Throughout my career I think the most popular question I came across with was ” how can I grow my business without growing my budget? ”
Because that’s like the holy grail to some, getting more traffic, more sales and scale the business without spending at all over your budget. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is. It can’t be done because you can’t expect to get something without giving something in return, that’s just how the world works.
But there are ways around this that will make this statement almost true, and i’m sure many people will agree that even if you increase your budget by just a little but gain a bigger ROI, you could live just fine with that.
I will review in this post a few methods of getting more out of your business without killing your marketing budget and my favorite way of increasing traffic to sites that anyone can do.
My online marketing approach that costs almost nothing
For me, when it comes to marketing online, I always love to focus on content, every business today must have a blog, or some sort of area on their site that they post articles in their niche, each article should provide enough value for the readers that they want to come back to read more, or at least keep you in mind as an authority on the subject.
I have done this throughout my career and the results speaks for themselves, I grew my own websites and businesses from scratch using this exact simple approach. And people found me, and bought from me.
Now while you might think that this is just a waste of time writing a blog, you couldn’t be more wrong. In recent years organic traffic has become one of the most important aspects of any business and the best way to start is to simply write about your passion or work. At the beginning, there’s really no need to over think things, if you’re passionate about something, just start writing.
What will happen when you start publishing content regularly?
So a few things will start happening after you start publishing blog posts about your topic. Let’s say for example you have a gardening company and you want to grow your business but don’t really have a budget for it, just start writing about gardening, publish daily or even weekly, but every time you do, try and put your best work forward.
When you publish awesome content people that will land on your site will see that you are an expert at your field, this will help them trust you and be more inclined to hire you when they need one of the services you offer.
The other thing that will happen is that you will start getting new traffic from search engines like Google and Bing, and it will be very targeted traffic because after all, you write about what you do best right?
So it’s clear that starting to write is a good idea, and the best thing about it is the fact that it won’t cost you expensive dollars, all you have to do is give away a little bit of your time. Trust me, if it even only brings you 1 new potential customer per month, it’s worth it. Don’t you agree?
How to start writing to grow your business?
I would suggest at the beginning trying to focus on very specific areas of your work, again going with the gardening niche, it will be too hard right from the bat to try and outrank articles on broad topics like ” Gardening “, so try writing at first on very specific areas of your work, like your favorite tools for specific types of jobs, style trends by time of year etc.
After a while when you establish yourself as an authority in your space, you could start targeting more competitive words and you will actually rank for them. But at first, start small.
Now if you run a business that is already generating revenues and seeing good traction, you can decide that you want to outsource these types of jobs, and let someone else take care of it for you, this will be perfectly fine, just make sure they know what they’re doing.
A few tips on writing the best article possible:
- List type articles usually works best, try create a top 10 list related to your subject.
- Use short paragraphs. one or two sentences in each will work fine.
- Use lots of images and videos if possible.
- Write in a conversational tone, like you’re talking to a friend and explaining the subject to him.
How long does it take to see results?
It takes a long time, don’t be fooled by people who say they 10X their business within 15 days or some other bullshit. Good things take time, you need patience, don’t rush it, think of it as an investment for the future that will pay off big time.
You can speed the process a little bit by publishing more content, a lot of times when you create more content with your audience, you will see more traffic from google, but this is not a rule, and you have to maintain the quality of the articles and not just blast away as much articles as quickly as possible. Remember:
Quality over Quantity is the key here
Final words
If you’re a small business owner and looking for creative ways to grow your business but like many others you’re short on a marketing budget, starting a blog could be the best way for you to attract new customers.
It cost almost nothing to set up a website and start publishing content regularly, with patience and passion, you will start seeing the results you want.