Is free advertising effective?

[jimintex]

I think ChatMaster nailed this one. The only thing I'll add is, that as a freelancer, you cannot let any opportunity pass you by to make a contact. Even in today's wired world, and even if you're primarily focused on local businesses, you need a business card. You want something that looks sharp and professional, distinctive, and you want a 1800 number on it. Always keep at least a dozen on you at all times, so you can hand them out, and find a way to carry them where they won't get bent up or stained.

And take them everywhere. Grocery shopping, soccer practice, movies, wherever you might find yourself talking with strangers and making new acquaintances. Cards are cheap, they're easy to hand out, and I've never had anyone tell me no. And they do work.

[jcs1989]

I think free and low cost advertising is great. It allows you to spread your advertising budget further and cover more areas of advertising. This allows you to saturate the market with more of your material which means you have a better chance of reaching more people. If you can expand your advertising campaign to cover print and mail as well as online marketing, so much the better.

By the way, you can get free business cards from vistaprint.com

[krashok1990]

free advertising is very very effective than paid advertising.. the best free advertising is google search engine

[nks]

Try submitting to various other free link directories also; that will help to boost your visibility of your website. It's free and also improves your search engine optimisation.

[astounded123]

I've really made a difference to sites popuarity via free advertising alone. It all depends on the niche but it can definitely be of use.

[entrabnetworks]

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

Something that I would like to emphasize is that marketing consist out of different strategies. The type of marketing you are in are the core indicator of how you should apply your marketing strategies. Free marketing strategies imo doesn't exist, because they take time to practice and time in my case is money.

As I said the type of business you are in will pretty much determine your priorities within your marketing strategies. But here are a few pointers.

SEO
SEO is very much consistent out of On-page and off-page factors. So initially you need to ensure that your basic site design is done correctly and that SE's will figure out what your website is all about. So on-page factors are a priority within your marketing strategy. The next step will be to ensure a flow of backlinks into your site and fresh content. Therefore you will need to dedicate at least 1-2 hours a day on off-page factors for SEO. Remember that each marketing techniques has it's own benefits and SEO has primarily the benefit of good conversions, targeted traffic and higher visitor loyalty. It does however take a little bit more time to get generis SEO to flow, but once it gets flowing it is worth it.

Online Advertising
Search Engine advertising, gives good quality visitors whilst you are waiting for your SEO to become effective. Banner ads on targetted sites can also leave you with a very good Cost per Acquisition ratio and is very good for building your brand and corporate identity.

Viral Marketing
Without jokes, this is one of the most powerful and longest lasting marketing strategies you can apply. Once again deciding your core objective influences the success that you can have with it, but I would look at sending out at least one campaign at least once a month.

Traditional marketing
Generally, traditional marketing has a very poor growth atm. There are simply to much choice for the consumer. There are hundreds of TV channels, thousands of magazines and newspapers and it is expensive. Not to mention that Internet ad revenue is on the up and conventional advertising is on the decline, this is in places like the US and Australia, there has been alot of research on this topic and a Google search should give you further information on this. HOWEVER, the basics needs to be done e.g. business cards and office administration should sent users to your website. The reason is simple, the web is a much easier place to convert and retain visitors as well as obtaining valuable info about them, something conventional marketing simply cannot do. Conventional marketing can be very effective still if your product is localised but your ROI target is normally increased and needs to be monitored frequently.

Editorial Marketing
Publishing of articles and Press releases needs at least 4 hours a week dedicated to it, and can be very effective if choose topics that are related to current events. It also helps with building of backlinks if you update content on your own website in conjunction. Special note, Email marketing is still very effective, if the database consist out of people that are interested in your product and did subscribe willingly to receive it.

Social Media Marketing
This is something you need to dedicate at least and hour or 2 on each day. It is extremely effective if done right.

Community marketing
The benefit with joining forums related to your product is that you stay current with trends and also get a chance to get popularity through your insight and knowledge within a certain product or service. However if not utilized correctly it can also hurt you, a mature personality is a requirement.

Referrals
Get a way of initiating a tell-a-friend campaign. People rather take notice if a friend suggested your service, if you somehow control what is being said about you, even better. Apply a bit of SMO to your site, you will never be sorry!

Finally, just take note that marketing any business take time. Newspaper reps will tell you that you need to advertise frequently for campaigns to be effective with them and that one time adverts often are unsuccessful. Marketing is not a quick thing, plan your strategies and stick to them, the ice always break for those that are patient.

Very good tips


thanks for saring

[JaimeCal]

It depends on what your business is, but i've seen the successful use of flyers and writing utensils.