Your firm requires consumers if it is to thrive and expand. You must advertise your business if you want to attract clients. In the good old days, the choice would be between a flyer, a brochure, a postcard, or an advertisement in the neighborhood paper.

But the options are unlimited in today’s digital environment (read: overwhelming).

As a result, you are (a) not alone and (b) at the ideal place if you’re having trouble deciding how to promote your company or even just what your options are.

I’m going to go through the 30 best ways to advertise your company in this post, whether you have a big budget, a small budget, or some extra cash. We’ll discuss how to spread the word about:

searching tools (namely, Google Search and Maps).
using social media (including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest).
There is more to online directories than you might realize.
your neighborhood (events, sponsorships, and press).

How to Google-promote your business

It makes perfect sense to promote your company via Google. With more than 90% of the market share, it’s one of the best ways to reach customers who are looking for answers right now. The following are the most effective methods for promoting yourself on Google:

1. Make your Google Business Profile and confirm it.

Your Google Business Profile (Google’s word for your Google listing) is what enables your company to appear in Google Maps results, the local section of Google Search results, as well as the right-side Knowledge Panel in Search results when someone types in your business name and location. As Google becomes more adept at customizing its results to the searcher’s location, this free directory listing should be a top priority.

The key to using your Business Profile to promote your business is to verify ownership of your listing through your free Google My Business account. Once you have ownership, you can optimize your listing to show up higher in search results and for more relevant searches.

If you’re ranking on Google Maps or showing up in the Local Pack (as seen above) of regular results pages (this is very doable), your business is basically promoting itself 24/7. Even better, you can publish posts directly to your Google listing, putting attractive promotions in front of your audience at a time when they have high intent.

2. Get a website

A website is a must-have piece of marketing collateral no matter how old-fashioned your business or clients may be. Your website is the go-to for current and prospective customers. Even if they find you on social media or Google, they will want to go to your website and, like your Google listing, it serves to promote your business around the clock.

A good business website not only serves as a promotional tool in and of itself—it tells the story of your business and what you offer, provides contact information, and reflects your brand’s personality and distinguishing characteristics—but it is also essential for measuring and improving the success of your other promotional tactics.

3. Implement search engine optimization

It’s one thing for you to promote your business; it’s another thing for Google to promote your business. SEO is a set of practices that align your business with Google’s ranking algorithm. But because this algorithm has evolved to use machine learning and user behavior to produce the most accurate and quality results for searchers, optimizing for search engines is really just optimizing for searchers—particularly those searching for what you have to offer.

SEO isn’t just one tactic, but many tactics that collectively work together to improve your rank. Also, because Google has superb location-based results, you have just as much of a chance as big retailers to show up on the first page of Google— without spending a dime! (With the exception of the costs to get a website, of course).

4. Create a business blog

We just touched on this in the previous strategy, but content is such an important driver of SEO that it really deserves its own category as a promotional strategy. A blog is not LiveJournal for businesses. Sure, you can create some posts about milestones and events, but a lucrative business blog is one that produces educational content, in your brand voice, around questions and terms your ideal customers are searching in Google.

5. Share your content

A blog that shows your expertise, approachability, and genuine desire to help your audience is the perfect promotional tool for a business. So don’t just publish posts—promote them! On social media, via email newsletters, or even turn them into downloadable guides to help you collect leads. Better yet, if you produce content with shareability in mind, your blog posts will likely get noticed by other credible websites who will mention and link back to your site on their site or social media feeds—promoting your business for you.

Just remember that the more traffic you get to your site, the more important it is to make sure your content loads quickly. For large and/or growing websites, a CDN can ensure your content gets delivered quickly.  There are plenty of options out there—for example, HubSpot has a CDN option.

6. Run Google Ads

While SEO is one of the best marketing strategies, it is a long-term strategy that can take weeks, even months to start seeing results. For more immediate exposure, and if you have the budget, Google Ads is the way to go. Google Ads ads show up at the very top of search engine results pages, above organic and local listings. And of the search engines available, Google is by far the most popular not only because they control the largest share of search engine traffic, but also because of its high level of flexibility, ad building features, and detailed performance metrics.