In this podcast episode I have free marketing ideas for you in your online business. We’re going to go over all of them and a lot of these we’re going to go over in more detail. In either future episodes or we’ve already done an episode about but I think this is a great topic, because a lot of people when they’re starting an online business when they’re starting any kind of business their first thought is how can I make this profitable for free? And then, obviously later on there they realize that it’s worth money to spend money on advertising but at the beginning stages at least for most people I think they want to do as much of the free work as they can and I think that’s fine so I want to answer all those different questions these are the top 15 ways that I’ve personally found to be best if you’re doing marketing and you don’t want to spend a penny.
- SEO – we’ve already done two episodes nose so I’m not going to belabor the point here if you want more information on this one listen to I believe its episode 13 and 14 but basically the quick version is trying to rank higher up in Google for different keywords
- Content Marketing – so funny enough this kind of goes in with SEO and we’re going to talk about this in depth I think in the next episode or pretty soon in a future episode here the content marketing is very important for a number of different things but it relates to a search engine optimization or SEO because of the fact if you can create really cool content pieces people will find you through Google so an example of this might be seven kudo friendly snacks so you want to rank in Google for ketosnacks and you’d write an article on top seven keto friendly snacks and then it gets picked up by Google or it gets picked up gets a lot of links to it and it ranks is number one article for ecofriendly snacks so this drives traffic to your website and people read the list and they say oh number four is performance nut butter which is obviously that’s my company and then they decide to buy it so it’s probably not the most effective way to drive content and there’s a ton of different traffic excuse me there’s a ton of different content plays that you Cando spotlight marketing which I talked about briefly I think in the last episode I’m going to talk about in depth in a future episode which is basically interviewing your potential customers a lot of different ways to do this but the whole point of content marketing is to make content pieces and get people to come to your website tread or whatever yeah to consume the content and then they happen to somehow relate to your business and they’ll end up wanting to buy your product so we’re going to go in-depth and I believe in the next episode on content marketing
- YouTube – and for half the people listening to this podcast you’re probably watching it on YouTube so a lot of people are watching this on my YouTube channel effective e-commerce and get way more views way more traffic tom YouTube channel then I do to my website hands-down and the reason is there’s a lot of reasons actually but people prefer to consume videos a lot of people refer to consume videos not everybody some people prefer to read but videos are easier quicker for 99% of people and they’re entertaining they’re little bit more entertaining so youkan use this your advantage similar to content marketing you can create videos about different content pieces and put those on YouTube put those on your website and create a following so you could do the same top Keto friendly snacks as a YouTube video instead now I’m giving away all my secrets I haven’t even done this yet but you could do something like that or for instance force dance or my dance clothing company we use DIY dance costume videos so we’ll do video on how to rhinestone a dance costume and we’ll say you know if you need some dance pieces we sell the basics at Bdancewear.com for calm so we’ll show awhile video on how to rhinestone a dance costume which is only loosely correlates to what we sell but yet we will let people know about our business make them aware and we’ll also do an email opt-in an email capture so for effective ecommerce for instance the reason I’m giving away all my secrets once again the reason I have the e-commerce success pact is twofold one I want to give people really good quality stuff and Idol I have some great stuff in thee-commerce success pack I have thee-commerce checklist have marketing ideas so if these frees free marketing ideas aren’t enough do have the marketing List in my e-commerce success pack but that’s only half the reason why I do tithe other half is so I can get those emails and I can send out emails now forth most part I’m personally sending out emails about other videos and I’m trying to make my videos more popular it’s kind of this whole cycle and I recommend doing this with YouTube trying to get email subscribers from YouTube and then using those emails not using them but sending to those emails more YouTube videos that will help those YouTube videos rank higher and it’s this kind of virtuous cycle here so YouTube ‘extremely powerful the last thing I’ll say about it is I believe YouTube is the second most used search engine and at least in the United States so it goes Google and then YouTube but yet YouTube has way less material than Google does you Google has trillions of pages where YouTube only has billions of videos so your chance of standing out on YouTube is much better and in fact it’s a lot harder to make a good quality video so YouTube well it’s a lot harder but it’s also easy at the same time YouTube anyways that’s a free marketing idea.
- Talk to everybody – never waste an opportunity go you can go to conventions which usually cost money or you can go where your consumers hangout and just talk to them and let them know about your company I’m not gonadal too much about this one I know that’s a little ironic but basically I’ll wear a shirt a lot of times the performance nut butter shirt and I’ll go where my consumers would be and I would just talk about my product so that’s an easy way to spread the word about your company number
- Make Phone Calls – call your potential customers so four be dancewear we’ll call dance studios and for performance nut butter I plan on calling gyms and letting them know about our product now when you’re doing this you probably shouldn’t just do like cold pitch because people are just jonahing up on you ignore you should try to come up with some kind of unique thing of why you’re calling them I use spotlight marketing which is where Interview them and post it on my blog you can do whatever you want but the whole idea is a free way to start getting traffic to your website and really good traffic at that is to make phone calls
- Influencer Marketing – now this isn’t necessarily free you’ll probably have to give away some products but goon Instagram find influencers in your niche in son some projects so it’s not a hundred percent free but it only costs you your products really easy we’ll do an episode on this one for sure so I won’t talk too much about that number
- Guest Blogging – and this is where you go to someone that has a blog and you write agues post on it I will talk in depth about this in the next episode but the quick answer is people already have these huge audiences out there so I also say guest podcasting guess youtubing like all these different things be agues on other people’s platform
- Start a podcast – it’s not necessarily free but it can be free there’s ways to do it for free I think I spend cent to dollars a month on my hosting which is so cheap that it’s basically free I mean realistically all you have to do is work for one hour and minimum wage job and you’ve basically got your hosting paid for so it is so cost effective I included it as free but it’s a great way I mean you’re listening to a podcast right now unless you’re what unless you’re watching this on YouTube you’re listening to this is podcast right now and if I was talking about a topic that I could sell product eventually the idea is with the podcast you gain people’s trust and you let them know that you only give out quality information and then you tell them about your product so for performance nut butter for instance I might do a performance podcast and it’s all about how to perform at the elite top levels and then I would tell them you know this podcast is sponsored by performance unbutters and maybe I’d tell them the story of my company for this effective-commerce podcast I have courses and my goal is to make the free material I put out so valuable that you’re like well this is really interesting and if you’re looking for a condensed version you sashay I’ll be I’m willing to pay for the course so I do have a course on how to start an online store for instance now the truth is most the stuff that I have to teach my course I give away for free on podcasts and YouTube videos but for some people it makes sense for them to pay for it because they want the either the condensed version or they want the roadmap I’m one of those people I’m willing to pay for knowledge and I know other people listening to this are that being said only one out of a hundred people that listen to this are going to ever buy a course for me that’s okay my goal is to help as many people as possible so I’m getting off one tangent here the goal the point of this is a podcast is a great way to spread your message and talk about your company anytime you can get people’s attention it’s a marketing tool anytime you can get people’s attention in your niche all you have to do is tell them about your product and if your products great and really good they will the flock to it alright so
- Send Personal Email – to everyone I mean youkan to send it to anyone and everyone don’t be spam my about it but what youkan especially do is send it to people who sign up for so two things people that sign up for your email if you sign up for the e-commerce success pack for instance you’ll notice that I send you personal message and I ask you questions on you know how can I help you and now some of them are automated but some of them are actually personal so if you haven’t yet go to effectiveecommerce.com sign up for the success pack if for no other reason than to watch what I do and learn from it and yeah so I’ll send you a personal email and I’ll ask you questions and I’ll try to start dialogue and you know what the truth is my hope is that I impact you in such appositive way you want to help me out and maybe you help me out through leaving five-star review on iTunes maybe you buy course maybe you sign up for Shopify using my affiliate link or maybe you just tell a friend about my podcast or my YouTube channel but the goal of sending this personal email is that it impacts you in some kind of way that Icon help you out and that you want to return the favor you know what if you don’t that’s fine but most people when you help them out they want to help you out as well once again I’m getting on little bit of a tangent but sending out personal emails also to influential people influencers can help sending out emails to people that would buy your product is a great way of doing it and try to come up with some kind of angle some kind of hook of why they actually want to read your email I get people all the time sending me emails trying to pitch me on this and that or trying to get me to buy their product and I don’t care if it’s a personal email I’m going to delete it alright so we’re going quick here I know but I get out all this information
- Social Media – pretty much all social media is free Facebook Pinterest Twitter now I don’t think Facebook is the best Avenue for most people to go if you’re advertising for a business I think Pinterest is much better and so there’s some different examples that I can use let’s use performance nut butter as one example I might do recipes I might say here’s some different recipes using performance nut butter here’s some paleo muffins here’s some keto friendly cake and then I would do also with that some of the things I do. I might do a pin of top keto friendly products or whatever all these different things I could also just do really cool pictures using performance nut butter then for Dance where what I’ve done is a few different things but one of them is DIY pins a long pin showing how to DIY advance costume very similar to what I do with YouTube but in Pinterest pin form now there’s some quick tips on Pinterest and we’re going to do a full episode on this so I don’t want to talk too much about it right now but long-long pins I think a hamburger and like lengths are better than wide pins or hot dog style and just look at the way that’s just the native way that pins are made on Pinterest and tend to do better so look at that and then let’s see what else Facebook probably not the best Facebook doesn’t work as well for spreading your marketing message Twitter can work if you have a big audience but I think Twitter is dying personally so I wouldn’t spend too much time on that
- Contest – I will probably eventually do a whole episode on how To run a contest but this is a great way to spread the message so you might do something via Twitter via Instagram via Facebook saying doing a post about your products and saying share this product or share this post for a chance to win free product then people share it and it gets shared with their friends and it turns into a whole viral thing so that is a great way of doing it you can also do contests for people into their email and then you email market to them
- Guerrilla Marketing – so guerrilla marketing is really any idea that’s outside of the box an example of this might be going to a trade shower a convention with a funny hat so I might was performance enough but I might go with a hat with a bunch of nuts like glued to it and just walk around and people are going to be like what the hell is that guy doing and I can say oh and people will say oh he’s talking about his company performance nut butter you could go down to a busy intersection and give out samples of performance nut butters for be dance where we could go to a dance competition and interrupt the show I wouldn’t do this cut it’s just rude but interrupt the show and hold big sign that says be dance we’re dance wearing plus colors you get the idea I’m going to let you come up with your own do have in the e-commerce success pack some examples of some other guerilla marketing things you can check that out if you want effective e-commerce calm to get that.
- PR – so public relations join Haro it’s a help a reporter out you can google I think it’s horrid dot org just Google Hero and you can join that and basically what happens is you get emails from reporters that say hey I want total about X Y & Z topic and they’re looking for experts in that so they might say what we’re looking for small businesses to talk about their struggles with marketing and you talk about it and they might put a link to your website or they might just talk about your company they might say you know we’re looking for a company that does ketogenic friendly snacks and obviously that’d be perfect for me and performance unbutters and I’d say you can write up you can write a whole article about performance nut butter you can also do the outreach yourself you can contact newspapers magazines etc. and just try to pitch them on why they should talk about your company
- Spotlight marketing – so I already kind of briefly mentioned this basically spotlight marketing is interviewing people interviewing people that might be your potential customers and spotlighting them on your blog on your YouTube channel on your podcast basically talking about how great people are and trying to help them out by helping them market themselves so thesis a great way to connect with high-level people influencers it’s great way to connect and in fact for the launch of performance nut butter I did a bunch of podcast interviews with a bunch of different interviews the Paleo ketogenic performance space and created a relationship with these people and then when the launch came sent them free product for performance nut butter and they ended up posting about it on Instagram and in their different groups and all this kind of stuff and it led to thousands and thousands of dollars of sales for me so that was huge hugely helpful so spotlight marketing is a great way to connect with influencers and potential customers
- Get repeat customers – the best free marketing method you have is to get someone that’s already customer to come back and buy again give them a call on the phone if you need to send them an email do whatever you need to give them coupons whatever do whatever you need to get those repeat customers because those are hugely important so that was a lot I know I went really fast through that but I did it on purpose because I just wanted to get through all this and we’re going to talk in depth about all these this is just a little preview of some of the future episodes to come so I’m going to go over the list one more time number one SEO content marketing is number two number three YouTube number four talk to everyone spread the message about your product number five make phone calls number six influencer marketing numbers even guest blogging number eight podcast create a podcast it’s not really free but it’s pretty close to free and you can do it for free if you really want number nine send personal emails number ten social media do all the different social medias number eleven contest number twelve guerrilla marketing number thirteen PR public relations get newspapers magazines tecta cover your product number fourteen spotlight marketing number fifteen get repeat customers I hope this was helpful guys and as always I do want to do quick plug if you haven’t yet go to iTunes leave a five star review please don’t usually beg but please leave five star review because it helps out the podcast but as a thank you I’ll enter you in a chance to win a free one-on-one consulting session and to be honest at this rate there hasn’t been there’s been a decent amount of people actually that have left five star reviews and if you give me a really good reason why I might just reach out to you anyways and you can always email me Travis that effective e-commerce comma but leave that-star iTunes review tell me what you think about the podcast tell me a little bit about your business and maybe we can help each other out even maybe we can network and on top of that it helps the podcast sound I think I already said that so that’s it for that obviously let’s see what else think that’s most of it new podcast episodes every Monday and Thursday is well I usually release them early in the morning if you have any questions email me Travis at effective-commerce comma and you can go to effective e-commerce comma to get that free ecommerce success pack which comes with a checklist for starting your online business as well as different marketing ideas a guide on how to hire a virtual assistant all these different cool things I give away all it for free at the end of the day I really want to help you succeed with your online business this is like my goal in life I try to figure out what am I good at and what do I enjoy doing and for meet’s my vision of my future my vision of my world is to help people create their own dream reality to help people reach their dreams through knowledge and one thing I’ve had some success with isocline business and if I can help other people do it I % will so definitely let me know how I can help you out and thank you so much for listening to this podcast or watching this if you’re watching it on YouTube have a good rest your week and I will talk to you guys next week
Free Marketing ideas
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- YouTube
- Talk to Everyone
- Make Phone Calls
- Influencer Marketing
- Guest Blogging
- Podcast
- Not really free but it can be
- Send Personal Emails
- To EVERYONE
- Especially people who sign up for your email
- All Social Media
- Contests
- Guerrilla Marketing
- Go to trade show with a hat
- PR
- Join Haro
- Contact Newspapers/Magazines etc.
- Spotlight Marketing
- Get Repeat customers