If you enjoy this article, please check out my free e-book: Marketing In Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas to help you engage customers and spread the word without spending any money.
My post, “10 Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times“, received a decent response both here and over at Marketing 2.0. Thank you for reading, I deeply appreciate it.
So, how to follow that modest success? Why, with “10 More Ideas for Free Marketing in Tough Times”, of course.
After ingesting even more tea and thinking about no-cost marketing further, ten additional ideas sprang to mind to help you engage customers even if your budget has been slashed by the current economic chaos. Of course, your mileage may vary.
As with the previous ten, these ideas range from basic tactics to high level strategies, but what they all have in common is that the only cost to implement them is time and effort.
And if you have any ideas of your own to share, please leave them in the comments, I’ll gather them into a future mega-post of free marketing ideas. (Be sure to provide a site link so I can give you proper credit).
Even better: start a list on your own blog. Let’s grow this list to 50 or 100 no-cost marketing ideas. This could be fun.
On to the ideas:
1. Follow Up After the First Purchase – Number 10 in the previous list was “Let Customers Know You Appreciate Them“. Good advice, but it was focused on existing customers. I’d like to amend that: It’s important to let new customers know you appreciate them too. And because they’re new, you have a unique opportunity to ask them how they discovered you, what they thought of the sales/set-up process, and how you can help them further while it’s fresh in their mind. Oh, yeah, make sure they know you’re glad to have them aboard.
2. Set up a Company Blog – Many companies are making great use of blogs. Amazon uses a variety of blogs to cross market products. The CEO of Zappos keeps investors and customers up to date via his blog. Even Fortune 500 companies understand the value of engaging customers through blogs. Start by having the free, open source, and highly popular WordPress installed on your site, then do your homework. Here are two guides to help you find the right tone and strategy: 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger, and Problogger’s Guide to Corporate Blogging.
3. Give Away e-books – You probably have enough blog posts, white papers, interviews, and collateral lying around to create a great e-book to give away to customers and prospects. The trick: make it relevant and valuable. Maybe a simple How-To guide or analysis of your market. Maybe something more in-depth. You know what your customers need. Just make it interesting enough to drive them to the next step: contacting you directly. Create the e-book in PDF format freely with Google Docs, Zoho Writer, or OpenOffice. Then put it on your site and upload it to Scribd, a popular document sharing site. Similarly, upload PowerPoint presentations to slideshare.
4. Create a Widget - What’s a widget? It’s a piece of code that can easily be installed on a web page or blog without the need for geek-like talent. People like you and me use them on many of the social networking sites to customize our pages with video, pictures, music, and more. Papa John’s Pizza lets customers order online with a variety of widgets for computer desktops, start pages, and social networks. Coke has CokeTags, a link sharing widget for Facebook. It’s easy (and free) to create them on sites like Widgetbox. Then, like everything else, make sure visitors to your web site know they’re available.
5. Get on TV – It sounds like a stretch, but according to Tim Ferris, author of the best-selling The 4-Hour Work Week, it’s easier than it sounds. He explains his strategy for getting on TV: “Find statistics that indicate a new trend, tie yourself into the trend, add experts, case studies, PhDs, and other guests to help fill 30 entertaining and credible minutes about this topic. Give it a good headline and pitch it to producers at the top shows. It’s a simple concept and it works.” Who knew? I may have to try this one myself.
6. Search For Yourself - People are talking about you online. Find them with Google Blog Search, twitter search, Technorati, and whatever other tools you like. Once you find them, make contact. Respond to their comment. Address a complaint. Right a wrong. Say thank you. Start a conversation. Just let them know you appreciate the comment. Most of them will be happy to hear from you. See also: “Help Your Fans Spread the Love”.
7. Make it Easy to Email Your Pages - Ever notice how web sites like Time Magazine and Amazon have a little “email this” button next to the printing and sharing options? That’s because some visitors just want to skip the social media stuff and go old school. I email myself pages all the time as a way to archive them. Sometimes I even use it as intended: to share a web page with friends. Just remember, people are submitting their email address for a one-time use, not opting-in to your marketing. Respect their trust in you and you’ll be rewarded.
8. Know Your Numbers – Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern business management said “What’s measured improves“. Are you measuring your web site traffic? Google Analytics is free, includes enterprise level tools, and features Conversion University, where you can learn how to make sense of the numbers and improve traffic to your site. Now there is no excuse.
9. Go Back to Old Customers – We’ve all heard the old adage that it’s easier to keep an existing customer than win a new one. But it may also be worth going through your list of older inactive customers and trying to reactivate a few of the better ones. Give them a call, tell them you value them, ask what it will take to get them back. You might be surprised at how simple or low-cost it is. If they say no thanks, consider it a learning opportunity and wish them the best. Then call them back in a year and ask again.
10. Put Great Review Front and Center – In the book “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive“, author Robert Cialdini asks, “How can we show off without being labeled a show-off?”. The answer is get someone to speak about your awesomeness for you. Studies show that social proof–the tendency to look to others for ques on how to behave–plays a critical role in how others evaluate you. If one person says your widget is great, many others will think it must be. Seriously, it’s that simple, and it’s why many web sites prominently display quotes and reviews.
Have your own ideas about no-cost marketing? Share them in the comments or, better yet, start a list on your own blog. I’d love to see what you come up with.–Keith
Photo: caitlinburke
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