Offer to help other influential business owners in your niche

Helping someone else, trigger a psychological rule called ‘reciprocity’. In essence, this means that when you do something good for someone, they cannot help buy want to do something for you in return. It always works.

Other than the fact that you’ll feel good about what you did; you will also develop valuable relationship with people who are in your industry.

What kind of help can you offer?

Think about your skills, and how they would be beneficial to others in your industry. Everyone has something he’s good at. If you are an expert writer, you could offer to write some articles to help promote someone’s business. Use your imagination and get creative. Everyone has skills and abilities that are useful. Don’t take your skills for granted, utilize them to form new alliances that will help promote and upgrade your business.

 This marketing method cost you nothing but your time, and I know a few business owners that use this method affectively and as a result of them offering assistance to others they’ve become friends with very influential business owners who have reciprocated far beyond the value of the initial help given.

Again, your only commitment is time, a willingness to use your skills to help someone who might be able to help you in the future.

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Start a blog

Set up a blog. It’s easy and free. You can set up a free blog using services such as blogger.com, squarespace.com, or weebly.com. You can also use a free web hosting service such as doteasy.com, and install WordPress, (a free blogging platform) however; this will acquire more technical knowledge from you.

The most important key to success with a blog is to provide value to readers. Don’t talk about yourself and don’t try to persuade them to buy. Offer value first, build a relationship with them so they get to know, like and trust you, and you’ll soon find people will naturally ask what they can buy from you.

submit the URL to popular blog directories to let them know you exist. Blindly submitting to non relevant directories is not recommended.

Submit your blog to Dmoz, mybloglog and blogcatalog.

If you have some etra time on your hand submit it to these directories as well:

Blogs.botw.org

Bloggeries.com

Portal.eatonweb.com

Ontoplist.com

Blogged.com

Globeofblogs.com

Read more about Blogs in my eBook eCommerce sites – get the traffic, convert it, measure your success – page 14.

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Use classified ads sites

A frequently overlooked method of getting traffic to your website is posting free classified ads online. Classified ads posting will attract people to your site and provide you with many back links, which will help to raise your website’s ranking on search engines.

So how does it work? Well, think of a classified ad in newspaper. It’s almost identical online, except there’s another benefit in that you’re generating quality back links to your website when you put your URL in the ad.

This is a repetitive and boring task but don’t underestimate its value.

Register for your free account at each of the websites. Prepare the ad. It should be brief and to the point. It should have an irresistible offer, a compelling reason for the reader to respond, with a clear ‘Call to Action’. Ideally, offer something of value, such as a free report, audio CD, DVD etc. Try and make it sounds as natural as possible – read other ads to get an idea of how other people write their ads.

There are some details you should be aware of when posting an ad:

• On some sites such as Craigslist there are numerous geographic regions to choose from. So you can’t post one ad that covers the entire country. You must select a region in order to place the ad. Try and choose the areas with the largest population first (if you cater to areas outside of where you’re located).
• Be aware that under normal circumstances you’re not allowed to post ads in more than one geographic area.  The way to overcome this is to use a different email address for each posting (register multiple free Gmail accounts). Also, change the order of the words or sentence structure in each ad.
• Try to select an appropriate category when given the option. Sometimes ads will be removed if they’re not seen as a good fit for the category they’re in.
•  Post ads consistently. Schedule this task every week.

Sites that allow free classified ads:

http://ftmcmurray.en.craigslist.ca/

http://toronto.kijiji.ca/

http://www.loot.com/

http://www.backpage.com/

http://www.gumtree.com/

http://www.oodle.com/

http://www.local.com/

http://www.usfreeads.com/

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Propose a joint venture partnership with other companies in your niche

A joint venture is a partnership or conglomerate between two or more parties to undertake an economic activity together and sharing the risk in formation.

It’s easy to find suitable candidates – simply do a Google search using keywords that relate to your industry. Find a few that you think can benefit from such a venture and call them with your proposal (suggest that they offer your product to their customers, in return for a substantial share of the profits). Be ready to split the profit of each sale with them. 

It may take you awhile to get through to the decision maker; however, you should be patient and persistent, without being a pain. Be friendly, and emphasize the merits of your product service. 

You can also send them an email or a letter explaining the potential of this venture for both sides.

You can say that you’re in the position to give away a very valuable service which will greatly benefit their clients without costing you a dime.

This way they’re clients will be exposed to your products and services. It might cut on your profits for now, but think of the future, or of up sales, and how much money you can get from new life long clients.

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Submit a weekly Press Release

A press release is pseudo-news story, written in third person and directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value of a particular person, event, service or product.

The most effective press releases are those that are either controversial, tie in with topical news, or arouse curiosity. However, the worst thing you can do to a press release is to write it like a sales letter (that type of press release will either be rejected or not get noticed). Instead, make sure it reads like a news story you would read in a newspaper. Make it factual and avoid hype.

There’s a fine line between self-promotion and creating a sense of excitement. Get feedback from trusted friends to make sure that it reads like a press release and not like a sales pitch. Of course, you always want to include your website URL and phone number in every press release.

A press release can be written for a significant number of events (not necessarily dramatic events). For instance, if you’re just launched a new website you could send out a press release explaining how the site is useful to your customer.  If you launch a new service, a press release can be an easy way to encourage the curious to come and look. If you’ve added a new line to your existing offerings, a press release can alert your customers and potential clients to the good news. If you’ve won an industry award, a press release can help get a greater degree of trust in your company.

Format your release in easy to read, short paragraphs. Try to tell an interesting story with specific details, and don’t forget to tailor the writing style to your audience.

Like any other thing you can learn a lot by reading press releases from other businesses, especially from press release that obtain a huge exposure. Examine what they did to create the buzz.

Your headline and opening paragraph should aim to grab the reader’s attention quickly. Then, try to break down your message into Who, Where, Why, What, When & How

Before releasing your release, get it proofed by someone you trust. You’ll be surprised at what they pick up on, regardless of how good your writing skills are.

After you write the press release you’ll need to submit it. There are a few press releases submission sites, and most of them are completely free. Here’s a list of the top ones:

http://www.npr.org/

http://www.betanews.com

http://www.directionsmag.com

http://news.thomasnet.com/

http://www.nanotech-now.com

http://www.prlog.org/

http://www.downloadjunction.com

http://www.newswiretoday.com/

http://www.pr-inside.com/

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com

http://www.pr.com/

And here’s a press release sample:

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Post comments on other blogs that relate to your industry

This is a powerful strategy for getting potential customers to visit your site. 

First you have to find such blogs. All you need to do is Google it. Put the name of your industry, niche, or what you do and add the word blog to it. So, if you have a pet store just Google the phrase ‘pet blogs’ and you’ll get a list of blogs. You can also go to blog directories (Technorati, Alltop, Blogcatalog) and look for the most popular blogs in your niche because they have more visitors to draw from.

Don’t just jump into them and start commenting! Explore them; see what and how others are saying. Once you learn to listen, it’s time to speak up. 

Here’s how it works.  When you submit your comment on a blog (which is just a variation of a website that allows interaction) you’ll be invited to include your website URL. When someone reads your comment, if they click on your name, it’ll take them over to YOUR website.

Next, add intelligent, helpful comment in response to a post (a post is simply a short article or commentary), and remember of course to include your website URL. In the future, when the other readers of the blog see your comment, if they resonate with it, they’ll click through to your website to see what you have to offer on the subject.

Avoid simple, and useless, one line posts that say “Good idea”, remember that your comment is an opportunity to prove that you can provide value. It is important to write something intelligent that adds to the discussion. Your aim is for visitors to the blog to read your comment and think to themselves that you are an expert in your field, and that why they’ll want to find out more about you, your website, and what you do.

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group

Introduction

Many business owners complain that they can’t get a head because they don’t have a large advertising budget. In the next few blog posts I will show you how to implement simple and free marketing strategies to build your brand, get publicity, and get great results without spending anything other than you time. 

Always remember that your options are only limited only by your imagination. You may not be able to invest in a large scale direct mail campaign or a series of powerful television commercials, but there are still a lot of ways to reach your prospects and clients with no budget.

All the methods that will be presented in the next few blog posts are easy to implement by anyone. You do not need to be a professional marketer to be able to make these methods work. This foundation will get even the smallest businesses running with their marketing, but remember, this a marathon, not a sprint. Focus more on consistently marketing your business and you will see far greater results than if you try to make a big impact right off the bat.

In the next blog post I will talk about the first method that you should explore for your no budget marketing plan so stay tuned.

Ross Marin

President – Marin Media Group