10 Free Advertising options for you online.

In most cases, the building of a new business website is just the start of your digital journey, once live and working well, the focus quickly shifts to how to get people to look at it, engage and start generating some return for your efforts. As a digital agency, we work with clients to ensure that their website is not only technically suitable but efficient and most importantly generates a tangible financial return. We always like to recommend an initial period where you work to drive traffic through Free Advertising channels and organic before you commit to a sizable advertising budget.

It is vital to success online that you understand what is happening on your website, we utilise analytics tools to uncover how your audience is, where they are coming from and how they are interacting with your website. With an open relationship we are able to assign value to the success we are seeing and optimise your efforts accordingly.

The free advertising options we have listed below are not reserved exclusively for professionally developed websites, they are suitable for websites at every level and establish a good foundation for audience generation before committing to paid advertising options.

Here are our favourite 10 Free Advertising options for businesses of every size, purpose and ambition.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation is our favourite of all the free advertising options, it is key to having your site ranked in search results and there is a lot you can do to make sure that you are represented against the keywords most suitable for your business. SEO typically generates a more engaged audience and generated brand trust and integrity. As well as the content and relevant keywords, your internal and external links make a huge difference to your organic search ranking. We have previously looked at some initial tips to improve your organic ranking,( https://www.digibubble.co.uk/2018/11/search-engine-optimisation-quick-tips/), these tips will give your website the best possible start. This free advertising option requires a little time and effort, it takes time to establish a consistent audience but once it does it will become a key part of your overall advertising efforts.

Email Marketing

Regular, consistent communication to potential customers is a proven way of keeping your brand in people’s minds. If you are able to share relevant news, offers and industry insights your return can be huge. My email marketers report email marketing to be one of the best mediums for noticeable returns. There are several free advertising opportunities within email marketing, a service like Mail Chimp offers a free account for customers with a small pool of emails. It is a great way of building a contact list that can be easily managed and scalable as your database grows.

Build a Blog

Blogs are a key part of the successful websites generated online. As a free advertising channel, it allows you to demonstrate your expertise, share examples of your work and offer helpful industry insights. Blogs allow regular and timely content to be shared which improves the overall rank of your website in search engines. Blogs are typically an informal, quick read for audiences to engage with adhoc.

Invite an Expert

Once you have built your blog and populated it with content, it is a great idea to invite a guest to contribute to your blog. It is a free advertising opportunity that allows you to piggyback on the success of your guest, align yourself with thought leaders and improve your link sharing.

Go Social

Social media has now established itself as a key part of marketing delivery, audience engagement with a brand on social media is one of the highest available to businesses. Businesses can start business pages, establish a community and build a highly effective communication tool for free. As far as free advertising online is concerned, this is a fantastic opportunity.

Online Directories

Google controls much of the activity we see online but there are still huge volumes of traffic flowing through online directories and listings. You want your link shared across as many sites as possible and directories offer a great way of distributing your URL. Before the free advertising opportunities that directories offer, there are several businesses that now offers a connection to thousands of directories.

Post on Forums

Forums as a source of free advertising can be highly effective. There are likely industry-specific forums where experts collate to solve issues your next customer is looking to solve. Being present and active within these forums improves your standing in the industry, increases your standing in the market and allows you to cement your expertise.

Outreach Marketing

Outreach marketing is a relativity new approach to free advertising that is gaining some good ground. The idea here is to connect with others in your business category, influencers and bloggers to promote your business in some way. It is recommended that you identify who you feel would be a good match for your business, and reach out with a proposal that is mutually worthwhile. A partnership with a well-connected industry expert could be one of the most effective forms of free advertising available.

Sign off Right

Think of your email signature as an opportunity to share a message that people will find hard to avoid, share your qualifications, awards, events, website, social media, logo etc in your digital signature, free advertising that hits everyone you will ever talk to. Keep it fresh, don’t overload it and make sure it is presenting well.

Quality & Integrity

Offering a quality service with integrity, when building content, blogging or servicing your customers, ensure you offer honest quality, it’s free and will make huge improvements to your brand perception. Generating word of mouth, referrals and testimonials that will further help your business, is free and can be one of the most successful free advertising tools.

All of the above options are recommended when launching a new site. With appropriate analytics tools in place, you should be able to quickly identify where you are seeing a return, once success is indented it is much easier to uncover where to commit your future efforts.

Of course, these free advertising opportunities do not take into account your time. It does time a lot of time and effort to get this right. At DigiBubble we offer numerous packages to manage and report on all marketing efforts. If you would like to explore what we can do for your website, please get in touch or call 0203 920 7276.