Most of these profiles will allow you to add a short bio and a website, so make it useful.

Here’s how Gary Vee’s Instagram profile looks:

It’s also very important to plug your business and website into your email signature. You might be contacting people who are serious and professional, so they’ll take note.

Conclusion

Now that you know all these methods of free online advertising for small business, you can start growing your business for free.

Just remember, free business advertising isn’t a miracle tool, it takes time and effort to be successful. All you have to do is keep on hustling.

It’s best to start with social media because that’s the easiest to do and then go from there. But if you’re a local business you might want to start with Google My Business integration and then go from there.