Whether you’re a brand new startup trying to launch a business from home or you’ve got an established brand with a great online presence, it’s crucial that you keep it growing. Stagnation is the death of all brands from small startups to national chains.

The following tips will help you build your online business without spending a fortune.

Make sure your website is optimized for mobile

Mobile web traffic surpassed traditional web traffic, and mobile web traffic is only going to increase the gap with each passing year. Already, more than half of your website visitors aren’t having a positive experience on your site if it’s not mobile optimized. Mobile optimization is inexpensive because the majority of website building platforms already have responsive design which does it for you.

Find out all you can about your audience

You’ll waste less money trying to find a marketing approach that works if you just take some time to get to know your existing customer base (and your ideal customer) better. Find unobtrusive ways to get information from customers along the way.

Start small by asking for an email address or phone number and get permission to email or text. Offer small incentives in exchange for personal info like birthdate, gender, and age. Short surveys after purchases are a great way to obtain this kind of info from customers.

Invest in SMS marketing

Mobile is an increasingly important aspect of digital marketing and there’s no better place to start with mobile marketing than SMS, or text messaging. Text messages only cost a few pennies per text so it’s one of the most affordable digital channels out there.

Add to that the fact that you’re only sending them to people who’ve opted in and that 98% of your recipients will open and read your text in three minutes or less and you realize how cost-effective SMS marketing is.

Create engaging content

You can diversify your marketing efforts by launching a content marketing campaign. Content marketing is different from other marketing efforts in that the primary goal isn’t to make sales, but rather, to create awareness, drive engagement, and generate leads that may one day become loyal customers.

Content marketing can be as simple as adding a blog to your company website and paying a freelancer to post two or three articles a week too it. If your brand is committed to producing high-quality content, potential customers will seek you out.

Segment and personalize

Using the information you obtain from following the advice in tip number two, you can segment your audience by age, gender, interests, or other criteria and provide more personalized marketing for the various segments.

Segmentation and personalization of your marketing efforts is cheaper in the long run since you won’t be wasting money sending ads that aren’t relevant to the people you’re sending them to.

Build a strong social media presence

The great thing about social media is that it’s free to create a business page and you get a lot of free advertising in the form of followers who share your posts where their friends and family can see them.

Once you’ve gotten started and are seeing success, you can invest in paid advertising and a full- or part-time social media person to maintain your various social media pages.