Every business wants to grow without spending money, but is growth achievable without any spend? Regardless of spend for the moment, the reality is your customers need to know you exist or they will not come. You need to find a way to reach them as cost effectively as possible.
Is free really free? Social media platforms which you can post to will always cost your time, patience, and creativity. Your time is valuable, and you cannot afford to waste it and not yield results.
Know your market
Have you considered how the gender and age of who you target will influence where you can market most effectively? If you want to market your business for free you need to embrace social media platforms and understand how to become effective.
As of January 2020, it was found that 14 % of global active Instagram users were women between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide is aged 34 years or younger. 4.6 % of global users were 45 to 55, and 2% of users above 55. So if you spend your time trying to attract over the 50’s who are “back to riding” via Instagram you are likely to come up short having spent a lot of your valuable time, even if you spent little or no money.
How to engage people online
Nobody wants to be sold to! How many times have you hidden or blocked adverts you don’t ever remember choosing to see? Creative content will provide organic growth of your business without having to pay for advertising online. The trouble is, not everyone is creative enough to put non-salesy posts together which are so fascinating they are shared hundreds of times without even opening your wallet for a boost.
From experience, sometimes putting a little money behind a very creative post to help it get off the starting blocks can make it fly, giving your business greater exposure than you might have hoped for.
There are also online groups you can post to, taking your business to the people instead of hoping the people will stumble across you.
Key things to help when marketing your business for free
- Know your market
- Find groups you can post to
- Create a Blog
- Do not waste time on sites and/ or posts which do not yield results
- Youtube videos are great if you have interesting content to post
I will continue to publish these blogs and articles outlining key strategies for building a really successful livery and riding centre. Over the last seven years, my husband John and I have built up what we think is a very successful enterprise that we are proud of (the Rein and Shine Equestrian Centre, Wiltshire). We made our own mistakes and learnt a lot on the way.