As a small business owner I often find myself searching for new and exciting ways to market my product and brand my company at little or no cost. By cost I am referring to actual dollars spent to incorporate a particular marketing element into your plan, not the cost of time spent or overhead costs such as internet access needed to research and implement the plan. There are a countless number of avenues that you can travel down in order to achieve zero cost marketing but not all of them will work for your particular product or service. Some of them are just down right scams. So it is very important that you do your research and find the best possible mix of ideas for your particular product or service.
In order to do this you will first need to once again identify your target market and really get know what type of marketing they are likely to respond to. For purposes of this article I will tend to focus particularly on the internet as my tool for zero cost marketing. So I first need to find out where my customers are hanging out around the net these days. A few of the questions you can look to answer are:
What type of social networking services are they using on a daily or at least weekly basis?
What type of content sharing sites do they frequent in order to get their fill of news and entertainment?
What news and entertainment are they looking for?
What forums and directory sites might they visit?
Once you have answered a few of these questions it is time to get out there and start creating a presence for yourself and your company. Don’t just hop on a site answer a few simple questions, create a password and leave it at that. Get involved, start interacting with the “community” so to speak. For instance if your particular niche frequents MySpace, it is not enough to create a profile and hope that people start searching you out just dying to make friends. You need to get in there and network. Search profiles and groups for keywords that might relate to your product or service. The easiest people to market to are those that are already interested. Make friends, interact add exciting content (even if it has nothing to do with your product), give people a reason to seek you out.
Next I move on to forums and social bookmarking. When it comes to communities such as this I can not stress the importance of becoming involved. These places tend to be a bit more regulated when it comes to pitching your products, ideas and services. If not by the administrators themselves then definitely by the community. Don’t let them intimidate you into giving up but definitely don’t hop into one of these arenas without bringing something of value to the table. Bluntly put, don’t sign up and start posting advertisements across the board, not only will you have just gotten flagged as a user but you may have just pissed off some potential future customers. The key here is to add your opinions and your knowledge to create a good reputation. If you become looked at as someone who is a bit of an expert in certain situations then people will want more and start digging into your profile a bit further. Your profile is were you will subtly hide certain info about yourself such as what you do for a living and even your web address. Many forums do allow for a “signature” which is a small file place at the end of each post and many times you are allowed to post a URL but don’t post a comment like this: “Wow that’s a really great idea… this is kinda off subject but guess what I design websites. Yeah my URL is in my signature check it out I’m cheap.” There are places were you can get away with this but I highly advise you against doing it. Look around you will notice that many of the members frequent a number of different sites and if you are seen as a spammer on one, your reputation will follow you. My recommendation is to sit back for a bit and observe the order of things when it comes to interacting on a particular site. When you show up to a new job it takes you a couple of weeks or even months before you figure out that it is ok to make paper clip sculptures in your down time, right?
Or you can start your own content. Create a blog for your company, or if that’s to involved then become know as the company that offers daily fortunes. If you do decide to start a blog then pick a topic related to yor offering and try to stay focused and keep it interesting. You might really be excited about the fact that you just gave yourself a 10% raise but chances are your customers don’t really care and unfortunately you just explained why your prices went up. However don’t be afraid to get a bit personal, people often like to see who they are dealing with. Lastly, make it fun and informative.
Last but not least, I can not say how important it is to create friendships online and off when it comes to zero cost marketing. I will give you an example. Quite awhile back I was contacted by a guy who was getting ready to launch a social networking site centered around boardsports and he wanted to get my company involved. This IS the niche that my clothing company focuses on and it seemed like a great opportunity to reach out to them. Over time that relationship evolved and we have been able to collaborate on a number of different marketing/brand awareness programs that have benefited the both of us. I also had the great opportunity to meet the guy in person and we have managed to stay in touch on a regular basis. My point here is make friends, don’t be afraid to consider others ideas and definitely don’t be afraid to help out if the opportunity seems legit. This stuff has a way of coming back around in the end.
I hope some of my ideas here help, this list can no doubt go on for quite awhile so feel free to add as you wish. Perhaps I will do a Zero Cost Marketing Part II in the near future.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }