What Are Some Cost-Effective Online Marketing Strategies For Businesses in 2023?

Updated: 11 July 2022

Getting word out on the street about your business can be a daunting task for new businesses. After all, nobody would trust your brand let alone be willing to help publicise it. To compound matters, unless you are armed with a war chest of capital, you likely are unable to afford large mass market campaigns.

How then can business owners such as yourself compete in an ever-crowded advertising space? While not impossible, you first need to be aware of several cost-effective marketing platforms and techniques.

In this article, we cover 2 digital marketing strategies that can be performed for free*. The caveat here is that effort and proper strategizing are required.

Capitalising on New Age Digital Marketing Tools

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for a range of different digital marketing channels. Their greatest value to you lies in their strong targeting options and shareability. More importantly, your target audience is increasingly on digital platforms, consuming content at a daily basis.

Unlike previous iterations of advertising, huge budgets are no longer a must. Gone are the days where mass TV & newspaper ads would suck up most of your year’s marketing budget in one go. Instead, due to the specific reach that these platforms have, you are capable of doing more with less marketing budget.

Unable to devote time and resources to creating and marketing content for your brand? Find out how our digital marketing agency services can help your business reach and convert target audiences today.

Maintaining a Business Blog

The creation of blog content has long been a trusted method for getting followers for your brand. A blog allows you to touch on a range of related topics to your industry. As such, it enhances the reach of your website while catering to the specific needs of visitors to your website.

Good blog content will provide your readers with answers to the queries that they may have or provide additional insights into a topic.

Great Examples of Website Blogs

An example of this can be seen in fashion blogshops which often feature look books that give tips on how to pull off a certain look. Another great example is that of businesses that have how-to blogs. These blogs focus on answering technical questions that users have or provide simple to follow step by step guides.

Moonflower’s blog gives ideas for styling their outfits while making them accessible to different seasons or events.

Critically, your blog must be structured to enable you to follow up on the visitor. Ultimately, you need to lead them to either giving their contact information or submitting an interest form. To achieve such, many websites employ strong call-to-actions or use a section of the blog to inform users how their products or services can be of help.

Creating a Great Content Strategy

Creating blog articles is insufficient to ensure good visibility for your brand. Instead, proper planning is required to ensure that each blog gains traction online.

Two efforts can be made in this aspect. Firstly, a good internal link strategy will help your blogs reinforce each other, thus creating a multiplier effect. Secondly, you will need to set up a cornerstone article for each topic supported by many other niche articles.

These two content writing strategies contribute to getting your website recognised for its expertise in a given industry topic. If you’re looking for help with content strategy and writing, let us know!

Math Learning Groups has a clear and concise strategy, giving their website authority over the topics that they cover.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search engines are the heartbeat of the modern-day internet. In fact, on any given day, millions of different searches are made by users online. How can you make sure that your website is visible to these searchers? The answer lies in Search Engine Optimisation.

All search engines use an algorithm to determine which websites should be displayed when a search is made. Otherwise known as Search Engine Result Page (SERP) results, the websites that are deemed most relevant for the search query are displayed first.

SEO involves professionally planned on-site and off-site optimisations of your company website. These optimisation efforts are designed to better position your website to capture your desired organic searchers. Having search visibility on the first search results page is critical to your business’ success online, as studies have shown that 90% of searchers rarely venture beyond the first page of results.

Find out how MediaPlus Digital performs SEO management services for our clients and delivers incremental business leads.

Increasing Your Website’s Page Load Speed

Your website’s load speed plays a pivotal role in your website’s search rankings. Slow loading websites are penalised by search engines as they provide a negative experience for visitors. Moreover, slow loading web page speeds correlate with higher bounce rates, thus further lowering your website’s rankings.

Google PageSpeed Insights is a useful analysis tool for identifying clear areas of improvement of your website’s page load speeds, FCP, LCP and CLS. 

There is a whole range of Technical SEO optimisations that can be implemented to reduce your website’s load time. These include:

• Removing unused CSS codes
• Reducing the usage of animations on the website
• Compressing your website’s image files before uploading them
• Enabling browser caching
• Deferring javascript loading
• Using external hosting platforms for heavy content e.g. Youtube for videos
• Reducing redirects and redirect chains

Structuring Both Your Website & Webpages

Just like any document, a website needs to be neatly structured in order for search engine bots to understand it. This also helps your visitors understand the relationship between pages and how they should traverse through your website.

Structuring applies to your website in two forms. Firstly, your website should have a clear categorisation of pages, with demarcation of parent-child relationships between pages. Breadcrumbs should also be implemented to further provide clarity on the hierarchy of your website.

For example, if you are selling several different brands of televisions, then could denote individual TV products as child pages of a central television category page.

MediaPlus Digital’s E-commerce web design page contains a clear page structure that is optimal for search engine bot crawling while still being user intuitive for visitors.

Secondly, proper usage of HTML tags – H1, H2, H3 & up to H6 tags should be used on every webpage. Like a document, web pages also require headlines, titles and subtitles to provide a positive user experience.

We recommend the usage of a single H1 tag on a webpage while also avoiding skipping levels of  HTML tags. In order words, you should not go from a H1 tag to a H3 tag without a H2 tag in-between them. This prevents confusion for search engine bots when they crawl your website.

Interested in having professional help to jumpstart your website’s SEO efforts AND make a strong digital impression? Consider MediaPlus Digital’s web design services to revamp your company website.

Hiring A Web Design & Digital Marketing Agency

While none of these digital marketing techniques requires a direct cost, effort and field expertise are still required. Engaging a full-service web design and digital marketing agency contributes a long way to helping your business accelerate your marketing presence online.

Their industry expertise will be most useful in properly structuring and setting up both your blog and your individual web pages to get a bigger brand share online. Naturally, SEO service packages can differ from company to company, so you can learn more here about how much does SEO cost for a small business in Singapore.

Choose MediaPlus Digital as your Web Design Partner

MediaPlus Digital is a web design agency with more than 10 years of experience, serving all types of clients from all industries in Singapore.

Our web development team provides mobile responsive websites that are both intuitive and attractive to users. As a premier web design agency, we pride ourselves on providing sound advice to clients and effective project management.