10 Free Ways to Quickly Grow Your Online Business

Having a strong online presence can help take your business to the next level. There are many ways to go about it, with one of the more prominent options being paid advertisement. That said, there are plenty of free options to grow your online business.

These free options typically take longer to grow your online presence, but they also do a better job of building a stronger presence when done right. Just expect to spend a lot more time cultivating your audience.

Today, I will share multiple ways you can grow your online business without spending a penny.

How Long Does It Take To Grow An Online Business?

While it largely depends on the business type, it typically takes between 12 and 24 months before an online business becomes profitable. The main reason for this is that it takes time to build a customer base.

That said, plenty of exceptions were able to take off quickly due to viral marketing campaigns.

Unfortunately, no one can control what goes viral, thus, you can’t rely on or plan around that possibility. Instead, you need to focus on building your brand, improving your customer experience, and most importantly, reaching new customers.

Luckily, reaching new audiences has never been easier today, and you can do it without spending a penny. The popularity of social media has made it possible for any business to advertise for free with just a little effort.

10 Ways to Grow Your Online Business For Free

There is no shortage of free options that your site can utilize, but it is worth pointing out that many of these methods can be improved by spending money. Just be aware that if you are having success for free, you can attract even more by investing in that method.

Note: While this guide focuses on free methods, the guide assumes you have your business up and running. Thus, you have a website that will be the base for your business and online presence.

1. Deliver High-Quality Content

SEO or search engine optimization remains the best way to grow your online business for free. Search engines like Google rank websites based on speed, mobile friendliness, and more.

However, the most important factor would be delivering consistent, high-quality content.

By producing high-quality content that other websites link to, you tell the search engine that your site is an authority on the subject. The first step is to understand the intention behind a search.

In most cases, the person typing something into Google is looking for an answer to a question or some kind of guide. While there are exceptions, this does represent the majority of searches. Thus, you need to make sure you are answering that question.

You also need to make sure you back up your content with facts. For example, Google accounts for over 63% of all US traffic referrals. This means that the majority of websites receive traffic as a direct result of Google; thus, ranking highly is a must.

Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm is very complex. In truth, we only know two things for sure: that it ranks the immobile version of your site first, and that speed is a factor. Let’s go over a few of the more important factors.

Site Speed
Speed is one of the few factors that Google tells us is a factor. No one likes a slow website, which is why over 50% of users will abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Your website’s performance is dictated by a variety of factors such as the quality of your web host, code optimization, choice of caching technique, and more.

Sitemapping
Google utilizes search engine bots to crawl through your website and index your content. These crawls occur randomly, unless you tell Google to perform one. To tell Google to do this, you will need to submit a sitemap. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like: a map of your site that provides links to every page and post you want Google to index. Having one of these is a must.

Optimize Images
Images play a huge role on most sites today. The problem is that most of them are not optimized correctly. They often have very large file sizes that slow down when a page loads. There are several ways to optimize images in WordPress, including image compression and enabling lazy loading. This is a technique where the image only loads when it is visible to the user.

2. Be Mobile-Friendly

Mobile users account for 66.22% of all online traffic, which means there’s a good chance the majority of users visiting your site are on a mobile device. And since 2016, Google has been indexing the mobile version of your website first.

Naturally, this means you need to optimize your website to perform well on any mobile device.

The good news is that most websites today are naturally responsive, which means that content will adjust to the size of the device the user is viewing it on. That said, there are a variety of factors that you must consider to get the best results.

For example, navigating a website is done primarily through the menus. While these menus will often change sizes to accommodate mobile devices, more often than not, they are not properly sized.

This can result in the text being too small to read or the buttons being too small for users to press. This level of frustration can easily drive users away from the site, and they may even tell their friends to avoid your site.

As long as you are using a responsive platform like WordPress, most of this will be done for you automatically. Thus, it is free.

3. Integrate Social Media

Social media has become a cornerstone for most marketing teams today. And the good news is that using social media is completely free, thus you can market effectively. That said, growing your social media presence is not easy or quick.

As such, before you can start using social media as an effective marketing tool, you’ll need to network and build a presence.

Unfortunately, there is no surefire way to grow a social media channel. It largely comes down to your messaging, how engaging your content is, and luck. That said, virtually every business today relies on social media to promote its business.

For example, Facebook remains one of the more dominant social media platforms. It allows you to build a business page to help promote your business. Be sure to fill this out and ensure that your main profile links to it.

That way, when you interact with other Facebook users, they may see the link to the page and visit it.

Some other things you can do for free include:

Adding Daily Posts
Daily engagement is key to growing a social media brand. Posting daily, or at the very least consistently, will help visitors remember your content exists and regularly check out your posts. That said, you need to make sure it is engaging. No one wants to see a profile that just consists of links to a store or blog.

Use Media Content
Today, most social media content consists of images or videos. The average user scrolling down Facebook, Instagram, or X does not bother reading walls of text. Instead, they often stop when an image or video clip catches their eye. Thus, you need to learn how to effectively utilize media content like images and videos. Videos are 6 times more likely to be shared than text.

Create Engaging Content
Social media is an extremely competitive platform nowadays. Everyone is competing for attention, thus, you need to make sure that what you create is engaging. You need to create posts that are not only interesting but also directly related to your business. For example, if you own a clothes store, sharing daily outfits consisting of clothing you sell is a great option. It all comes down to your industry.

Adding Social Buttons
Naturally, you want to leverage your existing audience to quickly grow your social media presence. To do this, be sure to add social media share buttons on your website. This is extremely common, and you would be hard pressed to find a site that doesn’t contain links to Facebook, Instagram, X, and more. If you use WordPress, there are plenty of plugins that can do this for you.

4. Focus On Your Target Audience

One of the biggest mistakes that websites try is to target everyone. While this might sound like a smart thing to do to attract the largest audience, the truth is that it is the worst way to grow quickly.

This is because focusing on a specific audience allows you to craft a more effective marketing strategy.

For example, if you were trying to sell life insurance, you won’t have much luck targeting younger generations. Instead, you would want to focus on an older audience that would consider buying your insurance policy.

The more you try to spread out your message to appeal to a wider audience, the less effective it becomes. Thus, you need to focus on your niche to have the maximum impact. This also helps you refine your marketing strategy.

For instance, let’s say you were examining your social media content to see which is the most effective. If your goal is to reach an older audience, you would have an easier time spending more time on Facebook as opposed to using TikTok.

This becomes even more important if you decide to start purchasing ad space, as you’ll have a better idea of what is more effective.

It’s also worth taking a look at what audience you are reaching. Often, beginners try to target the 18-34 age range, but many businesses discover that there customer base is older than that. Thus, you may need to change your focus.

No marketing strategy you try will be effective if you do not have a target audience in mind, thus take time and figure that out first.

5. Take Advantage of Free Marketing Tools

Marketing has become an essential part of every business. As a result, a variety of free marketing tools has made its way to the public, thus offering a free way to help formulate a marketing strategy and keep track of it.

Marketing tools come in a variety of types that can help you quickly grow your online business.

For example, typically, if a website were trying to grow fast, it would often allocate a lot of resources to purchasing ad space on most major platforms. This allows them to reach customers quickly, but that costs a lot of money.

The good news is that many of these platforms will offer you some free ad space to give you a taste.

For instance, Google Ads offers credits for new users when they sign up. These credits can be used to launch ads. This is free to do, but extremely limited. The point is to show you how effective Google Ads is before you make a purchase.

Other platforms have similar programs in place, but have different limitations to consider. Of course, this is only one option. We talked earlier about the importance of social media, but the truth is that it is very time consuming.

Taking the time to write a post for Facebook, Instagram, X, and so on every day can get exhausting. Luckily, several free tools allow you to craft a single message and post it on all of your social media platforms.

One such program is Buffer, and it can help simplify your social media marketing for free.

If you choose to build your website with WordPress, it is worth pointing out that you have access to thousands of free plugins. These plugins contain a ton of free marketing tools that allow you to build newsletters, utilize CRM software, and more for free.

6. Network with Complementary Businesses

Networking is a powerful tool that every business should utilize. The idea behind it is simple: every business is trying to reach new customers, but all have the same problems when trying to grow.

Thus, businesses that do not directly compete with one another should work together.

For example, consider two businesses. One makes tables, and the other produces tablecloths. The businesses are closely related, but do not interfere with each other. Instead, they compliment one another.

Thus, promoting each other can help you tap into each others existing audience. Most businesses of equal size will do this for free, thus, it is a great tactic that can be utilized at any level.

If your interested in a more realistic example, consider Google and Samsung. Samsung partners with Google to create android phones. Thus, Google benefits from Samsungs audience, while Samsung benefits from Googles audience.

It’s a win-win for both brands. This concept can apply to any business.

7. Start An Affiliate Program

An affiliate program allows for individuals to sign up and be able to earn a comission everytime they make a sale through an affiliate link. Virtually, all major businesses today have some kind of affiliate or referal program in place.

The reason is simple: it works. And just to be clear you only pay a comission when a sale is made, thus you really are not paying anything.

Many influencers will sign up for affiliate programs to promote products that they believe their audience would like. Thus, by having one, you create an environment where influencers may be more interested in your brand.

Perhaps one of the more well-known affiliate programs is Amazon. Anyone can sign up for Amazon Affiliates and make money by including the links in their blogs. Amazon is a trusted brand, used by millions of people.

Thus, it has a lot of trust behind it, and with proper marketing, you can sell anything to your audience.

You will need an affiliate tool to create an affiliate program. Most of these will cost money, but there are free options like the Affiliates plugin for WordPress.

8. Utilize FOMO Marketing

FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out is a popular marketing strategy used by nearly every business. The concept is simple, make users feel like they will miss out on a great deal or time limited product, which coerces them into buying.

FOMO marketing is highly effective and can increase click-through rates by 14%!

For example, have you ever visited an online store that has a big timer counting down how long you have left to claim a deal? This is FOMO marketing. Other example, include phrases like limited stock, seasonal, and more.

Online stores will often show you how many are left in stock to make it seem like the product is close to selling out. There are a lot of ways to take advantage ofthis technique, and it won’t cost you a penny to do so.

Just keep in mind that while FOMO can be a powerful marketing tool, it can also drive away some visitors. As FOMO has become more widespread, many users have become aware of the technique, thus avoiding stores that push it.

You want to find an effective middle ground where it can entice users, but not come off too strong as to scare visitors away.

9. Add Social Proofs to Your Site

Social proofs are another type of physiological manipulation that online businesses can take advantage of. The concept is simple, businesses post stats that show how many others have done a certain action, which then encourages others to follow suit.

This kind of tactic can be utilized by any kind of business.

For example, let’s say you run a blog. You can show off how many unique readers you have by saying “100,000 Monthly Readers” or something to that effect. This can help persuade the user to consider reading if many people are doing so.

You can often see this effect in real time when looking at platforms like YouTube. Many users will only watch videos that have a lot of views. This is because they think it will be higher quality because it already has so many views.

Simply put, many people are unwilling to be the first to do something, but are happy to follow others in a trend once it is set.

Social proofs are not just limited to statistics. Businesses often have users write testimonials or reviews to help incentivize other customers to buy a product. Someone thinking about buying a product may feel justified to read a review from someone else who has a positive experience.

Seeing a positive review can validate their opinion that the product is a good purchase, thus motivating them to make the sale.

10. Join Online Communities

Most people today are part of multiple online communities. This can be something simple, like being part of a Facebook group or joining a subreddit. Many businesses can trace their roots to these online communities.

These present a unique opportunity to directly interact with people interested in a specific niche that may become customers.

For example, if you are a freelance artist, joining video game communities where players regularly commission artists to draw their characters is a smart tactic. Not only can you talk about the hobby to make yourself stand out, but you can also show off your art.

This concept can be applied to nearly any topic and business. Not only can you advertise, but you can also figure out what that audience is interested in.

Often, you may hear about a problem everyone in a community has, and thus, can come up with a solution that your business can offer. It helps you better serve that niche and grow your business’s authority within that circle.

However, there is one rule you must follow to find success in this. You must actively engage with the community, and not exclusively try to sell a service.

Over the years, many of the communities have formed strict guidelines about adding links to a store page and other things of this nature. This is because that isn’t the purpose of the community. Advertising you do, must make sense to the topic.

For example, if there is a community dedicated to showing out outfits in a game. Drawing your character to show off your art skills may entice others in the community to ask who drew that. That’s an opening to say, “I did, and you can DM to commission your own.”

It’s simple, but highly effective marketing that you can do for free.

Invest in Your Business

As you can see, there are a variety of ways you can improve your online presence without spending a penny, but it undoubtedly requires more time and effort. As such, consider investing in your marketing efforts as soon as you can afford to.

The less time you need to spend doing so manually, the more time you can focus on improving the customer experience. And if I’m being honest, advertising platforms do a better job at reaching your target audience.

Thus, not only will it save you time, it will undoubtedly be more effective in the long run.

What methods do you use to grow your business for free? How long did it take you to establish a customer base?