Five No-Cost Marketing Tips

You can also try the benefits of the social web. For example, after having identified very precisely what blogs do you potential targets read, try to post comments on those blogs, about matters that are of interest to them, advices such as “how to…”. This will certainly gain you some popularity among your targeted bloggers and more importantly, you will gain credibility, You do not have to reveal from the beginning the solution to those problems of “how to…” You can first become credible among some bloggers, than give a link to your site. those bloggers will certainly do the word-of-mouth job for you.

Hi Laura – nice post. Good resources for some low-budget marketing. You might also add that, if you’re going to create a handout or article, you can publish it to article distribution websites. They feed articles to thousands of publishers, which means you could get valuable exposure all over the Internet. My favorite article website is: http://EzineArticles.com (I’m not connected to them in anyway.)

I like the second comment above, about distributing a useful article around the Web. I would encourage entrepreneurs to write for a magazine or e-zine that clients or potential clients would read. Not only will your existing clients find your article and be thrilled, but they will pass it on to their friends.

A friend wanted to sell his business and needed advice; My advice was to advertise in the magazine issued for his particular type of merchandise; Needless to say, he got his sale.

arthurpruett@yahoo.com

A. H. Pruett — Innovator, retired.
Many new innovations on the market today, wish to contact any of my old marketing scout friends for future innovations?

arthurpruett@yahoo.com

My favorite online version of the offline meeting attendance, business card handout, and follow-up phone calls, is visiting online business forums, posting and including your url in the signature line, and then following up with interesting people via personal messages.

This is an excellent way to not only build your reputation in your field of expertise, but also create joint ventures.

Dear Laura,

You have given great ideas in marketing without money. Blogging could also be considered as a modern marketing strategy. A blog creates a community which enables our customers to be actively involved and stay close to us.

Through blog we could communicate easily and conduct a great market research. It also increases the hit rate of the search engine. I have explained thoroughly how creating communities (http://marketingfirst.blogspot.com/2007/03/creating-communities.html) could induce the great marketing tactic. This then further creates a comfort zone for our potential customers. Blog could also be treated as PR strategy.

I think you have a great marketing mind, Laura!!

Cheers,

David Herlambang
MarketingFirst
http://www.marketingfirst.blogspot.com

Laura,

Some good, sound practical advice here.
I would respectfully submit that one other avenue many entrepreneurs and small and larg businesses alike could consider is news coverage.
Not everything a company or entreprenuer does, is front page news, but someone who spent years working in an industry for others and now works for themselves, probably has some expertise they could share in the form of expert advice columns or simply being available to the press as an expert. The same with so many different trades and technology companies. Example: the carpenter who offers advice on building a deck or the best type of lumber to use, or, the computer guru/IT type that writes about basic html or offers reviews on consumer software, etc. The list goes on.
An entrepreneur or small business that lands a large fish as a client also has a potential news story.
The only time/money investment is the time to write and send a press release or write the advice columns. That takes a little longer in the beginning, but working with the press is like working with any other industry, it’s simply a matter of learning how the media works.
I won’t go down the road that I see so many others go down, by saying the press is often sitting around in the newsroom, looking for this type of thing… those people obviously never worked in any newsroom I worked in or supervised… but there are specialty and trade publications as well as specialty segments in broadcast news that some of these types of things fall into. The good old daily newspaper is another source for a local business person to offer advice/expertise on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to potential clients.
The key is to do some homework and find out who the best person is to contact, then do so and do some follow up… just don’t be a pest about it.
One of the other keys is to respond quickly if the media does call about a news story or “expert interview”, because media outlets often work on quick turnaround times. Reporters rely on sources they know will get right back to them asap, if the source isn’t available when they call. That’s also why some experts show up in the news more often than others.

Forum posting can be very powerful if the forum is directly related to your niche and allows links to be posted somewhere (usually in sig).

And, if your content is good, Squidoo and hubpages are great as well. Though, Google recently announced no more Pagerank from one of these I believe.
But, if you are still trying to develop for pagerank purposes…all I can say is, welcome to 2002!

—
Richard Martin

http://www.websitetuts.com

I have noticed in my frequenting of the rest rooms of fast food restaurants that the children, boys, are having a tough time at the urnals which were designed for adult men, and the stools, not always being available, they have to leave to present a problem while traveling. My motto is; A urnal high on the wall serves only the tall, a urnal low on the wall serves all. Arthur H. Pruett, The old innovator.