One complaint I often hear about marketing: it’s expensive. On the one hand, I truly believe that great marketing will pay off far more than any monetary investment you make but on the other hand, I completely understand that everything is expensive (especially right now!) and a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners are constantly looking for ways to cut costs.

The good news is that good marketing does not have to mean big money, and since I regularly work within the constraints of a tight budget, I have learned a lot of free marketing ideas over the years. So if you need a few easy and free ways to marketing your business, here are my top 5:

How My Business Pivoted in the Pandemic

As I've started to reflect on the last few months and what changes have happened, my initial thought was that nothing really changed in my business. After all, I run my business entirely online, and even local client communication is done via email and phone calls - so what did I even have to change?

Despite that fact, I actually did need to pivot my business in a few different ways, and when I started to really dig in I was surprised at all the things I changed to not only stay afloat, but keep moving forward. Here's what I did:

Five Creative Ways to Announce Your Business Re-Opening

Maybe it’s been months since your business had to close its doors, but now things are finally starting to re-open! The problem is that this is true for everyone in your niche, and it’s easy to get drowned out in the noise of announcements from every corner of the internet. How can you stand out as your business opens its doors again? Here are five creative ways to make your announcement and get attention from past and future customers.

3 Quick, Easy, and Free Marketing Actions to take Today: Five Minute Marketing

Marketing your small business is always a good idea, no matter what state our country is in - which, right now, is pretty precarious and differs wildly depending on where you live. While there’s no way to fully prepare for a pandemic that suddenly closes anything and everything, there are still tons of ways to market your business in the midst of chaos. Today’s five minute marketing tip is all about a few quick, easy, and free ways to market your business, both now and anytime in the future…

The Most Basic Aspect of SEO | Five Minute Marketing

Now that you know why Search Engine Optimization is so important, your next thought might be, “So what do I do about it?” When I first jumped into the world of finding out about SEO, I was admittedly a little overwhelmed. It seemed extremely technical and a bit over my head. Although at first I felt like I would never understand it, and while there is always more I could learn, I can now confidently say I have a good grasp of the concepts and what it means for small businesses.

There are a lot of different ways you can invest time into improving SEO, but the most basic piece of improving your website for Google is simply content. This is both the copy (words) that are on your website and the new content you are producing and sharing online with your audience. Both are foundational elements to creating and maintaining a robust search presence. So let me break that down just a little!

Why Bother with Search Engine Optimization? | Five Minute Marketing

As a business owner, you’ve got a million things on your plate…you have clients to keep happy, products and services to create, a thousand emails to answer (per DAY!), fires to put out, employees and contractors to deal with…and it’s already tax season again somehow! When it comes to marketing, the big push is to be visible on social media, and for now even that may feel like too much to handle!

Today, I am making a case for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and why it is even more important than social media marketing. Almost every business has a website, but very few business owners prioritize key updates needed to make their business show up on Google to potential customers. These are the top reasons why SEO matters as you consider your online success…

Five Minute Marketing: How to Get More Online Reviews

Trust. It’s one of the top factors to getting people to buy your product or service. The bigger the investment, the more trust you have to earn in order to gain new customers. Besides word-of-mouth, one of the best ways to earn trust online is through reviews. Google, Facebook, and Yelp are some of the top platforms that allow customers to review your services, but there are a million more, and many industry-specific sites. I’m certain that your customers have looked at your online reviews at some point, and if there are crickets there…well, it may have ruined a sale or two.

So what is the best way to get online reviews - especially the good ones? It takes a little bit of strategy and a little bit of time, but increasing the trust factor among potential customers is so worth the investment. Here’s what you need to do:

Five Minute Marketing: How to Immediately Get More Facebook Likes...for Free!

The title of this post may sound gimmicky, but I’m not into gimmicks…just marketing advice that is 100% true and 100% helpful…yet easy to implement at the same time. That said, let me jump right into the easiest way to increase your Facebook likes for free!

The truth is, as much as it seems like the opposite is true, Facebook wants your business page to succeed. The happier you are with the results you see, the more advertising dollars they get and the more satisfied the consumer (aka anyone not running a business) is, which leads to their own business success. Yes, they have become a ‘pay-to-play’ platform in many respects, but they offer the most options for getting to know who your ideal customer truly is…and reaching them quickly and easily, even if you have to pay a little to do that…

Five Minute Marketing: How to Find New Customers on Social Media

Let me start off with a disclaimer: there are literally books written about this topic that I’m covering in a five minute marketing segment, so I am by no means claiming to cover it all with one article. I can, however, share some effective strategies most of my clients aren’t already using to find new customers using social media.

My second disclaimer is that although this article will only take about five minutes to read, the strategies themselves will require time and consistency, since nothing done randomly can be effectively repeated. With all that said, here are some things you can do right now to find new clients using Facebook, Instagram, and more…

Five Minute Marketing: How to Use Hashtags on Social Media

Oh, hashtags. Such a big, beautiful, and confusing topic that provides frustration for every business owner and entrepreneur. While opinions differ on the best hashtag strategy for Instagram and social media in general, there are a few rules that can help inform exactly what you do and why. Here is what I’ve learned through years of marketing about how hashtags can help - and hurt - your social media presence.

1) There is a limit to hashtags on Instagram.
Right now, you can use no more than 30 per post. Creator Studio will tell you exactly how many you are using, but if you are writing the caption yourself or using another scheduling service, you will have to manually count them or your post/comment will be rejected…

Maria Grace, LLC
Online Marketing Solutions for Small Businesses
Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday; 8am-5pm

Copyright 2023 Maria Grace, LLC

Maria Grace, LLCOnline Marketing Solutions for Small BusinessesHours of Operation: Monday-Friday; 8am-5pm

Maria Grace, LLC
Online Marketing Solutions for Small Businesses
Hours of Operation: Monday-Friday; 8am-5pm