Here is an overview of five types of marketing strategies to sell more you can use in 2019 to grow your business for free.

1. Social Media Marketing

Social media is the perfect marketing tool for entrepreneurs who want to start a business.

Free, extremely powerful and, if used in the right way, they will help you increase the sales of your online store exponentially.

About 79 percent of the US population uses social media, so it's not surprising that these tools have incredible potential!

Tips for social media marketing

1. Choose the social media platform that best fits your brand

There are so many social media platforms in 2019, but they don't all work the same way.

Some social media platforms are more suitable for people with certain demographic or psychographic characteristics.

For example, Instagram tends to be better for Millennials, Snapchat is great for Generation Z marketing, and LinkedIn is usually better for business marketing.

In fact, 92% of B2B marketing experts prefer to use LinkedIn compared to all other platforms.

So, do research to make sure you choose the best social media platform to connect with your target audience.

2. Remember that relationships are more important than sales

It might seem counter-productive, but the way to sell more is to focus on relationships, not on sales themselves. This is because social media marketing is essentially marketing in terms of relationships. The moment of direct sales is lower down in the sales funnel.

Social media marketing is a long-term issue.

The idea is to develop over time a real connection with your target audience. In this way, you will build a following of loyal customers who will regularly purchase your products and promote your brand.

Doing social media marketing correctly will repay you abundantly: for example, regular customers spend 67% more than new customers.

3. Always post with a certain frequency

Relationships take time, so being constant is of fundamental importance.

You must show yourself and develop an intimate and authentic presence of the brand with which your followers interact regularly.

Furthermore, this is another reason to choose only a handful of social media platforms to focus on.

If you try to use them all, you may not be able to effectively impose your presence and it may be more difficult to constantly manage social media .

2. Influencer marketing

Social media influencers who will be willing to work with you and your brand to promote your products or services with their followers are more than you can imagine.

It's an effective way to present your products to your target market, but why does it work so well?

The influencer marketing exploits a powerful social phenomenon called "social proof". It refers to the fact that people are strongly influenced by the opinions, actions and recommendations of others.

Other commonly used forms of social proof are product reviews, testimonials and case studies.

There are six main types of influencer marketing campaigns:

• Sponsored content
• Collaborations with products and contents
• Reviews
• Competitions and giveaway
• "Takeover" on your profile
• Constant ambassadors

Many great influencers expect compensation in exchange for a promotion.

However, many small influencers will be happy to promote your products in exchange for gifts or visibility for their profile.

So what should you focus on with this marketing strategy?

Advice for influencer marketing

1. Make sure you carry out the appropriate research

The sense of influencer marketing is to expose your products to your target audience through someone they trust and ... well, you influence them to buy from your store.

The success of this marketing strategy depends on two factors.

Firstly, do the influencer followers you selected reflect your target audience? In other words, it makes no sense to work with a beauty influencer to sell bicycle accessories.

Secondly, how active are their followers? Of course, the influencer you want to collaborate with could also have 100,000 followers, but how many likes and comments do you get from your posts? Remember to look for influencers who have followers who actively interact with the content.

2. Prefer smaller influencers

The smaller influencers, or micro influencers, typically have between 5,000 and 50,000 followers.

Compared to their more established colleagues, micro-influencers are easier to contact, are less likely to require high fees and are actually even more effective.

In fact, Collective Bias has discovered that only 3% of buyers are influenced by celebrities, while 30% of consumers are inclined to buy a product recommended by a non-famous blogger.

This is because smaller influencers tend to have stronger and more personal relationships with their followers.

3. Choose a proactive approach and contact them yourself

"Start with a private message on Instagram," said Zach Benson , founder of Assistagram .

"Tell him you're interested in working with them. Your message must be short, clear and conversational. Include relevant profiles, a direct request and your business. "

4. Develops long-term relationships

Long-term partnerships with influencers can be incredibly powerful. Most brands use the term ambassador.

Relations with ambassadors improve social proof and strengthen market presence. In other words, if you work with an influencer for a longer period of time, more people among your followers are likely to become your customers.

3. Content Marketing

The content marketing is a marketing strategy that includes the process of creating, publishing and delivering content to attract and engage your target audience.

(This article you are reading is content marketing!)

Furthermore, there are many different types of content that you can create for free, such as:

• Video
• Blog post
• Images
• GIF
• infographics
• Case studies
• Ebook
• White paper
• Podcast

Content marketing strategies can be incredibly effective.

One study found that it can cost 62% less than traditional marketing and generate three times more potential customers.

Content marketing is also an important part of social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).

Content marketing tips

1. Focus on the value of your content

The content you create must be interesting and engaging.

Think about content that may interest your target audience, or that can teach them something new they care about.

2. Optimize your site and content according to these keywords

Once you have a set of keywords searched by your target audience, you will need to use them in your content and in the web pages you create.

For blog content you can help yourself with an online tool like SEO Review Tools, Yoast, or SEMrush.

Shopify makes it easy to optimize your web pages for SEO - take a look at this guide on how to add keywords to your website .

3. Always update old content

Google gives priority to updated content.

Which makes sense: the updated content is more likely to be more relevant to the searcher.

So, as your content becomes obsolete, review it and update it. Just remove the outdated parts, add any new relevant information and optimize the keywords.

Even if you can't update parts of a podcast or a YouTube video, you can create new content by revisiting popular topics, to ensure the availability of relevant content.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest marketing strategies.

And although it may not be as interesting as it once was, it still has a huge return on investment.

One of the strengths of this marketing strategy is that you will have total control. This means that it is not a marketing channel influenced by third parties like social media algorithms.

There are so many different types of email marketing campaigns that you can use to grow your business, including:

1. Send a follow-up email to consumers who leave the cart
2. Grow new subscribers with a welcome sequence
3. Promote new products
4. Share discounts, offers and giveaways
5. Follow up with new customers to retain them and get them to buy again
6. Ask for reviews and collect feedback
7. Re-establish contact with inactive subscribers to get new sales

So how do you follow the email marketing strategy?

Email marketing tips

1. Create an effective lead magnet

Imagine the lead magnet as a lure.

Often it is a sort of premium content or a discount designed to attract new visitors with the aim of turning them into customers.

2. Segment your mailing list

The segmentation of the mailing list is a way to divide your subscriber list into groups.

This allows you to send different emails to different groups of people. In other words, it is possible to strategically address subscribers at different stages of the buyer's journey.

This type of segmentation is an incredibly effective marketing strategy.

In fact, the Direct Marketing Association has found that 77% of the email marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted and activated campaigns.

3. Use email templates

Writing amazing e-mails from scratch can take time, especially if you've never written an email campaign before.

Instead, start with some effective email marketing models.

Marketing strategies at a glance

You don't need millions of euros to start a successful business.

Thanks to these free marketing strategies, anyone with a computer, an internet connection and a little good will can start an online business.

Here is a summary of the main marketing strategies:

Social Media Marketing

1. Choose only a few social media platforms to focus on.
2. Make sure that a large part of your target audience interacts on these sites.
3. Relationships are more important than sales.
4. Be consistent with your social media program.

Influencer Marketing

1. Create an attractive offer: what do they earn?
2. Be sure to research the influencers in depth before collaborating.
3. Stick to the smaller influencers to get started.
4. Be proactive and contact several influencers.
5. Develop long-term relationships with ambassadors.

Content Marketing

1. Focus on production and value sharing.
2. Entertain your audience or teach them something.
3. Reuse content for different channels and platforms.
4. Invest in the long term.

Search Engine Optimization

1. Search for effective keywords that your target audience is already looking for.
2. Optimize your website and content for these keywords.
3. Update and continually renew old content to ensure it remains relevant.

Email Marketing

1. Create a compelling lead magnet to get people to join your mailing list.
2. Segment your mailing list into groups so that you can strategically target people at different stages of the buyer's journey.
3. Start by using effective email templates to save time.