8 FREE Marketing Tips for Quick Growth

Growing Your Business 100% FREE: It’s Easier Than You Think. Learn Simple and Effective Strategies for Fast Organic Growth.

Another day, another dollar? Maybe not. Your business is all set up and ready for customers… but where do you find them? I don’t have to explain the importance of marketing — otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. In my opinion, you should never bother with paid ads at all. Here are eight free marketing strategies to generate organic growth and up your conversion rates.

First, let’s go over some vocabulary and concepts you’ll want to be familiar with.

ORGANIC GROWTH: WHAT IS IT?

Organic growth is referring to your followers, likes, or comments on social media. This implies your business obtained these factors through genuine connection rather than buying them or downloading apps that give you free engagement. So why does it matter? As your business grows, your analytics will be thrown off if you purchase inactive likes and followers. This will make it very difficult to find your target audience and get genuine engagement in the future. We’ll go over some easy-peasy ways to grow your business on social media the right way.

CONVERSION RATES: HOW DO THEY WORK?

This is very simple: the number of visitors to your website that turn into paying customers is your conversion rate. If you have 1000 visitors that result in 10 purchases, your conversion rate is 1%. Generally, conversion rates are not too high — they usually range from 1–5%. Some bigger businesses range from 10–15%, but that’s considered very high. For now, I’m going to show you some basics to hopefully lift you out of that initial 0–1% range.

Time To Dive In. Here Are Eight FREE Marketing Tips for Your Small Business.

1. A/B TESTING

The first concept you’ll want to be familiar with is A/B Testing. It might sound confusing, but it’s basically a fancy way of saying you’re comparing your posts and seeing which does better based on captions, hashtags, or content as it pertains to your target audience — ie. reach, activity, likes, etc. You can access these stats on Instagram or Facebook if you have a business or creator account — they refer to them as insights. You can see stats such as your audience’s location, gender, age, interests, active times online, active days online, etc. These stats can help you determine which posts are performing better than others. A/B Testing is done by simply comparing your stats and seeing which post drove more traffic or business to your website or social media page. Create a goal, (ie. getting followers, making sales, etc.) create a target audience, and create content to post. Now do it again, but alter your audience or content— do NOT alter your goal. Keeping your goal consistent while altering simple features of your posts (ie. hashtags, images, styles, location, etc.) can help you gauge how well you know and target your desired audience/customer base. This can then give you insight on how to post moving forward for consistent organic growth.

2. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Your business or brand absolutely needs to be on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. — you need to have at least one active social media page to link to your goods or services. So why is this necessary if you already have a store online? There’s something called SEO (search engine optimization) which essentially is what determines how easily customers discover your business, brand, or website. SEO can easily be achieved by making simple enhancements to your website such as product descriptions with keywords or using metatags (keywords embedded in your website’s header code) leading google and other search engines to find your website first in search results. This helps customers searching for similar things find your business before others.

3. MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

So where does social media come into play? When you google a well-known business, usually their website and other forms of social media are the top search result. Having social media with posts regarding your goods or services increase the amount of data the search engine has on your business. This helps the automated search engines recognize your business over other similar businesses and boost its visibility in a search. Sure, you can search your name on google ten times a day until its rank is elevated, but using SEO will help speed up the process and ensure visibility on all devices and search engines. Try adding your target audience, product or service features, and descriptive words to your site description or “about” sections to increase the chances of someone finding your website. Just add anything you think someone would search to try to find your product or service — ie. “engagement rings” for a fancy ring. Having social media posts or pages with your content also helps search engines connect your goods or services to your brand/business. After all, you can’t forget about the importance of brand recognition.

4. THE TWO C’s: SOMETHING I MADE UP (SO TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT)

Content is really the only aspect of social media that matters to your business, and yet, it’s the most challenging part. Generally, your rule of thumb should be using the “Two C’s” — content and consistency. You can’t post consistently without having content and your content won’t get you anywhere if you’re not consistent. Figure out what your audience wants to see and come up with a plan to create and post regularly. Define your audience by age, gender, location, or niche, and then create posts that resemble other posts or accounts your desired audience is currently engaging with. Consistency doesn’t just refer to posting. Engaging on other posts and accounts is a great way to boost your account’s visibility and fuel organic growth — try commenting on, liking, and following accounts similar to yours on a regular basis. Don’t forget to use hashtags on your posts related to trends or similar categories for your business, service, or product.

5. AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the best free investments you can make. Your only investment is your time — spend some time forming connections with affiliates, a.k.a. people in your niche, who you want to represent your brand. There are great third-party apps that exist on Shopify which will automatically calculate commission for affiliates who close a sale — try “goaffpro” — it’s totally free. It gives your affiliates a dashboard with a personalized referral link and discount code for them to share with their friends, family, and social media followers. It also includes analytics for both you and your affiliate to track their progress. Any time someone uses their link or code to make a purchase, they earn a commission on that sale. This entices them to share your business and saves you money as you only pay their commission after each sale is made. And don’t worry, you can choose how much commission they get, as well as how much of a discount their personalized code is worth.

6. GIVEAWAYS & CONTESTS

Another great way to entice traffic to your business is to set up a giveaway or contest of some kind. You don’t have to spend any extra money—giving away something small like a sticker or t-shirt can make a big difference in someone’s attitude towards your business. This is also a great way to get the word out about your business or increase your visibility online. For example, let's say you run a t-shirt giveaway on social media. Have your customers enter by liking or sharing your post and following your account. You could also have them comment on your post or even have them repost your giveaway to enter. Some giveaways or contests will even have their customers sign up via email to add them to their email marketing list. These simple tactics can drive hundreds of customers to your business with the only expense being the base cost of your t-shirt, whereas a paid ad with said reach might have been double or even triple the cost of one t-shirt. Giveaways, contests, and other engaging posts also keep customers interested in following and staying active on your account which could easily lead them to jump on your deals, discounts, or promotions in the future.

7. EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

Here’s one I wish I could say is obvious, but many people overlook. I know, I know, email is old news. However, we all know we still scour our emails to find that promotion we swore we saw a few weeks ago when we want to make a purchase. So how do you collect email addresses? There are a few ways you can do this. First of all, the classic pop-up. Annoying, yet effective… but still super annoying. It’s a great asset to have because we’re all so used to closing out of an initial pop-up on websites that it almost gives your site some form of legitimacy. And let’s be honest, when we actually find something we want to buy, the first thing we do is try to find that pop-up coupon or deal. If you’re super against the pop-up, I don’t blame you. It’s not the most effective strategy anyway. Weirdly enough, you’re 10x more likely to capture an email in person with a pen and paper. No really, I’m serious. For some reason, people are more comfortable writing their email down to enter contests, get deals, or even just subscribe to a newsletter. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with some good old-fashion in-person marketing. Once you have your email list, there are sooo many ways to utilize it for free. Don’t ever spend money on email campaigns — especially if you’re just a start-up. Shopify offers an app integration you can access under their marketing tab called — what else — Shopify Email which allows you to create, schedule, and send emails for free. (No coding skills needed!)

8. SPREAD THE WORD

The best free marketing strategy might sound silly, but it’s honestly the most effective one to this date — even in the world of digital media that we live in. Word of mouth still drives somewhere between 10–20% of sales for businesses — even those 100% online. I know those might not seem like life-changing numbers, but honestly, they’ll make an impact predominantly on small businesses. At the end of the day, people trust people more than they trust ads. Yes, people like to click on ads and shop online, but in my opinion, a recommendation from a friend or family member is far more likely to result in a purchase than a post on social media. Be sure that you’re always in sale mode when you’re out with friends or meeting new people — you never know what connections you'll make or who could become a potential customer. I’m not saying you need to be on 24/7. Know your audience and your pitch — make sure you’re not out of place with sales (ie. don’t put anyone on the spot or pressure someone into supporting your business) because at the end of the day, if you speak about your business with enthusiasm, others will want to check it out.

Remember, marketing is hard. It’s what makes or breaks a business. But hey, don’t give up if you don’t get the results you want— just keep testing and posting, and eventually you’ll reach your goal. Once again, both consistency and content are key for successful organic growth.