It can be hard to scale your venture without a proper marketing plan.
To grow and sustain your small business, you need to market it to bring new customers. Luckily, there are various avenues that you can utilize to boost brand awareness, bring new leads, and even generate sales, besides just stretching every dollar in your business cash flows.
Here are just but a few:
- Small Business Development Centers
- Google My Business
- Google Workspace
- Yellowbook
- Canva
Free Small Business Resources for Online Entrepreneurs
1) Small Business Development Centers
If you are looking for assistance and advice in your area to help you start, run and grow a small business, then small business development centers should be your first stop.
You will find informational tools that will help you access funding, and new technologies as well as guide you to better business planning, financial management, and logistics.
2) Google Workspace Products
For many small businesses, Google products play a crucial role in the day-to-day activities of their business.
With a subscription starting from just $6 a month, you enjoy great features such as business email accounts (Gmail for Business), increased storage in Google Drive, Google Meet, etc.
Here are some ways you can use Google products to market your small business:
- Use a professional email with your domain name using Gmail for Business service
- Manage photos, and business files using Google Drive
- Manage business data with Google Sheets
- Create documents using Google Docs
- Run online meetings using Google Meet
- Create and present awesome presentations for various use cases using Google Slides
- Use Google Forms to collect leads, do surveys, etc.
3) Yellowbook
Yellowbook, a local yellow pages directory, has a section dedicated to small business resources.
Here, you will find informative content that will help you to better understand the field you are in or one you’re gearing up to enter.
Past industries covered include pets, home improvement, business, legal, health and fitness, insurance, fashion, food, and drink, and automotive amongst others.
4) Google My Business
Having an optimized GMB page is one step towards local SEO. Showing up in the first three listings for local queries can drive customers to your storefront.
An optimized Google My Business page helps potential customers make informed decisions, so you want to make it hard for them not to click through your listing.
Here are a few tips:
- Include all essential information, including professional business photos, working hours, your delivery area, videos that show your team at work, telephone numbers, and products and services that you provide.
- Always maintain your page to make sure that the info is up-to-date and correct, especially since people can suggest edits to your page that may be adapted.
- Ensure to claim your listing and have it verified.
- Encourage your customers to write their experience with your business on the platform. Great reviews influence people to visit your store, rather than your competition.
- Leverage attributes to add additional information about the location of your business (pet-friendly, offers outdoor seating, supports special courses, etc.)
5) Canva for Design
Today, it’s hard to market anything without visuals, and since most small business owners don’t have a design degree in their accolades, coming up with great designs can be a hustle.
However, with great accessible design tools like Canva, anyone can create any graphic design for any use case (marketing, advertising, web design, etc) in minutes.
Wrapping Up
Growing any business takes time, and requires a strong strategy, adherence to best business practices, and learning from the best.
Remember the key to marketing a small business is developing a consistent plan, and that doesn’t mean just saying “oh, I’m gonna do this, and that, and that.”
You need to develop an entire system.
Hopefully, some of these free small business resources will come in handy when it comes to developing business systems that will help you boost sales and refine your marketing.
