In previous posts, I’ve discussed types of business models, reasons for going into business, side hustles, and even entrepreneurial qualities. Deciding to go down this road is a big deal and if you’ve already started, you should know that the real work has only just begun. You’ll face a number of hurdles in the coming months (and hopefully years), most of which involve growing your business to ensure its stability and longevity.
With this in mind, one of the most important components of your business should be your marketing strategy. You might think marketing is dull, but without it, no one would know who you are or what your business has to offer. Marketing is what will drive your sales, so you can expect to spend lots of time working on it. With that said, let’s take a quick look at some of the best ways to promote your home based business.
1. Blogging
Regardless of what type of business you’re in, you could probably benefit from maintaining a blog. A blog can become an essential part of your brand, allowing customers to learn more about your business, your products, and your industry. Think of it as a valuable cyber-tool with which you can connect to the rest of the world and keep your finger on its pulse.
It’s not hard to set up a blog. You’ll need a platform to operate from and having a website of your own is probably the best approach. You can learn a lot about this through Wealthy Affiliate, which is a platform that teaches you how to set up a website and create regular content for it (like your blog). It even provides affordable hosting and useful tools to make the process easier.
As a blogger, you’ll have to decide what type of content to offer and how to approach it. In any case, it will allow you to engage with potential clients and share your expertise, which will help establish you as an authority in your field, adding credibility to your business and your brand. The most important thing to remember about blogging is that consistency is necessary, in order to build trust between yourself and your readers, since you’re ultimately trying to convert them into customers.
2. Social Media
Don’t neglect to incorporate social media in your marketing strategy. People all around the world use it to remain connected and learn about whatever topics interest them. You can use it to publicize promotions or special information you’d like to share, as well as informing your readers about changes in your industry that may affect them. If you’re already blogging, you can even use it to promote your blog and expand your reach to those who might otherwise not know you exist.
The most popular social media sites include Facebook and Twitter, but they’re far from being the only ones. Creating a profile on LinkedIn will make it possible for you to connect directly with other professionals, some of which will be in related fields. There are even specific marketing strategies you can apply to the different social media sites, including Instagram and Pinterest. If you’re already using social media for personal reasons, it makes no sense to avoid using it to promote your business.
3. Paid Advertisements
If you can determine where your customers are and what they’re reading or looking at, you have an opportunity to divert their attention to one of your ads. Do they read specific magazines or visit certain websites? You can run reasonably priced ads in whatever spaces you determine they’re likely to stumble upon them.
Keep in mind you may have to experiment with different versions of these ads, until you figure out which ones generate the best response or lead to the most conversions. The same principle applies in the “real world,” too. If you know they’re attending specific events or frequenting certain locations, find some way to put an ad there, where they can see it.
To increase your reach even further, create similar ads for both print and online media. At some point, you might even consider sponsoring conferences or other types of events that your target market would be interested in. Keep in mind that this doesn’t have to be expensive, especially if you look into purchasing remnant space or shared ad space from other websites.
4. Listings
You can also list your business on websites that match service-based businesses with the type of clientele that are looking for them. Depending on what you have to offer, it might be a good idea to list yourself on sites like Elance, Freelancer.com, or Hire My Mom. These sites allow you to create listings with resumes and samples from your portfolio.
Interested parties browse listings for businesses in relevant categories and decide which ones best fit their needs. Some will base their decision to hire on price, while others will be more interested in the quality of services offered. The best way to stand out from the rest is to include your best samples and thoroughly explain what makes you better than your competition.
Don’t forget to list yourself locally, as well. Yelp and Google Places are great sites for creating local listings that still allow you to be seen from everywhere.
5. Press Releases
Press releases are another avenue you might want to consider. A press release is not an ad. It’s actually more of a news piece you can put out when you’ve reached some type of milestone, won a prestigious award, or managed to address some type of pressing problem.
Think of a press release as an opportunity to do an interview for a website that already has an established following and simply needs expert guests like yourself to talk about what you do and why it’s important. The idea is to take advantage of free publicity to build your credibility and increase your customer response on top of what your ads can accomplish.
6. Joint Ventures
If you know others in your industry well enough, it might be a good idea to attempt some type of joint venture. This allows for cross promotion, so you can help each other out for mutual benefit.
One way to do this is to have your partner promote your business for a percentage of whatever sales come from their promotions. Another approach is to simply pay them a previously agreed-to amount for any and all promotions they are responsible for. The point of this is to promote your business to a completely different audience that might not otherwise know about you.
7. Videos
If you’ve never considered it before, it might be a good idea to start a YouTube channel. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on camera equipment, at least not in the beginning. It’s not terribly important to have theme music, a high-tech introduction or multiple camera angles in the beginning. There are plenty of channels that have gained a ton of traffic, despite creating their videos on their phones.
The important thing is to create content that helps solve the problems others are having. You can help by having your viewers read your content or watch your videos, while promoting your business in such as way that people understand what you can do to help, whether it’s through products, services, or some type of consultation. With that said, it’s still a good idea to improve your videos over time in whatever way you can, so your viewers will see that you’re trying to make your content look more professional.
Remember that you’re there to help and that’s the impression your videos should put forth, while also being entertaining. Don’t forget that if you also have a blog, you should promote it in your videos, as well as promoting your channel on your blog. This will help improve traffic to both of them, which will improve your search engine rankings all around.
8. Forums
Discussion forums are also helpful, despite the fact that they can take up a lot of time. That’s why it’s important to create the most impact possible in these groups, so you can learn everything you can about your market and your customers, while improving your offerings.
Sharing your expertise adds to your credibility and helps you build rapport with people who can eventually become your customers. They’ll feel better about doing business with someone they know more about. The best way to look at this is that discussion groups and forums should be used to focus on providing actual value, rather than directly promoting your business.
Remember that running a home-based business will be an uphill climb for the first few years. At some point, you will have established your brand and won over enough customers to sustain your operation for years. But you have to keep promoting your business, because you never know what the future might bring. If you get your name out there now, become known and share your knowledge, your customers will eventually come to you and bring others with them.
This is all great advice, especially press releases, videos and blogging. Too many home-based businesses (and businesses in general) underestimate the power of creating videos for their products/services.
Not really a huge fan of forums though because like you said, it can be so time consuming. But, home-based business owners should only focus on actually joining relevant forums and providing value (like you said). In the past, I’ve come across so much info that came off as spam in forums.
Oh yes, I’ve seen much of the same out there. To me, it’s a turn-off to read a bunch of petty comments from one forum user to another, when I’m trying to weed out information I can use. But aside from that, what I’ve always found interesting is that if I run a search on something, forum posts are often among the first results that pop up. So while I don’t care to spend a lot of time on them, it’s nice to have a few posts circulating out there that interested parties can stumble across.
Mark
Marketing strategy is all-important for sure and your 8 ways to promote an online business are really outstanding here. Blogging is something that people might consider to be intimidating. I agree that a blog is a great way to promote and compliment a brand. Wealthy Affiliate is a tried and true platform to help anyone accomplish blog creation. I hadn’t really considered press releases until now so this is really useful information. Joint ventures are another interesting idea with which to help promote. I’ve saved your post to reference and share with some friends who might be looking to promote their business. Great post and I’m looking forward to reading more!
Glad you enjoyed it! You made an interesting point about how intimidating blogging can be. What’s interesting is that I’ve found it easier to blog to a bunch of strangers than to try to convince people I already know of whatever ideas I might have. Your friends and relatives have all sorts of preconceived notions about you, but strangers don’t. They have nothing to judge you by but your words.
Mark
This is just what I needed. Almost like a digital ‘pep talk’ As I was going through your suggestions I was mentally ticking them off, well I managed four, I think. This is good because now I have four areas to look into. I’ve not looked into paid adverts as yet. I think this is because I’ve not really ascertained what my target audience is yet.
The forum suggestion is one I’ve just started to use and thus far it has been a bright start. I have found that as a means to to get another perspective on subject matter, they’re ideal. It’s important to engage back though, that way you are letting those who have given you input, know that you have taken their thoughts on board and it encourages others to take part.
Interestingly, only recently I was having a conversation with my son about setting up a YouTube channel. That would certainly put me outside of my comfort zone but I can see huge benefits. I like your idea of ‘cross-promoting’ yourself, that makes a lot of sense and it’s free.
Recently I have been trying out various ‘traffic’ sites to see if there are any immediate benefits. Most of them have free membership options. Like you say it’s just a case of getting yourself out there.
Oh yes, definitely. I’ve only recently delved into video myself and I would agree that it’s a big step, but it can expose you to an entirely new audience. For instance, not everyone reads. As unfortunate as that might seem, it would be unfair to label those who don’t as being unwilling to learn anything. Some of them just learn better watching videos and can watch them all day. You’ll probably never reach those people through the written word, but it can be done with video.
Mark
Thank you for these great ideas for promoting my website. Currently I only do blogging, using video and social media. I have been wanting to find more free ways to promote that do not require me to buy ads. The guidelines you have posted here will help in my determination before I decide to invest money for paid advertising.
With regards to the paid advertisement, do you recommend any one ad provider or over another for best results? Should I go for the obvious ones first like Google, Bing and Facebook? I realize I will need to test all to see which is right for me. But if you know of any others that are even better, can you please let me know? Thanks!
Hi, Robert! I would start with those obvious ones, to include Twitter.
Mark
As I am a member of Wealthy Affiliate, I see an advantage using that, to start a blog and use it to create content.that will build my business.
Using W,A, with it’s worldwide traffic,we can use it to, promote my blog on social media,or to expand my reach to those who might otherwise not hear of me.
Using other members in W.A,.we can promote our interests,to a completely different audience, to help each other out.
Using promotions and discussion groups,will help us to establish our brand,and will bring customers,and others with them.
Yes, W.A. is a great platform! My own first attempts at blogging were terrible, because I didn’t have a clue what to do. It’s amazing what you can learn in there.
Mark
WOW!!! wonderful article about 8 Great Ways to Promote My Home Based Business,I learned tremendously from your write-up,blogging is awesome;the best way to market your products are what you have explained,blog can become an essential part of your brand, allowing customers to learn more about your business, your products, and your industry.Customers get to know your product through your website with quality article which will increase the traffic for more sales,other means also are good,listing,social media,paid adverts etc,thank you for this helpful article.
Absolutely, my friend. Interestingly enough, your blog can grow into a business of its own, over time. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
I have just started my own website, and this is great information to try and grow my business. I do blog regularly and have begun to use social media to spread my influence to my followers on social media. I have had many friends tell me to start doing videos as well, but I am not as comfortable doing that so I will put that off for now. Thank you for the great information, it is very helpful!
Glad you enjoyed it and found it useful. Thanks for stopping by, Travis!
Mark
Great article to read, I’m currently working on blogging, sharing my content on Social Media and working to grow my YouTube channel. I must say it takes time but it worth to work on it, I see my audience is growing and I’m starting to get some clients.
Thanks for sharing a good list of ideas on how to promote a home based business, I never thought about press release and forums, after reading your article I will give it a try.
It’s great to hear that your audience is growing! That hard work will pay off in due time. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
I found your article very useful and informative.
I have learnt the ways to promote my homebased bussiness.
Quality content is very important for any blog and wealthy affiliate plays a vital role in teaching you how to set up a website and choose your niche content.Social media is very important for marketing like Linked In ,instagram,facebook etc
I usually use facebook and instagram for promotion.For paid advertisement , i prefer facebook ad campaigns.
Its a good idea to start a youtube channel for homebased bussiness promotion.
Thanks for sharing this great post
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
Thank you very much for these ideas. There were a couple I had not taken into consideration. I would like to start with joint ventures. It should be a win-win for both parts. And I have wanted to get into video for a long time and your post has given me that additional post. I’ll give it a try. Thank you!
That’s awesome! Great to hear that you’re considering video. A lot of people are reluctant to give it a shot, but that may be the best move you make. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
Thank you for sharing a lovely, informative article with us. The chief item of this article is 8 Great Ways to Promote Your Home Based Business. It is truly amazing that you covered this subject so well in your post. I’ve learned a lot from reading your post and gained a lot of knowledge about it. I like the social media of the points in your article. Social media is a platform where anyone can do business by promoting their own product’s or other people’s products. I myself have established my business through social media. So those who are interested can set up their own business on any social media including Facebook.
Yes, absolutely! A lot of people like to knock social media, but I’ve always felt that the best approach is to use it for business. It’s indispensable in today’s world, especially since it’s the most popular way for people to remain connected and gather information they want or need. Thanks for stopping by!
Mark
Great article! I’m starting my online business as an affiliate marketer and I think your article is very useful. I’m still trying to get my first sale and the suggestion you have made will be very helpful to expand my business. I have tried some of the methods, but there are some new ones that will try. Thanks and great job!
Hello, David! Thanks for reading the post and I’m glad you found it useful in your own business. Best wishes on your entrepreneurial endeavors and thanks for stopping by!
Mark