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No Cost Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales

Guest post by: Jan Marie Dore

Article Overview: In these times of tight budgets, many of my clients are looking for low cost and no cost marketing strategies to promote their services and make more money. We still need to get the word out about our business and continue to be visible, and there are many ways to do this even on a limited budget. Here are four no cost ideas to promote your services and increase your income:

No Cost Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales

In these times of tight budgets, many of my clients are looking for low cost and no cost marketing strategies to promote their services and make more money. We still need to get the word out about our business and continue to be visible, and there are many ways to do this even on a limited budget. All they cost you is your time. Here are four 'no cost' ideas to promote your services and increase your income:

1. Write and submit articles

Article publishing has been one of the most effective strategies I have used to get more visitors to my website and grow my business and income. Whether you like to write or not, you can either write or record your tips. You always have some good tips and ideas to share with your clients. You can speak an article into a voice recorder, and then have it transcribed. Or, use speech recognition software like I do to dictate your articles and have them automatically typed up. I use 'Dragon Naturally Speaking' by Nuance. Submit your articles to online article directories, print publications, and specific online sites that your target audience would go to. My favorite online article directory is EzineArticles.com.

2. Contact former clients

Previous clients can be one of your best sources of repeat business. It costs much less time and money to market to someone who already knows you well than it does to try to continually find new prospects. Yet, many business owners fail to pay attention to the potential gold mine of former clients. They continue to look for new prospects rather than keep in touch with previous satisfied clients. Designing a 'keep-in-touch' strategy is crucial to your business growth. Regularly sending out tips and resources to prospects and clients will keep your services top of mind. Survey your former clients using a free tool like SurveyMonkey.com and entice them back by making them an irresistible offer. Provide exceptional customer service to keep them satisfied and buying more. Get creative in thinking about what clients would really like from you and over-deliver on value.

3. Get more visible on blogs, forums and social networking sites

There are lots of places online where you can be more visible, express your opinion, and let others know who you are and what you do ... and how you can help them. Posting helpful comments to other people's blogs in your area of specialty with a link back to your website can be a very effective strategy for attracting new visitors to your site. Posting or answering questions in forums is also worth doing. And - social networking is one of the latest ways to get connected and visible online. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be very effective to develop relationships and joint ventures. Be strategic and limit your time on these sites so they don't consume all your time. Writing testimonials, comments and book reviews are also ways to get noticed for free.

4. Send out press releases

Press releases are often overlooked as a low cost marketing tool. There are paid services of course, but there are also many free press release sites - such as 24-7PressRelease.com or Free-Press-Release.com. You can send a press release about a new service offering, or a workshop or teleseminar or a new product. To make your release newsworthy, connect it to a current news item or a current event or holiday. Create a list of media contacts, and send the information directly to specific editors or contact people in your area.

Don't let not having a budget for marketing stop you from promoting yourself and increasing your visibility and income. All it takes is some time and a little creativity!

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Article Tags: marketing strategies, marketing strategies for small business, marketing tips, marketing tool, small business advice, small business coaching, small business marketing, small business sales



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Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Different Hats - CEO Sales & Marketing & Leadership Development Company Strategic Vision 10 Alliances & Growth Strategies 10 Hiring & Managing People 8 Mentoring 8-9 Strategic Planning for Clients 10 Execution of Marketing Campaigns 9-10 (i have great people who do the nitty gritty) Financial Management 9 Bookkeeping 3 (outsourced as I really hate the fine details like GST0 Administrative Follow Up 6-7 (again have great staff) Writing & Publishing 9 (getting better all the time!) Speaking 10 (so I have been told) Self Promotion 9-10 Web development & Promotion 6-7 (learning more and have brought on players who are 10+) Babysitting Employees (1 - wont do it, that's why I work so hard to hire and motivate the people I have) Great topic Kevin!! Jude
Re: First Facebook Ad - Experiment! - Hi GT, Thanks for the prod! As you know, this was my first ever Facebook campaign and results have been... so so! Here are the latest stats: Impressions 115,246 Clicks 44 CTR 0.038% CPC $0.75 CPM $0.29 TOTAL SPENT $33.04 Subscribers 1 Sales 1 A single sale brings in $100 so I'm ahead of the game, but won't be for much longer at this rate!! I tweaked the ad a couple of times. I also need to point the ad to a landing page. At the moment it sends people straight to the sales page. I'm going to set up a Facebook Fan page and see if that converts better. The Cost Per Click has been slowly going up. I was getting a better rate, but suddenly clickthroughs have dipped down to ZERO on Saturday, and just 1 per day thereafter. Best number of clicks in a day was 6. The ad is now in its second week. I'm letting it run for four weeks to try and see if any pattern emerges.
niche forum categories - I think Kevin just touched on the point that I was going make... and that is developing 'categories' that stick. Sales and Marketing may be too broad for example. However I can almost guarantee you that you would see many more sign-ups if you tailored a category to 'internet marketing' for newbies. I've seen this work on other forums, however, [i:1i903wkn]it can get a little frantic[/i:1i903wkn]... Fine tuning the categories, or expanding the scope should be effective. I think a lot of IM folks are surfing right on by because they're not finding what they're looking for here... Just a few thoughts: Better Blogging Developing Info Products Internet Marketing Presentation Skills More How to's Another point is... a lot of people don't know that they can benefit from participating in forums. The signature links to their site - if they have one - can / should be motivation enough to get more involved. The more internet savvy members that have signatures seem to stick around more... Don't you think?


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