Small businesses can often be on tight budgets. No matter how tight your budget is, you still need to budget for digital marketing. Luckily, there are a lot of ways to stick to your budget and pursue your digital marketing objectives. The following suggestions will help you to do that easily and effectively.

1. Complete Your Free Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (GBP, formerly Google My Business) accounts are completely free and are essential to local digital marketing. Once you claim your complimentary listing, you will ensure that your business appears when potential customers search for you on Google. Your small business will similarly appear on Google Maps.

Once you've done this, take it to the next level by optimizing your GBP fully. Complete as many of the fields in your Business Profile as possible. This will help ensure your Business Profile will rank as highly as possible in the search results based on these actions alone.

  2.  Use Social Media to Your Small Business Advantage  

There are both organic and paid ways to utilize social networks for your digital marketing. Ads are the classic quick and easy paid option, while organic social media strategies are "free" but will actually cost you in terms of your time and are a longer term game. 

Start by making sure that you have a business page on the major social media platforms. Even if you aren't active on them immediately, still set them up with your basic business and contact details at a minimum.

Doing this will make it a lot easier for potential customers to find you. It will also prevent someone else from claiming an account with your business name and triggering confusion. This can obviously be harmful from a branding perspective.

When you have your social media pages set up, focus your energies on only a few platforms at first. Decide which ones to concentrate on based upon which where your customers spend their time.

Use your social media pages to promote your blog posts as well as your offers, and engage with current customers and prospective ones on these platforms. Posts about your offers and promotions should be kept to not more than about 15-20% of your content. The rest should primarily either entertain or education your audience about your industry. 

You can request feedback or run polls to learn more about your audience. You can join the broader online conversation with your relevant content by adding hashtags to gain greater exposure.

Tag People and Brands  

To take advantage of social media, think about tagging individuals in addition to brand names. You and another local business owner might agree to promote each other, so you periodically tag each other in posts. This lets you both broaden your audiences.

Or if you have brand name influencers or ambassador customers, tag them in your posts. Remember that tagging another profile will extend your reach, as individuals who follow that profile might see your post.

Obviously, you should likewise encourage people to tag your small business in their posts.

Usage Hashtags For Your Digital Marketing

As mentioned above, using relevant hashtags in your social media posts can be a helpful tool. Hashtags assist you to expand your reach by consolidating your post with others using the same hashtag around a similar topic.

You can likewise use hashtags to weigh in on trends or events going on. For instance, if your city is hosting a significant sporting event, make a post about that and add the relevant hashtag for the event. It might be as basic as cheering on your home team, or explaining how your products or services would improve the experience of event-goers.

3. Usage Local SEO 

Technically, local SEO is totally free if you do it yourself. That said, it can take a lot of time to learn how to do local SEO well, and which can keep you from focusing on what you do best. Because of this, some small businesses will want to outsource their local SEO to a professional. Even still, doing local SEO can be a budget-friendly way to increase your website visitors and customer conversions.

If you want to try doing it on your own, look for location-based keywords and create posts or landing pages that focus on your  business and local area. 

Another important focus for local SEO is claiming your business profiles on all of the available online directories.

4. Use Email Marketing

No digital marketing plan is complete without e-mail marketing, and you can make this remarkably budget-friendly. Yes, you will likely require a software platform of some sort to make email marketing feasible, however you may not require a lot of functionality.

A small investment in email marketing can provide substantial outcomes. Be sure to use A/B testing and produce engaging subject lines to optimize your results. You should also segment your audience for the best outcomes.

5. Apply for Awards

If your service has been publicly recognized or has won an award, leverage that in your marketing. Display the award logo or a photo of your acceptance on your website and social media.

Take this to the next level and apply for various organization awards that you believe you have a chance of winning.

After all, with the help your customers, you might just win!

Conclusion

Even if your small business is on a tight budget, there are lots of digital marketing strategies at your disposal. You just need to be thoughtful about which ones to pursue with your limited resources. The above suggestions are excellent options as a starting point to help your bottom line and grow your small business.