How To Market Your Business For FREE On The Internet
Create a Completely Free Website For Your Business
Did you know that you can set up a completely free website on Google My Business?
If you run a local business like a service-based business and want to have a landing page where potential clients get ahold of you to request a quote and to see your work and the services you offer, Google allows you to create a completely free website that makes it easy to do just this.
You can add some photos of your work, write a description of what you do and who you help, and add a contact form to connect with new leads for your business.
Choose your brand colours to match the website and it will automatically be linked to your free Google My Business listing.
It’s basic but that’s the beauty of it. Simple often is all you need.
You don’t even have to pay for a Google email address to do this, you can use an @gmail.com free email address.
Whenever I set up an online brand for a new client this is the first step I do.
I register a free Gmail so I can start to get their online content and social media channels set up with an email that’s easy to hand over completely to them once it’s all good to go.
You’re now on the map in your local community and your business is on the internet!
Systeme.io
This is another incredible way to build a completely free website and if you’re willing to spend the $17 on a professional domain or you already have a domain for your business, you can link it to Systeme.io.
This platform is designed for people who want to sell online courses and you can even list one course and start making money from your knowledge with the free plan.
But some of the other amazing things that Systeme.io includes in its free plan is the ability to build a landing page and funnel to offer a free download and build leads for your business.
You can even host a blog on Systeme.io without a paid plan.
The website builder has tons of templates ready to use and the entire platform is drag and drop so you don’t need to know anything about coding to get up and running with a great website for free.
If you have a domain already and want to take it to the next level of professionalism for your brand, get a professional email address to go with your domain and that way your newsletters will come from your email address rather than a Gmail or the systeme.io automated email address. It’s a very small expense to have in your business for the value it returns in professionalism.
I roll my eyes anytime I see a business that has never transitioned to a professional email address once it’s been running for a while.
Social Media Channels
Another free way to start to build an online presence for your business is with a business account on social media. You can start a business page for your brand on any social media platform.
Some businesses are able to run entirely from their social media presence online. It’s not a great idea to be so dependent on a platform you don’t control, but it’s a place to start to grow for free online.
Now, there are a lot of choices out there so how do you decide which ones to post on?
Here are a couple of ways to think about it.
Do you already have a bunch of friends and followers on any platform?
Most people have a social media following and places that they frequent online.
It may not be the best place to focus your attention but it’s a starting point and springboard to other social media channels (see the next point for where your business should be online).
You can direct message all of your contacts to let them know about your business or try to get them to follow you on the other platform you’re going to be on.
Here’s an example:
Hey [friend’s name],
I recently got my business online and am trying to get the word out to more people who need [insert service or product]. Would love it if you’d follow the business page [insert @ symbol or other link to business] or pass along a friend who you think would find the business helpful!
Go To The Place Your Ideal Customers Are
The popularity of social media channels is ever-shifting so as of writing this what may be true today may not work as well tomorrow. You have to be willing to roll with the tides and go where your ideal customers are.
Do a Google search for “best social media platform for [insert your target audience] in [enter the current year].”
It’s February of 2024 as of writing this and so if I was running a gluten-free bakery in my city, I’d want to search for which social media platforms 20-30-year-olds are on the most in 2024. I know that Instagram and TikTok would still reign supreme for this type of business, also because food and baked goods are extremely visual and do well with photo and video content which is what users on TikTok and Instagram want to see.
Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin On Social Media
This can be hard when social media trends constantly evolve and people are telling you to go to different platforms. Everyone has an opinion on what you should do, often based on the opinion of their 20-year-old niece.
If you can’t stand to create videos, a visual platform may not be the best for you.
Go with what you’re confident you can remain consistent at.
I’ll repeat that again, you need to be relentlessly consistent for months. Social media won’t get you overnight success but if you’re consistent over the long term, more people will become aware of you online and in your area and this will help you to lower your advertising costs and market to more clients for free.
For most businesses, the value of building your brand that comes from putting a bit of effort into social media at whatever frequency you can sustain will be worth it in customer loyalty and recognition down the road.
So keep at it.
Free Newsletter Software
Newsletters are one of my specialties when it comes to marketing businesses.
Writing compelling newsletters that turn subscribers into clients is never going away.
In the past, savvy business owners would handwrite letters or print newsletters to mail to their clients, today we send emails and sometimes text messages directly to our subscribers, and in the future, we may be sending virtual reality greetings to our client’s inboxes but it’s still the same direct contact that we control.
Sendfox.com
I love Sendfox and use it for multiple businesses because it’s easy to integrate, very easy to use, and works flawlessly for sending out newsletters and automating your customer journey emails so that they start to build familiarity with your story and your business the moment they sign up.
I almost always pay the one-time upgrade cost for the advanced features but there’s so much that you can do to get started on your newsletter with the free version of Sendfox.
Sendfox allows you to create quick landing pages to capture emails and also can quickly produce a newsletter with one click if you have a blog and social media channels you sync it to.
Systeme.io
If you’re already going to use Systeme.io to build a landing page for your website, it’s also great to offer a “freebie” or some sort of gift to get people to subscribe to your newsletter. You’ve probably seen tons of these before. For some businesses it works best to offer a one-time discount when they sign up to your newsletter, others provide a valuable guide or report as a free download, and even a free quote, estimate, or consultation can be the freebie in exchange for their email. You can then send potential clients emails directly through Systeme.io making it a great all-in-one platform to start with!
Substack.com
If you’re a writer and want to create a blog for your business, Substack is another way to make it easy to blog as well as send out your newsletter in one place. There’s a great community around Substack but I think it works best if you’re creating content for your business that is more general to your industry. If you’re creating something very specific that’s more relevant locally, you’re better off building an email list on another platform.
If you’re also trying to build SEO as a local expert, you want more content related to your topic of expertise to live on your website, so you wouldn’t want to use Substack as your main blog for this reason too.
What About SEO?
We’ll cover this in a future breakdown but it’s worth mentioning briefly here because the moment you get set up online, you’ll start seeing emails flood your inbox from people who can improve your SEO and listing on Google.
SEO is Search Engine Optimization which means strategies used to increase your ranking when someone searches Google or any other search engine for anything related to your business. We all want to stand out on the internet for free. There is no magic shortcut for SEO. Keep creating blog posts or pages on your website related to your topic of expertise and you’ll start to stand out.
In my experience, what works much better since Google is the number one search engine on the planet is to improve your ranking by boosting your Google My Business listing. This will help you to stand out amongst the other local businesses in your industry and get you a head start on the long game of SEO.
