How to Use the Internet to Promote Your Business

 

Are you a company that has a low advertising budget? If so, there are a variety of fairly new low-cost advertising and promotional tools that you can use. If you have a business and you want to expand your territory but cannot afford to plant stores all around, you can take advantage of the Internet's many free or low-cost tools. Nearly everyone in business is on the Internet now, and they enjoy the convenience and ease of buying from or learning more about your business online. Give your customers what they want by having a sound presence online.

 

 
• Remember your business basics. The best form of advertising is free––that's word of mouth. If you're an excellent business with superior customer service, your customers will tell everyone they know about their experience. That makes their friends and family remember your business name when they are in need of your products and/or services.
• Be creative with your marketing, and you will save time and money.
• You can also keep business cards in local stores, mail out flyers to residents when you're having a sale, get listed in a business directory if your town has one, pin up posters, and more. In each case of print advertising, add your website, Twitter and Facebook addresses so that people can find out more online.
• To keep an eye on your tweets if you're using Firefox, use the TwitterFox extension to save you having to open Twitter all of the time.
• Usually in order to set up your own website for your business you need to purchase both a web hosting program, which, as mentioned above, can be purchased for as cheap as USD$5.00 a month. Usually a great package deal for a website can be purchased for about USD$10.00-15.00 a month. Also, you can purchase online store sites, also called e-commerce sites, which usually average in price of about USD$60.00 a month.
• Even though advertising on the Internet can still cost money, the beauty of advertising and have your store stationed on the Internet is that you do not have to spend large amounts of money on paper advertising. Furthermore, you do not waste as much natural resources such as trees and plastic when you promote over the Internet. And you can advertise more in-house than having to use more expensive advertising agencies to do the work for you.
• Another way to advertise to visit workshops associated with your business. There you can network with others in your business and get ideas on what works and what doesn’t. Studying your competition is a great way to see what you are up against, and even learn from their mistakes! Create an email account, wiki or Facebook group to stay in touch with the people you've met on these occasions.
• Do not neglect the webinar as a valuable way to promote your company. People love webinars; they feel a part of something bigger and they're learning something for nothing. There are some great webinar programs online that don't take long to learn; all you need to do is decide some decent topics to hold a webinar on.
  
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