How to grow your business from scratch. How to promote your business for free How to promote a small business

  • 05.07.2023

How to promote your business: using the Internet + promotion through video + making business cards and flyers + 5 tips for promoting a new business.

Even the presence of a brilliant business plan, ambitions and strategy does not guarantee that the business will flourish and make a profit. And not always impressive start-up capital leads to success.

Statistics for the Russian Federation show that the majority of new entrepreneurs close their business in the first year of existence.

In order for your business to avoid such a fate, it is very important to think over promotion ideas even before the start. And how to promote your business?

Option 1. Promote a business on the Internet

To date, the use of Internet resources is the most affordable option to quickly promote entrepreneurship.

If a businessman has a certain amount of money, it is worth creating a full-fledged website for a new company (company, enterprise). The originally designed platform acts as a business card, an advertisement for an entrepreneur. And the useful, concise information presented on this site will be of potential employees and business customers.

To create a website when your budget is very limited, you can also use free website builders (anyone can figure them out in an hour or two):

In order for the site to really give an effect, a novice businessman needs to promote it, having mastered the basics of SEO promotion for this. This will allow the entrepreneur to bring his resource to the top positions on the Internet.

So, to put it simply, to promote your business website with SEO, implement the following principles:

  • Post only unique content.
  • Drawing up headings, subheadings in articles that will act as advertisements, attracting attention.
  • Applying keywords.
  • Content design with illustrations and videos.

Useful advice: it is worth going through an intensive training on this topic. Superficial knowledge will be enough to do basic things or be able to supervise the work of freelancers that you hire for this.

In order to promote a business, you can. This is where you have the chance to get more clients. To do this, you can create a separate page for your business, a group.

Today, it is realistic to promote a business with the help of such platforms:

  1. LiveJournal (only as an auxiliary channel!).
  2. Catalogs of enterprises.
  3. Company blog.
  4. Internet bulletin boards.
  5. Forums.

Contextual, media advertising for business promotion.

You can use PR articles to advertise your business. Also, media (banner) advertising, representation of potential customers about the company will allow to form an image. To date, it is the most cost-effective option.

Its essence is that a person clicks on the video and automatically goes to the company's website. Banner advertising will be effective when its text is composed as competently as possible from a marketing point of view, using triggers.

The advantage of this option is that the entrepreneur as clearly as possible falls into his target audience.

  • https://adwords.google.com/intl/ru_ru/home
  • https://direct.yandex.ru

Option 2. How to promote a business using video?

This option, how to promote a business, is also not free. But financial investments can be kept to a minimum.

To create a video about your business, it is not at all necessary to use the services of professional operators and expensive equipment. Good short videos can be captured even on a smartphone or digital camera.

After editing the video, it needs to be placed on the YouTube channel. The procedure for registering a channel is very simple, any user can handle it. A detailed guide was created by the video hosting developers themselves: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1646861?hl=en

If an entrepreneur is promoting not a specific brand, but himself as an expert, the instruction will be even simpler:

In order for a video to gain views, to gather its audience, the information must be presented in a creative, creative way. No one is interested in looking at just a nicely dressed person with a boring, monotonous broadcast about the benefits of his business. You need to be smart!

Option 3. How to promote your business with business cards and flyers?

Every businessman, entrepreneur, counterparty should have personal business cards in stock. Indeed, in the case of a partnership or cooperation, the partner must have at hand the contact details of the businessman.

Flyers can also be used to spread information and advertise about your business. A small batch of such printed material costs a penny, but it will bring a lot of benefits. Flyers can be distributed both independently and hire a person who will deal with this issue in crowded places, promoting the case.

A concise business card and leaflet that will help promote the business should have the following information:

  • address (if the firm has an office) and telephone numbers;
  • description of the type of activity;
  • advantages.

If it is not possible to order a batch of flyers and business cards from professional agencies, you can make them yourself. But for this you need to have at least basic skills in working in graphic editors.

Option 4. Help partners in business promotion

Other firms can play a peculiar role of additional advertising, an informer.

For example, you can agree on mutual cooperation. A strategy is developed that is beneficial to both sides of the business. For example, it may be an offer to receive a good discount on the services of one company for the purchase of goods for a specific amount of another company.

A simple human resource can also be considered a good option for promoting your business - friends, acquaintances, relatives tell in their environment about the opening of a new enterprise that provides certain services. After all, word of mouth is the oldest and most effective way to promote a business.

It is equally important to be able not only to promote entrepreneurship, attract people, but also to keep your audience.

Use these steps:

  1. Individual approach to each of their clients.
  2. Careful selection of qualified personnel to work with the audience.
  3. Stable improvement in the quality of customer service.
  4. Dealing with negative reviews and comments.

To find your audience very quickly, keep it, promote your business further, use a few tips below.

No. 1. The original name of the company.

The name of the company should be attractive and easy to remember - this will be of great help in the task of promoting the business.

Marketing experts advise using those images that evoke pleasant, positive emotions and associations in consumers. To choose the right name, you must first determine the potential client audience.

No. 2. Creation of a slogan, logo.

To be recognizable in your market, you need to come up with a unique logo for your business. Having your own logo automatically makes the company authoritative. Such a firm inspires confidence, which increases the number of clients.

Your logo must be placed everywhere:

  • business cards;
  • stickers;
  • souvenir products;
  • newspapers;
  • leaflets;
  • signboards;
  • brochures;
  • internet sites.

No. 3. Attending theme nights.

To obtain the necessary knowledge, to acquire new acquaintances, a businessman must attend theme parties, exhibitions, meetings. An entrepreneur needs to attract potential partners at such events and share his contacts.

Maybe at the moment counterparties are not ready to work with you, but tomorrow their decision may change. And even if you have never done this, you will have to start, because promoting a business without communications is a more difficult task to complete.

No. 4. Outdoor advertising.

Despite the fact that the World Wide Web provides a number of advantages for those who want to promote a business, no one has canceled the effectiveness of outdoor advertising.

  1. Signs.
  2. Banners.
  3. Shields.
  4. Boards.

For example, Muscovites can contact:

  • https://www.mosreklama.net
  • https://www.chevector.ru
  • https://www.bigbukva.ru

In cooperation with local print media, you can place information about your business in newspapers and magazines. For distribution by mail, brochures and booklets are created that briefly, but as clearly as possible, set out all the necessary data about the company. So, you can promote the business with minimal financial investment.

How to promote a business when there is no money? Advises
Entrepreneur Fyodor Ovchinnikov:

No. 5. Profitable offer.


After you have launched all the methods designed to promote your business, you cannot stop there. In general, the campaign is further aimed at retaining old and attracting new customers.

Profitable offers will help keep your business afloat. These can be promotions, discounts, a cumulative points system. For example, when buying products for a certain amount, the consumer receives a 5-10% discount. This will make him come to you again and again. Or in the case of purchasing certain types of goods, services, the client can receive additional features for free.

If you understand how to promote a business, your business will flourish!

We must not forget that the market is full of competitors. Many of them are more experienced, more ambitious.

In order not to miss your chance for success, you must always follow new trends and develop not only your business, but also yourself.

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It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million people, TV 13. Facebook gained 200 million users in less than a year.

More than 82% of Internet users have social media accounts and use them for (at least) two hours a day. Russia ranks first in Europe in terms of the popularity of social networks.

There is a growing number of users who come to social networks not for communication, but for information, as well as businessmen who understand that social media is an effective marketing channel. If you want to promote a project through social networks, then get acquainted with four effective ways to promote it.

Content is the main promotion factor

Any SMM specialist will confirm that promotion tools are useless without quality content. If the page of your brand is boring, you should not count on the growth of the audience and its loyalty.

Three ingredients of good content:

  1. Uniqueness. The information you post should be relevant and engaging. Do not copy materials from other resources. The exception is cross-posting between the company's blog and its page on the social network.
  2. Regularity. Articles should be published systematically. Two, three, four or seven times a week - depends on the specifics of the business and its target audience. So, two or three updates will be enough for people from the business environment, and this is clearly not enough for the beauty community. It is necessary to adhere to the chosen content strategy, regardless of the number of subscribers.
  3. Virality. Publications should be lively, causing an emotional response in the form of a burning desire to tell friends about them. Avoid overt promotional posts.

Facebook in Russia- "social sphere is not for everyone." It is used by marketers, programmers and other IT-savvy people. They are not afraid of a “complicated interface”, but in their area of ​​interest are gadgets, the Internet, travel, education, books and business in all its manifestations. They willingly like and share materials on these topics, as well as motivating articles that set you up for positive. Most of the active Facebook audience uses the mobile application - it is recommended to illustrate posts with pictures 800 × 600 in size.

"In contact with"- the largest social network of Runet (more than 230 million registered users). Her audience is younger; the focus of users' interests is mainly entertainment (communication, games, music, films, etc.). VK users do not like text content (it is desirable that the length of the post does not exceed 500 characters), but they love photos and videos.

Among photo hosting sites in Russia, the most popular Instagram. At the same time, while maintaining a brand page on Instagram, it is recommended to adhere to a single style in design (use not only standard filters, but also third-party photo editors), as well as place objects in the photo on 2/3 of the screen (this makes the picture visually more attractive).

Targeting

The possibility of placing targeted advertising is available in almost all social networks: VKontakte, Facebook, Odnoklassniki and others. At the same time, it is believed that targeted advertising in social networks is more suitable for the B2C sector. However, there are companies in B2B that effectively solve business problems through targeted advertising.

Some types of targeting:

  • Geographical (geotargeting) - displaying advertising to residents of a certain region / city / district, etc. For example, you want to promote a beauty salon located in Khimki, Moscow Region. Your targeted ad will be displayed to the residents of this city.
  • Socio-demographic - showing ads based on gender, age, marital status and other social criteria. Thus, advertising for children's goods and household goods is recommended to be placed on the pages of married women over 25, and advertising for an art store - on the pages of designers, architects, decorators.
  • Contextual - displaying ads in accordance with the interests of the user. Membership in groups such as "Fashion", Fashion, "Shopping", etc. clearly demonstrates the interests of the user. He will be interested in relevant advertising.
  • Behavioral - displaying ads depending on specific user actions (travel routes, favorite places, frequent search queries, etc.). Let's say a person is fond of Latin American dances, goes to a salsa club, looks for relevant videos - it is likely that he will be attracted by an advertisement for a last-minute tour to Cuba.

Despite its apparent simplicity, targeting is a tool that requires serious preparatory work. First, you need to analyze the target audience of the brand. Second, create an ad.

Community advertising

Advertising in communities (in the professional language of SMMs - sowing) is the purchase of posting or reposting in popular communities. In the first case (buying a post), the advertiser's goal is to increase traffic on the company's website; in the second (buying a repost) - attracting users to a company group on a social network. At the same time, the more subscribers the community in which you buy a post has, the more expensive the advertising campaign will cost.

You can negotiate directly with community owners or use the services of a special exchange. In 2013, the VKontakte social network (an office for an advertiser) opened one. Advertising is placed by the community administration in its feed and, according to the conditions, must remain there for a day.

Professional promotion in social media

It refers to services that provide paid services for promotion in social networks. As a rule, they independently create high-quality content, launch a targeting mechanism and negotiate advertising in communities. These conditionally include Plibber. Why conditionally? Because the possibilities of this service are much wider.

  • register;
  • decide on the format of work on the site (you can advertise your brand yourself or contact the Plibber team to organize an outrageous advertising campaign);
  • prepare an advertising post;
  • select the most suitable sites from the target audience and start sowing.

After preliminary moderation, your task will be available, and you can start attracting fans of your brand.

How to get organic loyal traffic? With this question, which is of interest to all advertisers, we turned to the founder of the Plibber project, Oleg Ratunin.

Oleg Ratunin

General director and ideological inspirer of Plibber.ru. Knows everything about social media and even more.

To attract potential fans to your brand, you should:

  • use quizzes (quizzes), infographics, illustrations, viral videos, promotional games, etc.;
  • place a link within the visible zone of the post announcement (first-second lines);
  • embed a call to action in the content;
  • add a provocative poll;
  • work with the associative content format and its adaptation to the brand;
  • launch creative, vibrant and unique contests.

If you've managed to find the content your audience is craving, you can count on over 600 clicks per post.

Also, do not forget to analyze the communication of large brands with their subscribers, now a good result is being detected in the community

Anyone can start their own business, the main thing is to find the right approach and a worthy idea. A lot has been written about how to promote your business from scratch, but still there are nuances that are very important in this matter.

Many people ask themselves the answers to the question of how to build a business from scratch and unwind. The reason is that people, as a rule, think about business when they are already tired of working for their “uncle”. Many want to realize themselves and live a decent life as a free and independent person, and not constantly count pennies and be content with little.

We start and develop our business

Where to find? Where to begin? Of course, from the simplest, but very important stage - choosing an idea. There are a lot of options, no one will tell you what to do specifically for you. Since there are many important nuances, such as place of residence, competition, as well as the skills and abilities of a particular person.

Choosing a business to your liking

It is best, of course, to choose a business to your liking, it has a much greater chance of success than any other job. But not always a hobby can become a full-fledged way of earning. Consider the relevance of a particular idea to your area. If, for example, you live in a village, then opening a supermarket or a restaurant is initially an inappropriate undertaking for you.

You can promote your ready-made business with the help of additional innovations. For example, well-designed advertising will help attract visitors. To do this, use the services of experienced professionals. Also, by changing the concept, you can achieve some success.

Now you know the ways to promote a business from scratch, be sure to use them to achieve a good result. Good luck to you.

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