I know, marketing could be expensive. Every ad costs money, and you could easily spend at least several hundred dollars on an advertising campaign if you aren’t too careful. Having said that, if you have good ROI, return on investment, then your ad spend is not expensive. If you spent $1 and get $2 back, will you spend $1,000? I am not sure about you, but I will. This is sort of no brainer. We’re talking about 50% of the return.
Although a lot of people might say, you don’t HAVE to spend a fortune on your marketing efforts. In fact, if your budget is tiny or you are just starting out, you don’t have to spend a single cent if you don’t want to. It’s just you don’t see instant results and will take longer.
So, the next question is, who are you trying to reach? Before you start marketing your business, you need to think about who your audience is. There are lots of ways to market your business for free, but depending on your audience, you may not need to use all of them.
For example, if you have a product that is aimed at retired people, the chances are you won’t find too many of them on the social network. Always know exactly who you are trying to reach from the outset; that way, you won’t waste any time using methods that aren’t going to give you a good return.
In other words, spend some time to figure out who you are looking for and where you are likely to find them will pay huge dividends later on.
Then, putting a plan together. When a digital marketer is investing money in a marketing campaign, they tend to put a lot of effort into it. After all, they want to be sure they are going to see a good return on their investment. But when it comes to marketing a business online for free, some people just don’t put enough effort into it. It’s understandable – after all, you aren’t putting any cash in so it doesn’t really matter if you do something and it doesn’t work. It also doesn’t matter if you forget to do something or you skip a stage when you are too busy with other things.
Now, you need to think differently. You need to take the same professional approach to a free marketing campaign as you would if it was going to cost you $10,000. Not only will you learn a lot by doing this, but your business will thank you for it too.
Start thinking about what you are aiming to achieve with your free marketing efforts. Start thinking about how you could develop your business in this way. After listening to this podcast, you will soon find yourself starting to come up with fresh ideas and plans that could make you a decent amount of money in the weeks and months to come.
Social media is free. They are easily able to accommodate people who have an interest in a specific topic and want to share that with like-minded people. For example, you might have a website that regularly sells USB gadgets. And of course, you would be fascinated by all the different USB gadgets that are on the market, wouldn’t you? So why not share your thoughts and knowledge with all the other people out there who like the same thing and have a growing selection of them? You will be able to have a link to your website on most social media. All you are going to do is share your fascinations and interests with people. They will naturally follow you onto your website anyway, so you won’t even need to try and sell to them.
Can you see how effective these social media can be for finding potential new customers? Lots of businesses do this, and it doesn’t cost you anything to get it started. You do need to invest some time in it to get the best results though, and this is where planning ahead really helps. Remember what I said just now about planning your free marketing efforts? This is exactly what I am talking about. You can put in just a few minutes a day on this, so we’re not talking about taking on a full-time project here. But you need to be doing this regularly so that people will come to realise you are around on a regular basis. When they realise this, they will be more likely to follow you and what you have to say – and that can be a very important step towards turning them into a future customer.
Another example of why it is worth spending that little bit more time thinking about how you are going to proceed with your free marketing plans. Ask yourself this question. When you think about social media, what is the first one that comes to mind?
I think a lot of people will say Facebook or Instagram. That’s understandable because these are the main two social platforms that everyone knows about.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be the ones that are ideal for finding the people you are looking for. So investigate ALL the possibilities before diving in, and don’t spread yourself too thin. You are always going to be better off concentrating on using just one or two social media channels and really making a mark there, at least to begin with.
Ok, there is another free technique you can use to help you enhance your marketing efforts. A lot of people simply overlook this one, because it is not perhaps one of the most obvious ways to go about things, and it does take a little more work. It also relies on making connections with other marketers online, and some people don’t appear to like doing this.
But don’t knock it! A lot of associations with other marketers can really help advance both your and their business in the long run. So look at this as a long term venture that will help you to promote your business for free AND find a whole new audience in the process.
How does this work? Well, there are a number of ways you can do it, but basically, the idea is that you exchange services with another person who is in a similar business to you.
Now I know you are thinking that means talking to your competition, but if you do it right, they could become a valuable ally instead. Let’s check out the various ways you can make this happen.
1.GUEST BLOGGING
If you have a blog that you use to help you promote your business and find new customers, see how many other marketers you can find in the same business who also have one. Make sure you pick those whose blogs are of a standard that is at least equal to yours – one that you would be happy to see one of your own blog posts on.
The thing is, as you know yourself, writing a blog constantly can be tricky at times. You may run out of ideas here and there. You may struggle from time to time to keep it looking and feeling fresh.
So wouldn’t it be nice to get an injection of knowledge and advice that is somewhat different to your usual mix? And who better to ask for such insight than a fellow marketer in the same arena to the one you are making your money in?
What you need to do is approach them and ask them whether they would be willing to write a guest blog post for your blog. Make sure you confirm that in return you would write one for their blog, and you could both link back to your own websites at the bottom of the post.
This gets both of you free publicity for your businesses; and of course, it also means you can tap into an established audience that won’t be exactly the same as the one you already promote to. Let’s suppose for example, that you both have a visitor rate of, say, 500 people a day to your blogs. That’s 3,500 a week. Now there is no way that you are both going to be reaching the exact same 500 people every day. So there is a chance that you could as much as double your reach just by writing a blog post for someone else.
And of course, you don’t only expand your connections to other marketers online and open up the possibility of more free marketing chances later on down the line. You can also write for each other’s blogs once a week or once a month if you wish. This turns a one-off freebie into an ongoing event that really builds up your marketing efforts and doesn’t cost a cent in the process.
And of course, the articles would remain on the site for the foreseeable future too. This means that half an hour spent writing a 500-word piece to go on a website would get you a steady stream of traffic for the foreseeable future as well.
EXCHANGING LINKS
If you’re not that keen or confident about your writing skills, don’t worry. You can still approach other people with similar websites or blogs and ask them if they would be prepared to enter into a link exchange agreement with you.
You provide a link back to their website (together with a one or two-sentence review or description about it), and in return, they do the same for you. If you do this with several other websites and/or companies, you can create a recommended links page on your own site which contains all these recommendations.
This has a couple of advantages. Firstly, you will increase the number of places that could lead to your site being found by new visitors. But secondly and most importantly, quality links which lead back to your own website will help your search engine rankings.
If you are struggling to rank highly in the search engines, this will definitely be of use to you. And a better search engine ranking will, of course, lead to more visitors and hopefully more sales. And all this happens because you asked for a few links – all completely free of charge.
There is no doubt that the above methods will get your free online marketing campaign started.
GUEST PODCAST
It’s very similar to guest blogging. You can interview people for your podcast. You can invite people in your same industry or someone who offers compliment service to your existing service. For example, I run a full-service marketing agency, so I can invite someone who is good at running an Instagram account, or I can invite someone who focuses on getting the mindset right. Both will help my listeners. They will promote your podcast as they are being invited as a guest, so you can tap into their audience as well. You might end of getting a few new clients. If not, you still have exposure out there and build up your authority in your niche.
THINGS TO AVOID
You might be tempted to try any number of free ways to get more attention and more traffic to your website. That’s understandable – after all, you want to make sure that your website is seen by the right target audience.
But don’t let that tempt you into trying anything and everything without considering the consequences first.
For example, link farms area definite no-no. They basically exist just to provide links to peoples’ websites, and Google doesn’t like it. That means you won’t get any benefit from being listed with any of these link farms, and you might actually do your website some damage as well, as far as its reputation is concerned.
IN CONCLUSION
You are now in a position to drive your online business forward and reach even more people than you ever thought possible. And the great thing is that you won’t have to spend a fortune in doing it.
All you need to put into this is time and effort. The same goes for articles and guest blog posts. All it takes is half an hour here and there, and you have something that will send you traffic for the foreseeable future and beyond.
So take some time to think about how you would like to promote your business. Generate some fresh ideas and then go about finding the people who would be interested in hearing about them. Remember that not everything takes a huge amount of money to get started. I hope you like this episode.