5 Free Marketing Ideas That Can Help Startups Improve Visibility

How can a company improve online visibility?

You thought of a unique business idea that solves a real-world problem and made a website that showcases the same. Now what? How do you promote your business online to your customers? Here are five free marketing ideas that you can implement to market your business idea to your audience and track those efforts. We'll dive into tips to help you answer, "How do I improve my business' online visibility?"

Social Media

According to Statista, there are over three billion users on social media. That's more than half the world's population, spending 2.5 hours daily on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If that doesn't convince you to be on social media this will - 54% of consumers use social media to research products before they buy. Therefore, brands must be present on social media. You can start with creating a target customer persona and research on which platforms your target audience is present. Your business or startup should be present on those platforms and be active there, engaging and nurturing their potential customers through the right content at the right time. Check out some of Hootsuite's best practices for social media!

Email Marketing

The inbox is one of the most personal spaces that a user has on the internet. Therefore, businesses, like yours, can personalize the content you're sending and make it relevant to your customer. Platforms like Mailchimp are DIY (do it yourself) platforms and offer the first 2000 contacts free, so businesses can immediately start sending out emails to prospects that help them engage with the product and convert.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

According to Ahrefs, 68% of all online interactions begin with Google search and 92% of all online global traffic comes from Google. Hence, startups need to optimize their websites for SEO. This may sound complicated but a simple way to start is by performing a basic keyword research using free tools, like Google Keyword Planner, and by ensuring that those keywords are present in all your relevant pages, URLs, titles and meta descriptions. This will help Google identify your website as an appropriate resource for those keywords and point users to it whenever they search for those keywords on Google. Check out Moz's beginner's guide to SEO!

Google My Business

This is a free tool from Google and is especially useful for products and services that are sold at brick-and-mortar locations. You can access this free service from Google by making a free business profile where you can add all additional information like your address, category, website and contact information. Whenever a user searches for goods or services, your information will show up in all Google properties (search, maps etc.) according to your business' location.

Google Analytics

Putting in all this effort is useless if there's no way for you to track and review your results. That's where Google Analytics, a free tool from Google, comes in! It can help you track your marketing efforts and enable you to see the demographic and behavioural breakdown of the traffic you're receiving from your marketing efforts. You can also use it to set up goals on the website to track your return on investment or ROI. Setting up Google Analytics simply involves pasting a couple of lines of code, that they will provide, on each of the pages that you want to track. If your website is on WordPress or any other CMS, this process can be simplified for you. They usually have a direct integration with Google Analytics; they'll usually automatically paste the code on your website so you can start tracking the same way.

These tips are a great jumping off point in improving your business' or startups' digital marketing and social media presence. Our Foxquilt mission is to support small, medium businesses and startups and lead you to success any way we can - whether it's business insurance or marketing tips like these! If you need help with your Business Insurance, our team of insurance professionals can support you every step of the way and provide a smarter insurance solution tailored to your business' needs. Start your quote online today!