Are you reluctant to spend money on your marketing? Are you are running a small business or a startup – or has your budget run out? If that is a ‘yes’ – this article on marketing for free will help you.
Interestingly, unpaid for marketing can be more effective than the paid for variety. The reason is that the free stuff (i.e. articles, blogs, do-it-yourself SEO, media interviews, talks, social media etc) has more credibility than the paid for variety, i.e. advertising.
The challenge, of course, is time. Business owners are usually running at full stretch. Marketing professionals have a never ending to-do list.
With the advent of digital marketing communications – writing can deliver rapid results. In the last century, when I was a professional copywriter, I would take up to a week to write an article for a client, then submit it by post to a publication and then wait a few months for the article to appear in print * gasp *.
Today, as you know, you can publish a blog post the instant you have finished writing it. You can then, within a few moments, let your social media contacts know about it.
My advice is begin your day by writing. Do this before you check your emails (which is the first activity of the working today for many people). I have been doing this for the last few weeks, although I have been massively busy with clients, training events, The Marketing Compass and my family.
A blog can feed a newsletter and generate ideas for talks and books. Remember that ‘Google loves a blogger’.
Marketing for free is a mind set and you have to be able to come up with a lot of ideas. A key skill is creative thinking skills which I have written about here.
The challenge of course is selecting the right mix of promotional techniques for your enterprise and then getting to grips with the myriad of details. I recommend that you start with the free ones.
Here are 50 ways to promote your business – many of which are free.
