What’s Your Best Organic Marketing Strategy? — Experts Weigh In

If your small business is on a budget, chances are that you’re more likely to seek out organic marketing strategies than opt for paid marketing. What’s the best strategy that allows you to attract loyal customers at little to no cost? Our panel of 55 entrepreneurial experts chime in with their advice on the best organic marketing strategies any small business can use that provide a strong return on investment.

1. “Invest in customer education. By customer education, I mean some form of inbound or content marketing. Write for your customers, but also write for other sites who might link to your content or share it. It’s a really difficult process, but it’s a simple one to describe: (1) Discovery (who is your audience, what do they care about), (2) Content Creation (make your content different, better, or compelling enough to attract an audience), and (3) Distribute (go where the fish are, use content promotion tactics to increase your reach).” — Alex Birkett, Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot

2. “Nail down your messaging. Create in house documentation that states what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and who you do it for. From there, ensure that everyone in your
company has full transparency to your message. This ensures anytime your employees speak to others whether it be potential clients, family, friends, or others in the community about their career and their company your message is put forth clearly and consistently.” — Sean Killian, Director of Marketing, Enola Labs

3. “Thought leadership is a great way to build your brand, increase broad visibility, raise your profile, and attract more customers. Activities like speaking at conferences, writing articles, and building a following on social media all contribute to increasing awareness with potential customers and building credibility with a larger community. Before starting your own blog or newsletter, try contributing regularly to existing well trafficked blogs in your industry or newsletters of like-minded organizations reaching the same target audience as you. Make sure you include your URL or contact info so they can find you and follow up. When your articles or talks become available online, make sure to send them out via social media to your friends, followers, and contacts. Optimize your website to make it easy for people to find you too.” — Paige Arnof-Fenn, Founder and CEO, Mavens & Moguls

4. “A great strategy for organic growth especially in the early stages of your business is to connect with other professionals in complementary fields to your product and service offerings. For example, if you are an artisan coffee roaster you can team with brands that offer disposable coffee cups to cafes. These kinds of mutually beneficial relationships are great for all businesses involved, helps you establish your business faster, and costs you nothing!” — Natalie Athanasiadis, Owner, Ormi Media

5. “One of my best organic marketing strategies would be to crowdsource posts. Crowdsourced posts give you the ability to get content without having to create it and have influencers share and link to your content. This has helped benefit and grow my business by increasing my total domain rank and pushing my other posts up in Google search. This has increased my traffic volume and lead volume and increased our sales. This is the fastest type of content you can create with the most reward.” — JC Matthews, Co-Founder, Simply Insurance

6. “Customer referrals are by far the most powerful, yet underutilized marketing method. Since we trained and implemented a referral program this year, our sales are up 27%, and our close rate is up 40%. When you are looking for a new service or product, what is the first thing you do now? Read reviews, or ask friends for referrals. We have an active referral program integrated into our sales process. It all starts with happy, satisfied customers. Many referrals are organic but do not be afraid to reach out to customers. Directly ask do you know one or two people like you, with XXX needs, which could benefit from our services?” If each client tells five people about our service, and then those companies tell other companies, then you see exponential sales growth potential. In turning each customer into a referral, it is like having an unofficial salesperson without that expensive salary. Referrals also have a much higher closing rate. If you want to get referrals, you should also give referrals. It is a two-way street. This is what I call the “referral mindset.” Assist your contacts and grow their businesses by connecting them with people in your network, and they will return the favor. Always say thank you for a referral. Once a client has sent you a referral, thank them. I send a handwritten thank you note.” — Ian McClarty, CEO & President, PhoenixNAP Global IT Services

7. “Content marketing is one of those strategies that—with a little upfront investment and a lot of patience—can yield huge dividends for a small business. The practice of regular blogging can lead to evergreen website traffic and improved search engine visibility as well as establish your team as experts within your industry. This ultimately builds organizational credibility with prospects and customers, which in turn makes a significant impact to your bottom line. As an example, our team has focused extensively on content marketing, and we have TRIPLED our organic traffic just in the last year. We do not have to pay a single dime to acquire those website visitors!” — Greg Bullock, Marketing Manager, TheraSpecs

8. “Create good content and distribute it often. Blog posts, podcasts, videos. Whatever business you’re in, look for ways you can delight and provide value to your customers through content. People have to know about you and find your content. You do this by engaging with your customer where they are. On social media, comment on posts from your target audience. Direct message them on Instagram. Build a community over time on social media the same way you do in real life. This takes time, but the ROI is limitless. Creating content and fostering a community will come back to your brand tenfold. Give to your audience, and they’ll return the favor.” — Astawa Alam, Co-Founder/Lead Marketing Consultant, DxM Creative

9. “This will seem obvious, but surprisingly it’s not to most small businesses. We use Instagram to dispense advice, tips, tricks, and thoughtful contemplation. Why it’s not obvious is that Instagram is largely used for actual photos and filtered beauty. But we are using it as a tool to copyright. We’re taking what would normally be a blog or article on Medium and economizing it into useful, actionable advice on top of colorful backgrounds. Again, it sounds obvious, but very few people use Instagram in this way because it takes times to create and curate. So, you’re not seeing photos of food, or even photos for that matter. But rather micro-articles that lead back to our brand. The idea is to just provide value. Just give everyone for free as much takeaway content as they can consume. Eventually, hopefully, they discover who we are and listen to a podcast or buy a book.” — Terence Michael, Entrepreneur, 100% Terry Cloth, Inc.

10. “One of the best organic marketing strategies for small businesses is content marketing. Paired with basic SEO, it can gradually drive traffic to your website, which can convert to leads and sales. Creating content also provides free value to customers, allowing a business to establish them self as a thought-leader and authority. Writing blog posts is the easiest way to begin creating content, only requiring a time investment if done in-house. Once it’s published, posts can continue to bring organic traffic for years to come.” — Carmine Mastropierro, President, Mastro Commerce

11. “One of my best organic marketing strategies is to use content, specifically blog content, to rank high in search engine results pages. Doing keyword research before writing a blog post is critical to ranking high and there are lots of free tools available to help you figure out what people are searching for and the domain authority of the pages currently ranking. Blogging is great for building brand awareness and trust. The more high ranking, quality content you have on a subject the more of a thought leader in the space you will become. Building trust that you are an authority on a topic is key for businesses, especially B2B businesses.” — Jessica Califano, Head of Marketing & Communications, Temboo

12. “Are you creative? Maybe you can take a shot at making a meme for your community. In just a few minutes you can try to make a meme that can be share many times and help people remember your business. You can also share your knowledge through great content. If you already have expertise and want to share it, you can help others and market your business at the same time. Remember to answer questions too! Helping individuals on forums is a great way to give back. Not only do you get to help someone, you are able to present your company as a useful resource to the community and everyone that comes along afterwards. This helps with exposure to your business, site traffic, and eventually more sales.” — Ramon Khan, Online Marketing Director, National Air Warehouse

13. “One of my best organic marketing strategies which I apply to all that my company does is create meaning. I tend not to think in terms of marketing. I think in terms of providing meaning and value to everything we produce. Whether it is a new service, sponsored content, or tweet; our primary focus is on helping people help themselves. Often times companies get so caught up in marketing that they forget their target consumers are humans. When people find value/benefits whether it be emotional, intellectual, or physical in what your offering, organically they will be drawn to your product or service. It helps build trust with our audience, which is most important. As simple as it sounds we genuinely just want to help people discover, learn and grow. When businesses identify their intention, mission, and values then they can create marketing with meaning.” — Alexis Davis, Founder & CEO, H.K. Productions Inc.

14. “The most effective marketing, by far, is simply being helpful. When you’re inside of any industry you’re connecting with people all the time. I don’t charge for my thoughts or advice. So when the time comes when there’s a need for a paid service. I always get the phone call. I’m generous with my time and my thoughts.” — Elizabeth Urenda, Founder, Talent Moxie

15. “When a customer is satisfied and happy with the service/product you have delivered encourage them to write a review on your FB page, Yelp, or Angie’s List. Peer to peer reviews and referrals are one of the most important ways to convert customers. Don’t ignore or delete bad reviews. A bad review is an opportunity to open up a conversation and collect valuable feedback to make changes to improve your company. Once you address and fix a customer’s complaint, they will be the first to sing your praises.” — Maria Botta, Marketing Consultant, Maria Botta

16. “We recently decided to tackle the same challenge. How do we evoke a personal connection with our customer to spur word of mouth? We have around 122,000 customers, and we want to figure out a scalable effective way to get closer to them. After brainstorming we came up with an idea to tap into our customer’s soul through their pets. When a homeowner signs up for our service we gather information on if they have pets, and if so what are their names. We do this so our lawn vendors know to be careful when entering the lawn. We decided we could use this info about our customer to send a personalized gift to our customers’ pet, addressed to them. This really wowed our customers, we received personal thank you notes, videos of their dog chewing the bone we sent posted to FB and thank you tweets, it worked really well for the time and money we invested.” — Zach Hendrix, Co-Founder, GreenPal

17. “Organic search is a huge part of our marketing strategy. We believe the quality of the traffic over quantity. We focus only on acquiring relevant, useful links. For this reason we don’t like to say link building. We earn these links, because we are providing real information in a way our clients are searching for. We also shy away from providing content just to say we provide content. You hear everywhere that content is king, but we believe in providing information our clients will actually use. The formula we strive for is: quality, natural links + optimized content = organic traffic overflow.” — Amanda Basse, Outreach Coordinator, Alan David Custom

18. “I still think the best organic marketing is content marketing. Content marketing is like a company’s sales force that works around the clock — 24/7/365. I love going to Quora and answering questions about my industry (online marketing). People’s questions give me ideas for blog posts, Facebook/LinkedIn posts, podcast, YouTube videos, email & FB group posts. Also, when my answers start gaining traction (people view my answer and/or upvote it), I then re-purpose my answers on the above channels, with some minor tweaking. So I basically start with browsing Quora, answering some questions and that gives me plenty of ideas for content on my other platforms.” — Adam Dukes, Founder, Never Settle

19. “If your business operates locally, prioritizing your Google my Business reviews is a great choice. Earning more Google my Business reviews can have a strong impact on your reputation, your SEO, and your click through rates from search entire results. It’s also easier to leave a review on Google than Yelp, and it’s less likely to be filtered out. Growing your Google reviews is one of the most impactful ways you can promote your business without spending a dime.” — Joe Goldstein, SEO Director & Operations Manager, Contractor Calls

20. “The best marketing is determined by the amount of deals one makes (not by the amount of leads one gets) through our website. We focus our efforts not on pleasing Google, but we try to please our visitors. Therefore our best marketing strategy is levering and developing our own SEO strategies that are original, to get traffic to our website, and we send that traffic to our testimonial videos, where potential clients can see the reactions and reviews from our happy customers. Deals are made by a 2-ingredient recipe. Traffic and conversion. SEO takes care of our traffic, then our testimonials and credibility signals seal the deal converting traffic into leads and ultimately into deals. There is nothing better than using what you are doing (making deals) to get more deals!” — Dixie Lee, Real Estate Investor, Noorden Estates, LLC

21. “I have found offline networking to yield the best results in finding new customers. I have tried a variety of other methods and I have swapped them with other tactics and strategies regular; however, networking has proved to be effective throughout the entire time I have been operating my business. I have been networking consistently since I started my business almost 4 years ago. I network anywhere I can. I look up my local community’s Chamber of Commerce website for upcoming events, I use Meetups (the website), I have tried BNI previously (wasn’t for me), Board of Trade and any other events that I see pass me by. Heck, I’m even networking when I’m out for lunch or dinner. Any opportunity I have to make a new friend and share what I’m up to – I take it! So should you. The long-term benefits both personally and professionally promise to be rewarding.” — Mazdak Mohammadi, Owner & Founder, BlueberryCloud

22. “One of the best marketing strategies is a form of personal branding. I recommend when greeting a new lead to treat them genuinely. Meet them with a big smile and a warm welcome. Find something that you share in common, and let them feel a bond. If a lead feels comfortable with you, then they most likely will buy a product or service from you. Even if they don’t, follow up with them a few days later. If they bought a product or a service from someone else and it didn’t work out, then by you following up with them will encourage them to return back to you. This is all easy and free marketing. This method will also let customers know that you are there for them and will be reliable.” — Amanda Grenier, Public Relations Agent, SuperInterns

23. “I use forums like Reddit to share genuine stories and promote my products and knowledge. A few weeks ago I shared my investing story on Reddit, and it gained more than 500 upvotes in a few days. From this alone my site was visited hundreds of times, and I received over 30 emails and messages asking for investing advice, help and requesting to be on my investing waitlist. I’ve found telling your story through a genuine lens and posting in online forums such as Reddit to be a great source that drives new fans, customers and attention, great for any business to grow, and best of all, it doesn’t cost a dime.” — Stacy Caprio, Founder, Growth Marketing

24. “We’ve had good luck at my business Splendid Beast by encouraging customers to post photos of their pets with their finished pet paintings. People they know on social media often ask them where they got that amazing painting of their cat or dog. I think most businesses that sell gifts or custom products could benefit from this strategy.” — Eagan Heath, Owner, Splendid Beast

25. “Our best organic marketing strategy has been encouraging our customers to post photo’s in our products and tag us on social media. We’ve been able to get great content that other potential customers can resonate with. We encourage this sharing by offering occasional discounts and giveaways. This has helped us grow to over 50,000 Instagram followers. We get close to 20% of our sales directly from Instagram on the organic side so it’s one of our biggest channels. In addition to the sales we can often funnel our Instagram followers onto our email list to further increase the potential of a conversion.” — Ryan O’Connor, Owner, One Tribe Apparel

26. “Being able to do a good job on a client’s case is always the best publicity there is, because it is free, accurate and readily marketing. In essence your satisfied clients become your best ambassadors. However, being a sole proprietor of my own business (law office), means I have to be a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to all facets of the business. One of those facets has been being my own PR and marketing team. As such, I have invested time and a small amount of money in order to execute a short (yet effective) PR campaign in order to promote myself and my business. Not being able to afford an actual PR firm has forced me to learn how to do this myself, which means it has allowed to gain one skill and tool I can now use on my own.” — Gustavo Mayen, Sole Proprietor, Law Offices of Gustavo Mayen

27. “Some tips for organic marketing strategies include: (1) Create a brand advocate group. By creating a group just for your customers, you can create a place where they can rave about how much they love your brand! The group can be a Facebook group, an in-person group, or a cross platform group. Give your early adopters a chance to rave about everything they love and weigh in on the things they hate so you can change them based on customer input. Customers having input and feeling heard in the development process will create lifelong brand advocates. (2) Create an advisory board whose members include subject matter experts that are influencers in your market. By having influencers on the advisory board they become your advocates who can let others know what projects you are innovating next. This lets them become advocates who can tell their friends, followers, and colleagues why they should get on board before you release the next big thing. (3) Have brand reps who are influencers. By having brand reps who get more of what they want for free (your product or service) in exchange for promoting you, you both win. You reach their circle and by extension that circle’s circle. This type of promotion can introduce your product or service to markets you otherwise may not have reached. It also builds brand awareness and brand advocates who do the marketing for you!” — Aleania Orczewska, Co-Founder & Director of Business Development, Carte Blanche

28. “Productive commenting is my best organic marketing strategy. There’s something to be said about genuinely helping someone out. Online forums and message boards for related niche products and services are often full of potential customers just waiting for assistance. Many of these forums allow you to add a credential to reference your company and experience. By helping the person, you raise the likelihood that they will think to themselves, wow, that was helpful, let me visit this person’s site. I have found that this approach has garnered far more leads than the alternative commenting strategy: overly self-promotional posts.” — Augustin Kennady, Media Relations Director, ShipMonk

29. “One of the best organic marketing strategies a business can activate is a good referral strategy. While often thought of as a business development tool, a carefully crafted referral strategy serves as both, thereby creating brand advocates of current clients and a captive audience of prospects. The key to implementing a successful referral strategy is to build it into your sales and marketing process, which should include nurturing touch points pre and post-sale that create positive sentiment about your brand and a formal ask for referrals. Leveraging the influence of your best clients is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business.” — Jacqueline Hayes, Principal & Chief Marketing Strategist, Crayons & Marketers

30. “We make use of content and inbound marketing for organic reach. It is all about helping people with their problems through content. This way we not only get better search rankings, we are also in a better position to convert the visitor into a customer. As we have solved his/her problem, we have the trust factor with the particular visitor which is crucial for getting a sale. Some of the content we produce is blog posts, white papers, guides, and how-to videos.” — Saud Ibrahim, Digital Marketing Manager, The Jacket Maker

31. “My best organic marketing strategy is content marketing. It’s one of the best methods to analyze what problems your target audience has, and how your business/product/service can solve them. Having a blog and writing high-quality content is easy and doesn’t cost too much. All you need to have is a deep understanding of the needs your target audience has. This strategy can bring your company more revenue if you target the right people and give real value to your readers.” — Roman Daneghyan, Chief Marketing Officer, Renderforest

32. “Your potential customers are already online and looking for a company such as yours. Continually strive to improve your website by providing great usable and useful content to your prospective audience. Over time it will help build your online presence by providing help and guidance, they’ll love you for it.” — Damien Buxton, Director, Midas Creative

33. “My top tips for organic marketing is to include quotes within your blog content. If you don’t have a huge budget, use free platform HARO to gather expert quotes, add in more quotes to your blog posts to make them more interesting and credible. This simple tip will allow your blogs to gain more engagement, as the expert involved is likely to share with their audience, and publications may be more keen to cover as the piece is seen as more authoritative and credible.” — Hannah Moore, Senior SEO Campaign Executive, Intermarketing Agency

34. “The inbound marketing strategy is one built around the fact that customer acquisition is a four-part journey: attract; convert, close, and delight. The attraction element is the new organic marketing – and it essentially means having a content strategy. Content is king, and prospects need to find your website as they go about their normal daily business. Search Engine Optimization, will only get you so far. Links from other sites to yours are growing in importance, bringing in a need to create other connecting content – such as linking to posts on social media or blogs. But while the inbound route solves many of the problems of marketing apathy, prospects won’t simply come to you by themselves – getting it right and getting a level of differentiation from competitors requires a strategy.” — Andre Rampat, Director & Co-Founder, CorporateLeaders Communications

35. “Content marketing is one of our best organic marketing strategies. It is a great way to drive traffic to your website and to get people to engage with your brand. Posting blog posts or other content that is relevant to your brand and sharing it on social media engages people with your brand in a more natural, fun and interesting way, making your brand seem more personable and human. Not only does content drive traffic to your website directly, but it has a lot of SEO value too. If the right content, using the right key words is produced, it can also push you up in the search engine rankings, making it easier for people to search for your business online. Social media users are also more likely to engage with marketing messages if they are posted between content that they enjoy engaging with. What’s better still is that this strategy can be implemented for free, making it a great strategy for small businesses to try. All that is really needed for a company to be able to implement a content marketing strategy is a platform to create a blog on (there are many free platforms available), and a social media platform to share your blog posts on.” — Steve Pritchard, Digital Marketing Consultant, Cuuver.com

36. “Despite all the buzz around social media, many businesses aren’t capitalizing on the power that it has. Pick a platform that’s best for your industry, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and begin building and engaging your following. The best way to do this is providing them with free insider information that your competitors are afraid to share. Whether it’s tips, news, or product information, use your social media platform to educate your customers. If you can educate them, you will earn their trust and their business. If your followers like you, they will recommend you, and this has an exponential effect in the digital world. It’s word of mouth on steroids, and it all starts with great content. Be bold and provide your customers with insider tips and tricks, and in return, they will reward you with their business. Best part? It doesn’t cost you anything more than sweat equity.” — Sean Dudayev, Founder & CMO, BrawlBros.

37. “To me one of the best organic marketing strategies is a two-pronged approach: (1) Having an amazing product/service and (2) Having the system in place for name capture/follow up and a specific referral system in place to turn happy customers into walking talking billboards. I call this the ‘point of happiness’ strategy because the best time for someone to refer, to give a testimonial or to sing your praises is at the moment when they are their happiest in regard to what you’ve done for them.” — John Mulry, Author & Consultant, JohnMulry.com

38. “At uBreakiFix one of our strategies is creating local community impacts that can allow opportunities for partnerships. For example, we go to our local University and talk to the HR benefits manager to create a local discount for faculty and staff. This also works if you’re interested in other opportunities like theme parks, museums, local restaurant chains, They all have employee perk programs that your business can fit into for free.” — Jonathan Alonso, Digital Marketing Manager, JonGeek

39. “I partner with local small business owners and use their organic reach to add to my art studio reach! I just started using side walk chalk and fun I SPY social media posts to activate my audience’s curiosity and engagement with my art studio brand! I use art education posts to inform parents about the importance of art and child development along with understanding its role in STEM and STEAM for older age groups. I’m a part of boost groups whose sole purpose is to boost posts daily with specific qualifications.” — Tiffany Pierce, Owner, The Art Table Studio

40. “Social media (particularly Instagram) has always been one of our primary marketing strategies. It’s an excellent way to promote your brand, reach the right people, and engage with customers and florists alike. Instagram, and the seasonality and heritage of flowers is in our core as a business. When I started Floom, it was actually just an Instagram account (without the Floom name for the first six months). I would showcase a particular flower (through a picture taken in my living room at the time!) because it was in season, and the whole concept was always bringing attention to the seasonality of flowers and not just buying roses or lilies all year round. As we’ve grown, we’ve always maintained a strong sense of shareability, which allows other people to promote us. For example, the introduction of Instagram stories has allowed us to open up flowers in new ways, and make it playful, by talking about how it was named with little animations and things like that. Our Instagram definitely caters to a different audience than flowers have been catered to before. There’s a generation gap where people really cared about flowers and suddenly nobody did, and now we have the tools to make the content to bring that kind of love for flowers back. We have florists that have stories to tell. So instead of just us needing to tell our story, we have 100 florists who all have their own incredible stories. So having that really sets us apart, and increases word of mouth and discussions about Floom – between both customers and florists.” — Lana Elie, CEO, Floom

41. “One of the most successful and low cost marketing strategies we have employed is email marketing. Targeting existing customers or people who’ve expressed an interest in your products can frequently cost less than acquiring new customers. In our particular business, shades and blinds, customers often order fabric samples but do not always make a purchase until a number of weeks later, so by sending them an email reminder with incentives to buy works really well. Similarly, showcasing new products and new ranges via email is a great way to engage and get new or existing customers to make a purchase. The beauty of email marketing is the simplicity and low cost. There aren’t many technical components or best practices to learn so it’s a fairly approachable and low cost strategy.” — Peter Collins, Director, English Blinds

42. “One of our most successful organic marketing strategies is to offer our customers the best possible end-to-end experience, and to go the extra mile when things go wrong. Nothing beats word of mouth recommendations from happy customers, and we’re delighted with how they spread the word in person and online through social media.” — Rob Feldmann, CEO, BrandAlley

43. “A referral program is one of our best strategies. We offer a discount on our service not just for the person that does the referring, but also for the person they refer. We’re a blogging service and charge by the post. The more posts any client does the lower the price per post. If a client refers and another client, we count their frequencies together and they both receive the lower pricing. Offering discounts does cost money obviously but giving away some of your product or service is great advertising since in the customer’s eye the value is worth more than what you’re paying. A product may cost a business $100 to produce, but if they sell it for $200 the customer gets a $200 value for only $100 spent by the business.” — Dayne Shuda, Owner, Ghost Blog Writers

44. “We are a small business with small budgets, so we do what we can to market our products and store without spending anything. Because we sell jewelry, our products are very visual-focused. What we do when we sell items is that we post it to all our social networks. So instead of just creating a piece of jewelry for a customer and never seeing it again, we always post a picture of the finished piece to Facebook and Instagram. This brings us views and many times sales. And it doesn’t cost us a penny to do. It has helped our company grow from more local based to actually selling Internationally now. Next we plan on posting videos to these social networks of finished pieces as we have seen an even bigger response from those.” — Jeff Moriarty, Owner, Moriarty’s Gem Art

45. “The best organic marketing is to encourage our customers to share their purchase via social media in particular Facebook and Instagram. This creates great trust and word of mouth for our brand to that person’s followers and friends. To encourage shares we have competitions for the best photos or offer discounts and refunds for posting images of our products. We can also use this customer-generated content on our own social media channels which saves a big cost in ourselves having to create content.” — Adam Watson, Marketing Director, Hollywood Mirrors

46. “When it comes to marketing, one of our most successful tactics is actually surprisingly simple, time-effective, and essentially cost-free. With every purchase that we ship out, we included a handwritten thank you note. Each note isn’t particularly long, twenty words at most, and only takes a few seconds to write. But the impact of these notes have exceeded even our wildest expectations. When we started this campaign we immediately saw a boost in customer engagement on our social media channels, sales saw a modest but noticeable increase, and since then our number of repeat customers have rising. Another surprising benefit was the effect it had on our employees. Having that personal connection with our customers through a handwritten note improved both morale and productivity in our workplace. All this, just from taking a few seconds to provide a personal touch.” — Jordan Harling, Chief Digital Strategist, Wooden Blinds Direct

47. “Organic Search Marketing is typically the highest ROI channel for just about any business when potential customers turn to Google for answers, they are served BOTH the paid and organic listings at the same time. Optimizing paid and Organic search together as an integrated channel outperforms optimizing them in silos A simple example of an Integrated Search Marketing strategy in action is to stop buying Google Ads for searches that you have earned organically (and vice versa).” — Damian Bergamaschi, Director of Marketing & Strategy, BuyerGenomics

48. “One of the best ways to boost your company’s ranking is to get linked to authoritative sites. Many growing companies use guest posting on high-ranking websites as a springboard for their own success. Although relatively effortless, getting these crucial backlinks can do wonders for your organic marketing. While it may require a decent amount of outreach, many sites are happy to accept guest posts as it serves as free content for them.” — Nate Masterson, Marketing Manager, MapleHolistics

49. “For our business, SEO is by far the most effective form of organic marketing. People need our services when they need them–and search at that moment. By ranking on page one for relevant location and industry-specific keywords, we’ve been able to take advantage of these micro-moments to boost website traffic, sign-ups, and conversions.” — Sid Soli , Owner & Founder, Docudavit

50. “One of our best organic marketing strategies is to hold contests to help our business gain traffic and recognition. For example, right now we are holding a contest to see who can get the most reviews posted on our site because for every review posted on our site for a 2-week period, Best Company will donate $2 to charity. This works great as an organic marketing strategy because Best Company employees reach out to each of their networks to let everyone know that if they leave reviews on our site, they are donating money to charity for each of those reviews. This is an effective organic marketing strategy because it not only helps Best Company get more reviews, which is the purpose of Best Company’s website, but it also helps spread the word of who Best Company is. And this is done in a positive way because a company willing to donate to charity for a simple exchange of someone’s time is going to spread like wildfire. People love to contribute to charity, and by giving people a way to donate to the cause without having to spend money of their own is going to stick with them and make them remember Best Company. It also gives our company a lot of recognition, and with such outreach, people are going to remember who we are. And in the future when they are looking for a review, or if they want to leave a review, they are likely to return to our site to do so.” — McCall Robinson, Content Specialist, Best Company

51. “One of our most effective organic marketing strategies has been leveraging Google Alerts to discover journalists and bloggers who cover our industry. We set several keywords alerts so we know when a relevant story has been published. Because our niche is small, it can be challenging to uncover industry news. Google Alerts has helped us earn press by making it easier to research opportunities to pitch our company and story.” — Eric Jackson, Co-Founder & CEO, CapLinked

52. “Right now it would be to embrace live streaming. All major social media platforms are prioritizing live video in respect of both product development and user feeds. Live streaming capability is built directly into the apps that you probably already have on your phone. Not only can it benefit you by helping increase your exposure to potential new audiences (particularly if you combine it with a good hashtag strategy), but is there anything more organic than simply firing up your phone and documenting your real-time day-to-day activities and turning that into your biggest marketing asset? I know it’s not for everyone right now, and I appreciate that it’s harder for some businesses to implement than others, but I do think it’s likely one of the most rewarding, low-cost and organic marketing strategies available to us all right now.” — Scott Colenutt, Head of Digital, SiteVisibility

53. “Customers like experiences and we try to provide that for them. Hosting events has been our best approach to organic marketing. We’ve partnered with other businesses to have events at our store which gives us a shared outreach. Events also allow us to post on a variety of local free calendars and Facebook, giving us another method of outreach. These events get people talking and increases our word of mouth advertising as well as gives customers a memory and to have good feelings about us.” — Cindy Jones, Owner, Colorado Aromatics

54. “As an entrepreneur, it is important to utilize all the free marketing you can get. One way to do this is to educate yourself on social media. Social media is free and a great way to advertise, but it’s more than just posting a status. Social media platforms run on algorithms and each one is slightly different. To market more effectively with a small budget, you want to get the most out of organic reach and engagement on social media, especially Facebook, which has a notoriously difficult algorithm for businesses. To build relationships with your target audience and get your business known online, despite algorithms, focus on providing value more than being salesy. Go live and talk about tips or share advice, create graphics, and ask questions to get your audience involved. The more your audience engages, the more organic results you will get on that post, which leads to increased brand exposure, the ability to reach more people, and the opportunity to attract new followers and sales to the page.” — Jenny Hale, Military Marketing Strategist, The Military Social Media Guru

55. “My answer is networking. When you get out there and meet other professionals, and especially as you start to build relationships with them, word about your business will spread and you’ll be that much more likely to be top of mind when a professional acquaintance needs what you sell, needs a source for a piece (free PR!), or hears from a friend that they need what you sell. A lot of my business comes from referrals from people I’ve met when out networking – even people who are technically competitors can make for great referral buddies for when a client’s not a good fit for them, but they know they’ll be for me.” — Kristen Hicks, Freelance Copywriter, Austin Copywriter

Do you have an great marketing idea but not sure how to get your business started? Give us a call at 1-877-692-6772, or visit us at mycorporation.com.