You can tell potential customers about your product without a huge advertising budget. Entrepreneurs use affordable, but perhaps not entirely obvious promotion options for this - for example, they post information about themselves on review sites or in geoservices, agree on cooperation with other enterprises that already have the right audience.
We have collected free or almost free promotion options so that you can tell new customers about your business at minimal cost.

Cross-promotion and collaborations
The essence of the method. Entrepreneurs unite to tell each other's audiences about their projects — as if they "exchange" customers.
How to do. Find a project that has a similar target audience to your business. Agree on a joint promotion: partners will talk about your project, and you will talk about theirs. It can be cross-email, where you simply exchange email databases. Or a joint promotion: for example, a fitness center offers a discount on subscriptions to customers of a coffee shop next door, and she gives a cup of drink to those who work out in the gym.

When choosing a partner, it is important to find a company with a similar target audience, values, geography of presence, scale and number of customers. The promotion must be beneficial to both entrepreneurs. Discuss all the terms of the partnership in advance: what everyone needs to do, what information and to whom to send, what to talk about, how to evaluate the results.

Personal blog and company account in social networks
The essence of the method. The entrepreneur and his team talk about themselves and their business on social networks, share tips on how to use the product. This is how they build a reputation for themselves as experts and increase brand awareness.
How to do. A blog can be launched simultaneously on several sites. Content doesn't have to be unique to each of them—you can duplicate it. If you plan to run a Telegram channel or a community on Vkontakte, you should think in advance about where you will look for readers — most likely, you will have to run ads or buy posts from other bloggers.

If you are making a blog on your site, you should contact an SEO specialist: they will tell you how to write articles that will bring traffic from Google.

There are no universal rules for blog content. Some entrepreneurs talk about the inner workings of the business themselves, while others make small media outlets and hire a team of authors and designers.
Usually, among the topics for content are a story about business projects, photos of new products, and customer reviews. In posts, you can vote and ask questions to the audience about their preferences — what product or service is missing in the lineup.

If the company provides accounting services, you can talk about the latest changes in legislation, about typical questions to accountants. The idea is that videos are often seen by users who are interested. Gradually, they will remember the brand, begin to trust it and, possibly, become customers.

Email newsletters
The essence of the method. With the help of regular mailings, you can tell customers about the company's new products, offer discounts, share news and useful information to motivate customers to make another order.

Networking
The essence of the method. The entrepreneur meets potential customers and partners at business conferences and exhibitions, communicates in specialized chats, tells interlocutors about his company and its capabilities.
How to do. The idea of networking is to constantly expand your circle of acquaintances and unobtrusively talk about how you can help potential customers. Networking is often used in B2B — In large and long-term transactions, personal acquaintance with the head of the contractor organization is often of great importance.

Geoservices

The essence of the method. Create accounts in Google Maps. Fill in your business information and answer customer reviews and questions to build your reputation.

Add business information to each service: create an account, specify the address of the office or production, working hours, description of goods or services. Leave your phone number, email, links to social networks and the website. Depending on the type of business, you can add a price list or a menu. If there is an offline representation, upload photos of the façade or interior to the services.
Users can leave reviews and rate in geoservices. Motivate customers to do this — people are more willing to go into business with good reviews. React to negative comments.

If the employee was wrong, publicly admit the mistakes, tell what you did to avoid such problems in the future. When users leave inaccurate information in reviews, it is better to contact the administration of the resource for help - such reviews can be deleted.

Sites with ads
The essence of the method. Place ads for the sale of your goods and services on ad sites.