Marketing efforts have always been an inseparable part of every successful business. Today, there are plenty of marketing strategies to help products or services stand out. It’s no secret that big, famous brands can afford to spend millions of dollars on marketing.
Overall, AI today has redefined the way ventures used to promote their brands and handle business operations. From plenty of business prices automation to deep analytics and personalized customer support, AI today opens plenty of options for business. Depending on how deep you can dive in your pocket, you can make the impossible possible with AI.
But the truth is, not all companies can invest that much in promotion. Moreover, many brands, especially small startups with tiny budgets, prefer to rely solely on free marketing tools to get things done. Fortunately, there is not always a need to break the bank to promote your product in the AI era. Instead, it’s critical to know how AI has changed the way search algorithms work to make your products engaging and relevant for search.
Moreover, many marketing tools today offer AI features with affordable subscription options or even entirely for free. Which, let’s admit, are a perfect opportunity for small businesses with tiny budgets.
So, if you want to elevate your business in the AI era, you need to know two main things: how AI has changed search engine intent and which AI marketing tools you can leverage totally for free. Without beating around the bush, let’s dive in and find out.
AI Opens a New Era of Search
Keyword-stuffed content and thin blogs, which businesses typically generate to elevate SEO efforts, are now things of the past. Today, people-centered content matters more than blogs solely written for SEO. Well, now you may wonder: will AI kill SEO? Sure thing, it’s not going to happen. The thing is, you should reconsider your SEO strategies first.
Most likely, you’ve noticed that recently, when you search for something, instead of showing a list of the top-ranked 10 pages first, the search engine provides short, relevant Q&As that link to the source. If you find this information interesting and useful, you’ll definitely check the full article.
Looking at that search result as a reader, we’re more likely to read the relevant Q&As rather than skip them and check the ranked websites. Meaning as a business aiming to you must understand how to take a strategic move to online and adapt to new tech changes.
- Align your content with search intent, not just the query: As we mentioned previously, search engines no longer solely scan relevant keywords. Instead, your entire context should be highly relevant to the searcher’s intent. Specifically, to get there, an algorithm checks whether you provided a comprehensive answer to the question you covered. Plus, it values content that offers practical steps rather than just providing recommendations.
- Show your expertise: If you have blog pages on your website and want their content to appear in AI answers, ensure you provide real expertise in your blog posts. Share something from your experience to showcase it. And ideally, showcase the real author, not AI-generated, with their experience and, preferably, an active link to a social media profile like LinkedIn or Twitter. Thus, you will not only look trustworthy for algorithms, but also for readers.l
- Use valuable sources: If you are going to provide statistics, use authoritative sources. This will signal to search engines that your content is highly trustworthy. For example, if you’re writing a blog about the future of education in the innovation era, include market-growth forecasts from reputable sources like Statista or Grand View Research.
- Use FAQs: AI Q&A answer blocks typically scan FAQs on a page.
Whether it’s a landing page or a blog post, include a couple of relevant FAQs to attract the algorithm’s attention. And one more tip: keep the answer to the question in the first 50 words.
- Employ multimedia elements: Data visualizations, videos, infographics, and tables increase the chances of your content appearing in AI-generated Q&As. So, take time and enrich your content with these kinds of elements.
- Update your content: Though we put it at the end of our list, this point is of utmost importance. Outdated content will no longer be interesting for the algorithm. Meaning, again take time and review your website content to ensure it’s updated.
Proven Ways to Promote Your Brand Entirely Free
Now let’s get onto more details and discuss how you can promote your brand for free in the AI world.
1. Utilize Free Migration Services
To promote your brand, sure thing, you should have a website. But the key here is to have a fast-loading and well-performing one. Actually, to improve your website’s performance and load speed there is no need to break the bank. And as we promised, we are introducing you to the entirely free option to promote your business. So, here we are: you can migrate your website to the right provider at no cost and notably improve crucial SEO factors.
For example, you can consider HostOnce’s free migration service. It supports website transfers from any provider and gets your site up again without hassle.
2. Automate Your Business
Plenty of business operations eat up time and are prone to errors. For example, if you have a resort, one of the crucial tasks is booking and customer support. Just imagine what you’ll gain by automating these tasks.
Your customers can effortlessly reach out to you at their desired time from anywhere. Plus, they can seamlessly book rooms and make payments right from your website.
And you know what the best part is? You can use free scheduling software to automate bookings on your website. It will cut unnecessary administrative costs and free up your staff’s time to focus on more strategic tasks.
Actually, besides automating functions for services to make it smooth for clients, you can use automation to simplify the workflow for your staff. For example, utilizing free reminder apps help keep teams aligned on priorities, deadlines, and follow-ups. Most integrate with calendars to deliver timely notifications, ensuring critical milestones and meetings won’t be missed.
3. Set Up Google Business Profile
The next wise move to propel your business forward in the AI era is creating a Google Business Profile. This will significantly simplify how potential customers find you on Google Search and in Maps.
Technically it’s pretty simple to set up a Google business profile, and most importantly it’s free. But the key is to set up a comprehensive and eye-catching profile to engage people. So, ideally, you should include some high-quality photos and posts on your profile to help people get familiar with your place.
And of course, include contact details in your profile. That will help customers effortlessly find and reach out to you through Google.
4. Employ Email Marketing
Another proven way to promote your business at any budget, and even for free, is email marketing. Perhaps that’s the reason the email letter format still remains relevant in an era of innovations. Well, let’s see how you can employ emails to promote your brand.
Well, first and foremost, it will be a wise move to create some email templates. It just creates a more professional sense to your messages. By the way, today tools like Mailchimp or MailerLite make it possible to create email templates for free.
Some tools even can help you automatically send emails to the client after they take some actions like adding some item to their bags or earning promo codes. This way you can encourage them to take action, buy their desired items.
In general, the power of email marketing lies in its ability to create a direct relationship with customers. Specifically, you can divide consumers by groups and send them highly targeted matters, thus elevating your brand compellingness. Plus, emails are a perfect place to share your promotions or news, thus encouraging repeat purchases or informing about the crucial news of your brand.
5. Encourage Referrals
Another strategy to promote your product without hassle is employing word-of-mouth advertising. Actually, it’s a perfect opportunity to both drive new sales and encourage repeat shopping. Of course, when you create referral programs, you ideally need to provide engaging offers to both sides: referrers and referees.
Well, you can offer some symbolic discount or promotion to both sides. It’s not going to cost an arm and a leg to your business. On the contrary, it will drive your sales. Plus, today there are plenty of free tools to create and manage all entire referral programs.
6. Leverade Social Media Marketing
Regardless of the size and type of your business, it won’t go far without social media marketing. And really, it’s hard to name a brand without a social media presence. What I personally love about social media marketing is its affordability. The only thing you need to get started is creating solid social media profiles and publishing relevant, high-quality content through them, which, of course, is totally free.
Moreover, today there are many social media marketing tools that offer free subscriptions to provide insights about the activity of your audience. Thus, helping you understand how your audience grows in a given period and what kinds of content they engage with more.
If you use Facebook and Instagram, you can simply access critical insights about your page through Meta and measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Even better, you can schedule monthly content for your pages and ensure consistency of posts.
Of course, if you would like to go further and, as your business grows, switch to a paid option to get even more in-depth insight, you can always do this. However, the insights you get through Meta will be more than enough to gain a solid picture of your profile activity and make necessary adjustments.
Bonus Tips: Free AI Tools to Promote Your Brand
When it comes to implementing AI-driven tools, the first thing that comes to mind is: how much is it going to cost me? Generally speaking, AI is not cheap and used to be associated with high investment. But at the same time, you may wonder how exactly to propel your business in the AI era without AI-powered tools.
Fortunately, today there are plenty of marketing tools that offer AI functionalities for free. So, before wrapping up, let us share some AI tools that can help you promote your business without hassle.
- Picsart: This platform makes it possible to generate 3D Models freely with AI within seconds. Such content definitely cannot stay unnoticed. The only thing required is writing relevant prompts, and shortly after you will be there.
- Microsoft Designer: It’s another powerful tool to create or edit images, collages, or avatars with AI, totally for free.
- CapCut AI: This one can lend a helping hand to create high-quality videos really quickly with AI. CapCut AI offers over 100 digital avatars, leading to instant video generation.
- Infogram: To make your insights meaningful, follow current data visualization trends, especially AI-assisted visualization, and use tools like Infogram that recommend effective charts and surface key patterns.
- ChatGPT: Talking about free AI tools and not including ChatGPT in our list would be a big mistake. We’re sure you have already utilized it in your marketing, and that is a wise move. ChatGPT has proven highly effective for generating high-quality content and supporting market research.
Wrapping Up
So, is it possible to promote your business totally for free in the AI era? Our publication insists that it is. Moreover, you can employ plenty of AI tools for free to generate content and analyze your data for better outcomes. The key is knowing which tools to watch for. We shortlisted some basic ones that you will most likely need to elevate your marketing efforts and increase your brand visibility.
However, do not focus only on AI-driven tools. There are many other ways to promote your business for free in the AI era. Specifically, focus on social media marketing, create quality and relevant content, employ word-of-mouth advertising, and use email marketing to reach the right people and build a loyal customer base.
