As a small business owner, you’ve probably spent a long time browsing the web looking for marketing ideas and new ways to get your name out into the world. In your search, you will have found loads of resources, giving you a good idea of what needs to be done when you’re starting out with this work, all while improving your chances of success. Of course, though, even with this learning, there will still be temptations along the way. Along with free tools, there are loads of paid services out there which promise to give this side of your business a boost. All are not creating equally, and this post is going to be taking you through as many as possible to give you an idea of what you should be buying to support your marketing.

Social Media

Over the last decade or so, social media has had a huge impact on the world of business. Nowadays, without this tool, it is impossible for a company to get the word out about their work, making it a great place to start. The platforms themselves are free, making them great for those with loads of free time. Along with this, though, you can also buy varying kinds of support, and of them simply aren’t worth it.

What’s Worth It?

Influencers: It can take years to grow an Instagram or Facebook account to the kind of size which will help your company. To get around this, it’s becoming common to hire someone who already has a sizable following to post on your behalf. Known as influencer marketing, this has proven to be very successful in almost every instance, making it a sure bet when you’re getting started. You can pay practically whatever you want for this, with higher follower counts demanding more money.

Content Creation: Putting together the content for posts can be very hard when you don’t know the site which you’re trying to use. Thankfully, there are loads of companies out there with the skills to handle this for you, creating all of the content for your profiles. This can be a little bit costly, but will be worth it once you see the benefits of quality posts, boosting your online presence without much effort. Of course, to make this even easy, you can often request a schedule to tell you when to post.

What’s Not?

Promoted Posts: Most social media platforms have started to find ways to make money out of businesses using their tools. This usually comes in the form of promoted posts. Promising to provide a set level of engagement on your posts, they often fail to provide what they are offering when you first set it up. Unfortunately, users don’t like to see a post which is so blatantly an advert, putting them off the idea of liking it. This is something which the companies themselves are working to solve.

Followers: Click farm and robot generated users are very common on websites like Youtube and Facebook. Giving a business the power to fake the amount of people following them for a very small fee, a lot of people go down this route. In reality, though, this will rarely provide much benefit, and could even see you account being banned, as you are breaking the terms of the site. Likewise, users will notice this sort of behavior, damaging your reputation and opening the doors to ridicule.

Website

Giving businesses a gateway to the outside world, a website can be equally as powerful as social media. Of course, though, it has to be used correctly, and this can be a challenge, leaving loads of companies with sites which are poorly made. Overcoming this is a simple matter of paying the right people. Below, you can find some examples of the services to use and not to use when improving the website side of your marketing.

What’s Worth It?

SEO: Getting a website onto the front pages of websites like Google can be quite the challenge, with even seasoned veterans struggling with certain websites. An SEO company can solve this issue for you in its entirety, handling the structure of your site, research, and managing it all going into the future. This sort of work is very valuable to someone starting out with a website for the first time, giving you the chance to focus on the side of things which you’re excited about working on.

Search Engine Marketing: There are other ways to pay to get good results with services like Google, and SEM is one of the best ways to approach it. Google AdWords is one of the most popular tools for this. Anyone can use it, as long as you set up an account, making it nice and easy to create online adverts which don’t cost a fortune. The keyword research done by your SEO professional can be the best tool at your disposal when it comes to figuring out how to structure your ads.

Link Building: Not a lot of people realize how powerful a link or two on someone else’s website can be for their own. There are loads of companies out there which can arrange for this to be done for you, utilizing popular blogs and information-based sites to provide a strong backlink. While this sort of approach can be achieved on your own, the quality of the site you choose is important, and it will be worth going for something with a significantly higher domain authority than the site you’re working on.

What’s Not?

Business Listings: Sites which offer to present your business to customers are often a waste of time. Unfortunately, most users won’t go to these sorts of places anymore, opting to use options like social media instead. This can make it hard to get much use out of a listing, especially when you’re paying for it. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but it will be worth being careful to avoid putting money into something which isn’t worth it.

Marketing Materials

Flyers, business cards, and loads of other physical marketing tools can be bought for your business. You can get your hands on examples with your own logo without having to go too far, and this can often be handled completely over the web. To help you to avoid investing in the wrong options, you can find some examples of the good and bad below, along with the help you can get in the process.

What’s Worth it?

Business Cards/Flyers: While these are possibly the most basic options on the list, they serve as the perfect combination for most businesses. Giving you the chance to reach people on both a direct and a passive level, while also looking very professional, this is a great route to go down at any level. You can find printing which will suit most budgets for flyers, and designing them is nice and easy.

A Graphic Designer: Only having a couple of pieces of printed material will often save enough money to afford the skilled support a graphic designer. Websites like Freelancer can make it easy to get your hands on people to do this work for you, resulting in much higher quality products than you would have had without them. It is easy to tell when a DIY business card or flyer has been made, and this is a look which most businesses will want to avoid, even with a little bit of cost.

What’s Not?

Freebies: A lot of online resources tout the power of giving away freebies as an incentive your potential customers. This can cost a lot of money, though, and it doesn’t guarantee any sort of engagement, often getting poor results for companies which can’t afford to put enough merchandise into people’s hands. If you want to take an approach like this, it can be better to wait until you have some money behind you, as this will enable you to give out a lot more, improving your chances of call backs.

Mail Outs: Unlike online advertising, it’s impossible to target the right kind of people when you’re spending money on mail outs, instead relying on a small portion of the people who get your letter to use your business. Of course, there are some exceptions to this, and it could work as some sort of promotion. Aside from this, most businesses will struggle to sell themselves effectively using this expensive method, making it far from worth it in a lot of cases.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working to improve the time you put into choosing the services which help you to market your company. While it is easy to be harsh to those which are less valuable, they still all have their place. A big part of marketing can often be finding a route which other people aren’t using. Achieving a goal like this will be hard, especially when some aren’t being used for a reason, though you should be able to find someone to help with it.