Who said marketing has to be expensive? Whether you have money to spend on marketing or not, there a lot of things you can do that don’t cost a dime. Here is a guide on how you can market your company for free:
Track before you act
Before you start any marketing initiatives, you need to make sure you have the correct tracking in place. This way you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. The last thing you want to do is spend time on things that aren’t working.
An easy way to do this is through the use of Google Analytics, which is free. If you are already using it, that’s great. If you aren’t, here is a short video that explains how to use it.
Search engine traffic converts
One way to get more traffic to your website is to optimize it for search engines. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have millions, if not billions of visitors. So why not have some of those visitors come on over to your website?
Before you start optimizing your site for search engines, there are a few things you should know:
- There are 2 main aspects that will affect how much traffic you receive from search engines.
- Links – the more websites linking to your website, the higher it will ranking. Think of links as votes, if you have more votes than your competition, you will usually rank higher than them.
- Code – if a search engine can’t read your website, then there is no way that it will know what it is about and what keywords to rank it for. It is very important to make sure your website code is clean so that a search engine can understand what your website is about.
- Keep it simple – there is nothing wrong with having a cool looking site, such as those flash based movie sites, but they usually don’t rank well on search engines. In most cases, the simpler looking sites rank better.
- Content is king – you have to have content (text) on your website. If your website is about blue widgets, then naturally the word “blue widgets” should be inside your websites content. This helps search engines determine what to rank your website for.
- Page 1 is all that matters – if you want traffic from search engines, you have to rank on page 1 of the search results. Ranking on page 2, 3, or even 4, doesn’t drive much traffic.
- The long tail – your goal shouldn’t be to rank for generic keywords. Instead you want to rank for niche and highly relevant keywords because those visitors will more likely convert into sales.
Now that you know a bit about search engines, there are 2 articles you need to read if you want search engine traffic.
- If you want more search engine traffic for your blog, read this post that I wrote a few months ago.
- If your website isn’t a blog, read the beginner’s guide to search engine optimization. It will teach you everything you need to know about getting more search engine traffic.
Email marketing isn’t spam
No matter what type of website you have, you should be collecting your visitor’s email address. Now you shouldn’t force this upon them, but if they sign up for something or purchase a product, make sure you collect their email address.
For example, John Chow offers his readers a free ebook. To receive the ebook, you have to enter in your email address, which he’ll send promotions to in the future.
Once you have collected a few emails, you can use services like Mail Chimp to blast out special promotions to your email list. But before you get started, there are a few things you need to know about email marketing:
- Only send emails to opted in email addresses. If you send promotional emails to addresses that aren’t opted in, your emails will likely get marked as spam. And if too many of them get marked as spam, no one will be able to receive them.
- Don’t send out too many emails. If you send emails every day, you’ll notice that people will tend to ignore them. So try and only send them when you have something good to say or offer.
- Avoid spam filters. Before you send out any emails, read up on spam filters.
Create some buzz
The blogosphere is a great place to go to if you want to create some buzz about your company and boost your traffic. If you want to get covered in the blogosphere there are a few steps that you have to follow:
- Create something that is news worthy – bloggers want something hot to talk about. Whether it is something cool and exciting about your company or even a simple contest, bloggers need something to talk about. If you don’t have that, you won’t get coverage from the blogosphere.
- Target a select group of bloggers – after you have something that is news worthy, you want to create a relevant list of bloggers to target. You can determine if a blog is relevant by checking if they have written on things similar to what you want them to blog about.
- Contact bloggers – once you are ready to get covered in the blogosphere, you want to start contacting your list of bloggers. The easiest way to do this is by writing a custom tailored email to each blogger on your list.
- Build relationships – even after you are done contacting the bloggers on your list, you should try and build relationships with other bloggers. You never know when you’ll want more coverage in the blogosphere, and knowing bloggers on a personal level never hurts.
Getting bloggers to write about your company isn’t an easy thing to do. Just like most things, it is a numbers game because most of the bloggers you email won’t write about your company. So don’t give up too easily!
Don’t be afraid of social media
Although social media maybe new to you, it doesn’t mean you should be afraid of it. Just look at Dell, they have sold 3 million dollars worth of computers through Twitter.
Here are some useful links that will teach you how to use social media as a marketing channel:
- Create a Facebook profile – although Facebook profiles are personal, they can still be used to drive traffic to your business. For example, Facebook is one of the top referring traffic sources to Quick Sprout. Every time I write a blog post, I also push it out on my Facebook profile so my friends can see it.
- Don’t use Twitter for fun – why not use it to promote your business? Dell isn’t the only company on Twitter, there are thousands of companies that are leveraging it every day.
- Get dugg – although Digg isn’t the hottest social site on the web, it is the most effective social site in driving links to your website. All you have to do is get to the Digg homepage. And as I mentioned above, the more links you have the more search engine traffic you’ll end up getting.
- Videos can go viral too – if you have a camera handy, you can always create a video and get it popular on video sites like YouTube. Not only do they get tons of traffic, but those videos will also rank well on search engines like Google. Just make sure you mention your business or URL within the video.
- Look beyond the surface – social networks aren’t the only type of social sites that you should be leveraging. Sites like Docstoc and Scribd let you upload documents on whatever you want. Through those sites you can upload documents about your company. Those sites are so powerful that your content will rank high on the search engines and more people will end up knowing about your company.
- Old is sexy – although forums aren’t sexy, they are still popular. Find forums related to your business and start contributing to them. Don’t talk about your business, but just contribute by answering people’s questions. As long as you add your company URL in your forum signature, you will get more people to come over to your website.
The possibility with leveraging the social web as a marketing channel is endless. You just have to be creative and think out of the box.
Final thoughts
Don’t fall into the mindset that marketing costs money. You don’t have to spend money to market your company!
There are tons of examples of successful companies like Zimbra (acquired by Yahoo) who didn’t spend money on marketing and are very successful. Hell, even Google didn’t spend money on marketing for the first few years they were in business and they did very well.
So don’t let anyone tell you that you need to spend money on marketing. There are always other options.
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Great advice Neil. The only challenge is…all this takes work
No, this is the best way for someone who has no marketing dollars to blow their blog or website up. People, spend your time wisley, instead of goofin off watching TV or whatever, spend your nights on following Neil’s advice.
A lot of work indeed! It also takes time. At least the people that just can’t cut it are weeded out
I guess it is a good thing that my TV isn’t working properly lately.
That’s great to hear! That’s one thing you should procrastinate on getting fixed
The fact that it does take time and consistent effort is the very reason why most people won’t do it and it actually makes it easier for the people that will. Most people just want the easy way out. They want to push a button and make everything work.
Everyone is looking for that “magic pill”
The bottom line is that television really eats away at your time and productivity. If you want to start doing your own thing then those precious hours wasted in front of the telly is the ideal time to use to start getting your online groove going. Now just don’t get hooked on facebook
It’s really nothing more than chewing gum for your brain.
Terrific advice Neil. I find a lot of people forget about the power of opt in email (so focused on social media). In my experience, small businesses can build a solid email base by simply asking existing costumers if they want to get specials, newsletters and such. As you’ve said many times, it takes effort, but not always money.
Cheers!
Having a plan of action helps… You must know your potential market/customers/niche to define your plan.
Your plan should include creating feedback loops for every potential customer and customer status you have/will have. Then each of your marketing efforts become targeted and relevant to the customer > which is much more engaging.
@nuzunet
Right, the more customizable you can be for your audience, the better.
If you haven’t started collecting email addresses, you should ASAP!
That is the common refrain most internet marketers have these days as ” build that mailing list ” and ” the money is in the list ” is all you hear. Sage advice indeed. Managing that list is where the trick lies. You still need to give away ample free stuff, and only occasional offers, so people feel they’re getting value for money from you and not a hard sell. When the salespitch does get thrown, you are preaching to the converted, and should have a very good response.
Collecting the list is one thing, providing them with helpful and useful information is definitely another.
Spamming has many risks within itself and even if you don’t think you are spamming, your recipients might. This is a fine line and one that email marketers certainly have to walk along. What’s important is that when you use a spam checker to evaluate your content you will ensure that everything you send out is on the up and up. That’s really important and it will keep you out of trouble, which could include big fines and other problems!
Laws are going to get even tougher, so yes, it’s important to be on top of it.
What are the laws going to be changed to? Have they said anything about that? I am constantly removing myself from spam list and I still get them. I hope they will do something. Still I think it is a bit quirky to fine people too much for spam, unless they are doing serious amounts of it.
It will obviously vary from state to state etc. but if you plan on doing email marketing, just be careful about using a legit list.
Aweber’s integrate spam checking tool makes it pretty easy to take care of that side of things.
And although some people like making fancy HTML email newsletters, I like sticking to simple text based ones because they’re both easier to read and less likely to get sent to the Junk folder by mistake.
HTML emails do work, but you should obviously do as much testing as possible because like you already know, it does often get sent to spam
Yeah, I am totally agree what you said. Now, I must have a action plan with the points what Neil Patel said that above and then to maintain what to do daily task to drive quality traffic and visitor to my website without cost the marketing money.
You only want to drive the high quality traffic, thats what your focus should be on. To do this, all you need to do is come up with the good quality content.
Great info Neil,
I am currently implementing or learning how to implement each of the strategies that you spoke of. However this is the first I have heard of docstoc or scribd. I will definitely look into that as I was thinking of writing a white paper about all of the pitfalls of Debt Settlement and Debt Settlement Programs that consumers are not made aware of in the sales pitches. That sounds like a perfect place to upload something like that.
Free or low cost marketing is very important to my financial consulting business because there are so many fly by night companies out there offering to help people get out of debt, that so much money has been flooded into the marketplace for these guys to attract customers. Unfortunately since they charge consumers an incredibly large amount of money they can afford to spend that money and drive up advertising costs.
Since my focus is to help consumers for much less money, I always need to think outside the box and figure out ways to let consumers know about the options I have without spending a lot of money. That way I am not forced to pass on those costs to them.
Great and timely post for me.
Glad to hear it! Yes, I’ve seen too many of those fly by night companies just recently.
Great post, Neil! I totally agree and believe there are so many opportunities out there to market your company for free. Beginning with providing quality, unique content/products/services and keeping your customers satisfied and engaged will also help your word-of-mouth marketing which is free and highly effective. To echo @nuzunet, I also think your marketing efforts should be targeted at the right audience, target those niches, and target the right demographics.
The more specific you are with your audience, the better you will do with sales.
I love that Fedex picture! That is simply brilliant!
Guerilla marketing is extremely important for new businesses (online or traditional) which have low or no marketing budget.
The basic (high level) principle that I has helped me in past ventures has been:
1. Find out the places where your ideal user/client base is hanging out at.
2. Use creative methods (like the ones Neil mentioned in this post) to attract those users to your product or service.
Anything else you do pretty much falls into one of those two slots.
-Arif
See most people forget that it does take time for all of this too happen. Seldom does success happen overnight.
Great post. Thanks!!
Further to your comment about attracting the long tail, how effective do you think an Adwords (and alike) campaign for niche terms and phrases could be in attracting users in the early days of your marketing plan?
@joshsrathour
it worked excellent before, and it still has an impact now.
So don’t be afraid to participate in social media just because you don’t see the ROI. You’re not likely to, at least not immediately and not in a way you can pinpoint one event causing another. But over time, you can build your social reputation. This leads to credibility. And over time that credibility and awareness will very likely lead to an increase in your customer base.
It takes time in social media to build a profile or a network of people to help you promote your work. Just stay away from spamming people and genuinely build a network.
Unfortunately I don’t think most people using social media have taken your advice Neil. It seems like 90% of the stuff I see on twitter is just spam. I get so much of it I don’t even know how to keep up with the legitimate stuff that I might want to see. I just stop following people that continually send spam.
I mean I have no problem with people promoting their stuff. But when they start sending the same stuff multiple times a day or every affiliate product under the sun every other hour, it gets a little much.
I agree, it’s annoying and frankly, it shouldn’t be tolerated. Unfollow those who can’t provide you with something interesting enough.
Twitter is a challenge to me, as I just do not have the time to effectively monitor it, and end up missing the good stuff and being trapped by the spamsters. Other social networks offer more value on other levels to me. I love SU and Digg.
Well that maybe true, you probably just need to get more used to twitter before you can effectively use it.
As the owner of a company that specializes in teaching others how to market for almost no cost, I could not agree with your advice more. However, one will necessarily need to invest time in learning the craft as opposed to investing money. For some, that is a great option.
-Don
A free option is always great
. Right, it does take a ton of time though.
There are some golden nuggests of wisdom in this post. Although some folks would probably say that it’s “standard” online marketing, I would argue that “standard” works. In my experience, the trick has always been to take basic marketing methods and try to apply some creativity to it. Press releases is a great example. If you keep up with current news, you can just about always find a news story that has some kind of content that you can either apply or relate to your particular market. By leveraging those current or related stories into newsworthy press releases tied to your market, you can create some buzz and traffic. The cost: some time and effort.
Some of the best ways to market yourself are free in money, but cost a lot in time.
If you are doing well you dont need to spend on marketing. If your not doing well you dont need to spend on marketing because your not that good yet to attract people to you and thus you want to do marketing.
My 1RS.
Lol, interestingly put. If you are hustling and able to go out and get business, marketing yourself isn’t as necessary.
IMO, you don’t need to spend on marketing if you don’t mind “slow” (e.g. word of mouth) marketing. I’d say if you have a unique, novel product, you wouldn’t need to market it, and just have the product walk the walk and talk the talk. But if you are in a competitive market and your product may not be cutting-edge, then marketing your product may be necessary.
If you lack the money, than you’re not necessarily out of luck…
Neil, shhhhhhh be quite. Don’t tell everyone that they can do it all for free. J/k
Great post though. I think that most people should find a good mix, being honest with themselves, on certain things that they can do themselves and other things they should outsource to professionals. But trying everything, and educating yourself on how things work is definitely a big first step. That way when you hire a pro you’ll know how to audit their work.
There is a lot of time involved and undoubtedly a lot of trial and error.
SEO is overrated. Focus on putting out good content and reaching out to people rather than keywords and linking. It’s a much more sustainable plan, and a lot more authentic. Bottom line is, if you want traffic, don’t wait for it to come to you.
I think it’d be best to keep SEO in mind, rather than put it to the side and worry strictly on content alone. If you can seemingly target low-competition, mid-high volume keywords in your content… while at the same time delivering content-rich information, you’ll get the double whammy effect of free backlinks AND SEO-targeted traffic.
Yeah, you need balance and shouldn’t put SEO on the side. I think to fully optimize your site you need the solid content plus SEO.
Yes, both are important. You can have a fully optimized site, but with crappy content, you’ll have a crappy site.
You need SEO, but yes content is more important. It’s one of those things that are short term long term.
SEO is never overrated, SEO does really matter ! SEO matter as much as Content
Too many people get into SEO and forget about their content. Worry about the SEO after you start writing some really powerful and amazing articles.
Great advice. It seems a lot of marketers have giving up on get free traffic from the search engines. They seem to rather pay for traffic rather than spend the time to optimize their sites for the search engines.
That do it because they think its the easy way to go. Obviously not a cost efficient idea. Stick with quality.
Great Tips. Everyone also needs to realize that you will not be ranked high on search engines overnight. It takes time along with work.
Overnight success is just something people are sold on to believe. Avoid that mentality and be prepared for the long and rough path ahead.
Another suggestion to gearing your SEO-optimized content towards your audience would be to use the Google Keyword tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). This is typically used for the Adwords platform to gauge a keywords’ competitiveness or search volume, but it is also a good way to find out what search terms (or similar search terms) people are using for a given keyword.
That’s great, thanks for pointing it out. That tool is amazing.
Neil, you mentioned Google Analytics– Which I think is one of the best web analytics tool (that’s free). There are quite a few “hidden” tips and tricks (or hacks via Greasemonkey) that your blog followers may find useful. Just type in “Google Analytics hacks” in Google, and you’ll find a plethora of tips on tracking the full referrer URL, tracking exact keywords, and too much more to list.
Hmm, interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Do whatever it takes.
All really great tips. Google analytics is by far the best free tool out there to keep statistics on a website. All the things mentioned in this article are spot on. Marketing does not have to be expensive since there are so many revenues out there in which you can market for free. I think one huge point you make is the making a buzz. If you make a huge buzz on a post you write, people will come flocking to your site. It can sometimes have a snowballing effect and really pick up the traffic to your site.
It is very much like snowball effect and it takes time to build up a business and let it grow.
hey ! great advice , having just launched my own e-learning website this month, and going OVER BUDGET this information will help get me more hits/views/customers etc. thank you
Being over budget, something I can easily relate too
Nice tips, Google analytics is pretty awesome, I used to use statcounter before that (which was still pretty cool) but you have to use it.
And the tip about relationships is spot on, I’ve made so much progress since I started getting to know people I wish I’d done it earlier
I’ll be stopping by here again.
Cheers,
Sean
Same thing here with building relationships. I’ve heard it time and time again, but just recently, I’ve found out that “it’s not what you know, but who you know”.
Well, what you know is equally important because who you know will take far, but you’ll eventually need to carry yourself.
I remember using stat counters back in the day, they’re pretty fun. I look forward to having you around here some more.
Neil,
Any web marketing is worthless without analytics. Great nod to GA. In terms of email marketing, do you feel it best to take the time to create a custom landing page for each email campaign (with limited resources on hand), or do you think we can get by with a general landing page? I know it’s a loaded question, but I just want to see if what the best allocation of design resources are.
Any insights would be great.
Thanks!
a general landing page can do just fine, but remember it’s important to TEST TEST TEST. Use google website optimizer to see what works for you.
I have been following your blog for about a year now and I really enjoy it. This is one of your more helpful posts. I can see that your content is getting progressively more informative and structured. You offer great advice with enough room for marginal, cognitive thinking that is expected of entrepreneurs. I think you’re decision to continue school has benefited you immensely with your writing. As a fellow young entrepreneur, I sincerely hope our paths cross one day. Keep up the great work!
I’m glad you’ve been following me for so long. Also, it’s great that you’ve seen a big difference.
Although businesses can look about doing the things themselves but it is always advisable to talk to an expert in the field so that they know what they are doing. Beating behind the bush and wasting time shouldn’t be on the list for the small businesses.
Time is one thing a small a business can’t afford to loose…not to mention the obvious money.
Thanks for the great information. I am in the bootstrapping phase of development at my site, so this has a lot of practical tips that are great. I want to add video and do more partnering with other bloggers in my niche as a way to improve things.
This is the free marketing method I use. I optimize my website for the search engines and then collect my visitors email addresses by offering a free report. This allows my to continue to get targeted search engine traffic while building a highly targeted lists that gives me instant traffic each time I broadcast a message.
That supposed to be a great way to increase conversations
Neil,
You made the most powerful suggestion in the beginning of this blog – to track your results before you implementing any new emarketing tactic. Very crucial “What get’s measured gets improved!”
After seeing Tim Ferris at the Wordpress Conference promoting his use of the CrazyEgg visualizer on his blog, I am excited to start using it on my own company blog.
Thanks Neil!
Glad to know it made an impact with you. It’s always important to know stuff like that. That’s how we can focus on what works and making it better.
Though “Content is King”, Niel I would also say that its design that plays huge role in social media viral marketing.
Design plays a huge role, no doubt, but the quality of what you have will make or break your success.
These are all great points… I love the “magic pill” comment. I does say that content is king but it was not said that following html standards in that content is king! Examples would be to use proper h1, h2, b and other tags…
Yes that is important for the right “look”
Neil, you haven’t mentioned article marketing. I know you can’t mention everything in a single post. But is it something you utilize?
If so, the question I’ve been asking bloggers is: would you publish completely new and separate content for articles than the posts on your blog, or do you prefer to “recycle” on and off your own sites?
Thanks, Phil
Be creative and use reports…send those reports off for free to market your site.
There are so many pieces of this crazy little puzzle of SEO!
SEO is definitely a puzzle, probably one of the puzzles with 10,000+ pieces lol
Hello my friends,thanks for the suggestions but everybody does these tactics so if you want to have a popular site you should do differrent things which nobody knows
Well, learn to be CREATIVE, and that will drastically put you ahead of the competition.
Great post, and all your strategies do work, but…if you’re REALLY tracking results, then you CAN spend money to acquire leads.
I do this all the time. Mostly I pay for traffic from Adwords, and I can do this because I know that $1 spent will bring back $2 or $4 or $8 in return. Not just on the front end but also on the back end, other related products I sell to the same customer.
Not that SEO is a bad thing. It’s not. But before I spend the time to do something with SEO, which will usually take lots of time with no immediate payoff, I want to be targeting the keywords that actually make people buy my product. By first doing PPC I know what these keywords are.
To the guy above that said everybody does these tactics, I’ll tell you why that’s actually a good thing. Most of my success hasn’t been in innovating, like many startups try to do. My whole strategy is to see what’s already selling and do the same, but better. I see who’s buying what, and supply them. That’s where the real money is. If other people are already doing it, that’s a good indication that it’s working and you should do it too, rather than wasting time with unproven ideas.
-Derek
Right, it all depends on what your product is and how competitive you market is. PPC is fantastic and amazing for some, but terrible for most.
I’m certainly not receiving a ton of traffic yet, but some things that have been most effective are:
– Interviewing respected people, who will usually tweet about their interview (and therefore reach thousands of more people). And the interviews themselves make for great content.
– Guest posting. Pretty simple. Not all bloggers will respond to your requests, but enough will, and the traffic can be fairly substantial.
– And being the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. I did this on one of Leo’s posts at zenhabits.net and later that day Leo placed a link to one of my articles on the Zen Habits Tumblr.
Well good for you ! You’re doing all the right things, but what’s most important is that you stay consistent doing them.
Personaly I think Email marketing is slowly losing power but one can still squeeze some profit using it.
Focus on building a high quality list and send good quality content. Learn to write persuasive copy.
All things in moderation…
If we had to do everything that every IM guru tells us to re:SEO of our websites then we would never eat and never sleep. I think if we can all just adopt a best practice mentality and for whatever it is we do, we do it well, then that should be ok.
Very true. If that’s all you focused on, your content would be severely impacted.
But How can we learn secret tactics about this issue to be on the first of competition?
Well the secrete to getting ahead of your competition is working your ass off. Donald Trump sleeps about 4 hours a day, that’s his secrete to staying ahead of the competition.
Thought provoking, but misleading. Even if you said “Stop paying for ADVERTISING” that wouldn’t in and of itself be good advice.
Frankly, most business people don’t have the time or background to do an effective job marketing their own business. All the things you’ve outlined are time consuming and require careful thought and analysis. They’re all good points.
The message to stop paying for marketing, especially in a recession, is what people want to hear, but it often deadly. Of course a business owner would love to kill their marketing budget, but six months from now when they’re wondering where all their customers went, they’ll wish they had spent some money on a marketing pro to get the word out!
The point is that too many people are expecting the world from advertising and then end up loosing everything because of it. Plus there are many other people out there that just can’t afford it.
Exactly, because those are potential customers. The more traffic and the better your conversion rate… the more money you’ll make.
I think most people shouldn’t need to spend money on marketing. Focusing on good quality information is really all one needs to do.
My suggestion is to save your money on marketing until you have something really rock solid to promote.
Right, the chances of you taking a small product and spending tons of money on it without really even testing the market is slim for success.
Yeah, market your business on both web as well as blog, that way traffic will come both ways and you would be able to generate income.
You need to focus on building as many backlinks (bridges) as you possibly can to come directly to your site. It’s how sites go from mediocre to huge.
How do you really track the effect of offline marketing on your website? Google analytics is useful as long as your referrers are web based.. but what about other forms of advertisement.. word of mouth, banners et al.?
Word of mouth is obviously difficult to track unless you put on your site a survey “how did you hear about us” It’s actually a pretty good way to learn about an important source that brings you traffic.
If you understand SEO, then you have made a big step towards free marketing. Else you will need to spend a lot for SEO services.
Everyone should understand the basics of SEO regardless of what their intent is. It won’t be some major impact, but at least it’ll set up your site the proper way.
Great advice.
It seems a lot of marketers have giving up on get free traffic from the search engines.
They seem to rather pay for traffic rather than spend the time to optimize their sites for the search engines
Which is a terrible mistake… the amount of money they spend to bring in traffic really isn’t worth it. Social media, if you do it right is free and can bring you in a ton of traffic.
Great Tips. Everyone also needs to realize that you will not be ranked high on search engines overnight.
It’s never overnight.. in fact its probably on the opposite side of the spectrum. It takes a lot of hard work and most importantly… time.
The fact that you must rank one page 1 is annoying but very true. Creating a buzz is also very important IMHO.
Great article, thanks.
yes… that’s exactly why most people can’t take the energy needed to really achieve such a status.
Yes Neil I agree in the content of your article…Because whenever we market our company it takes a lot of time and money. But now there are a lot of ways less preparation and less money to spend.
Yes exactly. you can easily get away with a powerful site and not spend any money on marketing what so ever.
All the rich piggy back off other people.
While all the people blog, us smart internet marketers autoblog to make more money.
Think about it why start a blog and make mabey a few hundred dollars a month puting in alot of work when i can set up a few of these autoblogs and make that same money each month with no work.
Then i can sell them and make even more money. Its not about working hard its about working smart
Work smarter and harder. A combination of both will help you move ahead quickly.
I agree. Great tips and tricks. I love the part about “old is sexy” I think people don’t take advantage of the forums like they used to.
It’s mainly because it requires a lot of work. People for some reason don’t want to work.
Well, these are also marketing tacts but all are free.
Exactly!
It would be cool if we could use Google Analytic in the offline business.
Track leads, conversions, avg dollar spend, number of transactions.
And at least semi-automate the data collection of the metrics.
I’m sure there are ways to track offline businesses, but you can’t imagine it being as sophisticated.
In the early days of a start up, providing great customer service and getting referrals is marketing.
You will find points in your process that provide marketing touch points, that might be calling the client with an update on the progress of their order. A ‘thank you card’ after the order, you can build these into the operation and it snow balls as you move along & recreates repeat customers and referrals.
Doesn’t cost much, the main point is knowing your process and where to insert the touch points.
These touch points also act as the points where to insert up sells, down sells, cross sells.
It takes a sheet of paper, a pen, draw some boxes and arrows and map out your process, from the clients prospective.
Where there is a customer contact point, that’s a marketing opportunity. The obvious ones are at the start and at the end, but you find some int he middle.
I personally used SMS/text to the clients cell phone with updates via an online SMS/text provider and saved templates.
Clients always commented that they loved the updates, as its human nature to assume the worst if they hear nothing.
SMS/text also kept it short compared to a phone call and I didn’t need to make small talk, unless I wanted to call them.
I would often call on the last contact as I could ask for referrals at that time.
Hope it helps, as a small budget start up makes you think of solutions without throwing money at it.
Thanks for all that advice Brett. On a small budget it is tough but as you stated, there are always ways to be creative.
This is the golden Internet marketing trick to obtaining email addresses. If you offer your users an eBook, program download, wallpapers, etc… Make them supply an email address so you can send them the information to their email. IMO makes opt-in emails much more effective.
Sorry reply to love graphics ….My answer is BOTH! Blog or posting in forum are both great tools to market your site. You should think of marketing your site like an investment stock. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. There is not ONE best method to market your site.
That’s a good point. I think with the latest Google Caffeine update and other search engines optimizing their SERPs, pretty soon all “informational and accurate” websites will be pushed to the foremost positions (if they haven’t already).
As far as long term success, yeah of course it helps drastically. It’s how you’ll be able to build marketing campaigns.