Operating a business out of your home is the dream. Not only do you get to work for yourself—you get to work for yourself in the comfort of your home. Say goodbye to the hour-long one-way train ride into the city. Forget about having to decide between preparing lunch and paying $38 for a salad. Most importantly, feel free to work in your pajamas.
We don’t mean to minimize the onslaught of responsibility that comes with self-employment. Leaving behind the stability of a 9-5 workday and striking out on your own is a big risk. A risk so big, in fact, that very few are willing to take it.
What every home-based business owner works toward is growth. And in order to drive growth, you need to find the marketing channel that best suits your business. Let’s discuss some options.
Paid Search Marketing Tips for Home-Based Businesses
The last thing you want to do as a home-based business owner is blow through your (probably not very big) marketing budget. One of the most common ways we see advertisers waste money is through irrelevant clicks—clicks from consumers who are either unable to become a customer or who have no interest in becoming a customer. You can combat this with negative keywords—the inverse of traditional keywords. When you bid on a negative keyword, you prevent your ads from showing when that term is included in a search query.
Another surefire way to lose money is bidding on broad keywords: vague search terms that get searched a lot. As you can imagine, the impressions these keywords generate aren’t terribly relevant to your business. Bidding on them will probably hurt your click-through rates (CTRs), which will, in turn, worsen your Quality Score and increase your costs per click (CPCs). In essence, over-bidding on broad keywords is akin to driving fewer leads for more money.
Paid Social Marketing Tips for Home-Based Businesses
Consumers love to support small, local businesses. It feels good to help the little guy, and doing so creates a stronger sense of community in the surrounding area. You can capitalize on this sentiment by creating a Facebook page for your business. Your page will function as an online community of loyal customers whose enthusiastic feedback helps to inform your growth strategy. Plus, with the addition of each new member comes the possibility of adding several of his or her Facebook friends. You should see your membership grow in no time!
Another great way to take advantage of consumers’ passion for local business is hashtags. The hashtag is often misconceived as something that’s only used for flagging content. In reality, it’s a powerful tool your home-based business can use to create a sense of community. Similar to the Facebook page, hashtags allow you to get direct feedback from the people who want to see you succeed. Plus, when your customers’ followers see the hashtag, they’ll investigate and potentially become a customer as well! In effect, hashtags allow you to turn your followers into brand ambassadors—ultra-dedicated customers who benevolently spread your brand.
Search Engine Optimization Tips for Home-Based Businesses
Home-based business owners’ pockets aren’t infinitely deep. Eventually, you’re going to need an unpaid search marketing strategy. SEO is the process of improving your rankings in the organic search results as a means to drive more traffic. More deeply, off-page SEO is the process of getting reputable websites to link to you. Search engines like Google reward sites that get a lot of quality links by pushing them up the organic rankings.
A great way to earn links is to add a blog to your business’ website. Let’s say you operate a digital marketing agency out of your home. By publishing articles that provide advice for digital marketers, you not only create a channel for driving leads to your site—you create content to which other websites can link. The more links you get, the higher you move up the SERP, and the more leads you drive.
For more online advertising advice, read the WordStream blog.
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