Below the Line

Marketing your local business with little or no budget

Here are some quick tips on marketing a local business with little or no budget:

Let your customers speak for you.

Ask your customers to post honest reviews on high-traffic sites like Yelp.com. Be sure to respond to any unfavorable reviews.

Post customer testimonials on your web site.

Ask your customers for referrals.

Ask complimentary businesses to link to your web site; for instance, if you are a wedding photographer, ask a wedding florist to link to you.

Use Google.

Google offers a number of services that can help – post your business on Google Local Business, create a Google Profile for your company’s key executives and link to your web site, consider spending some money on Google AdWords.

Use social networking sites.

Set up a Facebook fan page, start connecting with prospects on Twitter and join groups on LinkedIn. You can also set up your company profile on LinkedIn (rather than only using your personal profile).

Send out an online press release.

There are a number of free online press release distribution services. See this previous post for an analysis.

If you have any other tips, please leave a comment below.

Related post:

DIY online marketing and PR

Can social networking make you rich?

Can social networking make you rich? Maybe, according to an article in USA Today. This article quotes stats from Anderson Analytics that show LinkedIn users have a higher-than-average income:

• Users with incomes of $200,000 and $350,000 are seven times more likely than those with lower incomes to have more than 150 LinkedIn connections.
• Executives make up 28% of users, with an average annual income of $104,000.
• Casual or new users had incomes of $88,000 or less.

So start social networking -- it's worth a try!

Before you get the axe: six quick things to do on LinkedIn

With the U.S. officially in recession, and more job cuts announced every week, now is a great time to get ahead of the curve and use social media tools to ensure you are well placed for future networking.

Here are six quick things you can do on LinkedIn:

1. LinkedIn now has a “status” message – similar to Facebook. Your contacts who subscribe to the weekly updates from LinkedIn will see what you’re up to. Get your name out there - but stick to business updates. No one cares that you just fed your cat.
2. Add new contacts to LinkedIn. LinkedIn can search your personal e-mail address book to find your contacts who are already on LinkedIn.
3. It’s important to get LinkedIn now with people in your organization – if they leave and you don’t have their personal e-mail address it will become much more difficult to find them and connect.
4. Join any groups from your current or former employers. Many companies now have a “alumni” groups – often set up by individuals rather than the company – so you can continue to network with former colleagues. Do this now as it'll be easier for the group administrator to verify that you work for the relevant company.
5. Add previous jobs to your profile - it will be easier for former colleagues, and recruiters, to find you.
6. If you have an industry-related blog, connect your blog's feed to your LinkedIn profile.