Free Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

While there are an endless array of paid marketing options for small businesses, free marketing is an essential tool to help build your business and improve your bottom line. As a small business owner, we use these techniques constantly to supplement our paid marketing and advertising efforts.

Here are four free ways to market your small business that will generate results as increased sales and more customers:

Hold an Open House
If you have a store or retail business, hold an open house, where customers and potential customers come in, meet you and the other employees and see what you do on a more casual level. Maybe hold it after closing hours to have a more personal touch. We have a small property management business and try to do this several times a year, just to have some face-to-face contact with people we deal with on the phone all the time.

Serve food and drinks, approach local food businesses to provide the refreshments in exchange for visibility in front of your clients, who could then become their customers. For example, approach a local bakery, ask for some samples and to provide a big sign with their information to post at your event. If your business is online-only, consider having a webchat or video conference call with clients and friends just to discuss business and also socialize.

Join A Group
Depending on your type of business, consider joining a trade or commerce organization. If you are a retail business, join a local chamber of commerce or similar business networking group. These groups are dedicated to discussing and improving business. You will gain new ideas to promote your business, new clients and customers, along with new friends and contacts to network with.

Look into joining a trade group specifically related to your trade or industry. Trade groups often provide great industry-specific free marketing ideas specific to your type of business. An accountant might join a the American Accounting Organization (aaahq.org), a neon sign company might join the International Sign Association (signs.org). If you are self-employed, The National Association of the Self Employed (nase.org) also has some great free marketing tips and ideas, along with affordable health insurance plans.

Issue a Press Release
A press release is an announcement to the world about what's happening and what your business is doing. While you don't want to flood the world with press releases every day, smart business owners use this tool to keep their small business visible.

Be sure your release follows the standard professional format, and should answer the questions: who, what where, why and when. Who is the business in the release? What is the news? Where is the news or business located? Why is the news happening and when is it happening? This can be applied to a new store opening or the announcement of a new piece of software.

For distribution, there are several free options, these are websites that accept and re-post your release. We like to use The Open Press (theopenpress.org) and 24-7 Press Release (24-7pressrelease.com), both get your release wide visibility. These services are free but they are very strict about rules and format, so review their directions carefully to avoid rejection. Also post the release on your website, and create a section for press releases.

Other websites pick it your press release and re-post it and the effect offers both visibility and positive SEO (search engine optimization). The SEO results from the third party links back to your website created anytime a site re-posts the press release. These third party links back to your website are weighed heavily by google as an indicator of your site's popularity and help increase your search ranking.

You should also send the release directly to appropriate media outlets, which is also free. This may be local or national newspapers, television shows, news outlets, websites or magazines, depending on the type of news and type of business. Simply refer to websites for contact information and approach them professionally, remember they need news to report on.

Use Social Media
Twitter and Facebook are free for businesses to sign-up and use and provide a great opportunity for free marketing for any kind of small business.

Twitter allows you to reach a huge audience using short messages, known as tweets. With proper coding and wording, similar to SEO, your tweets can reach many people searching for subjects contained therein, with the hope they will then "follow" you. This builds you a social network of interested potential buyers, customers, clients, all for free, to whom you can then market your goods or services, also for free.

Facebook allows you to tap into people's social networks by allowing them to "share" and "like" your page and information you post. It can work for any kind of small business. You can also offer specials for your Facebook network and to encourage them to share your . A local pizza place can offer Facebook-only specials available only after you "like" their page. You build a network of people who are interested in your business, then can freely market to them, all at no cost.

More from this contributor:

"Using Facebook to Improve Your Personal Finances"

"How To Use Email Marketing To Build Your Business"

"How To Use Skype For Business"