Successful, Low-Cost Marketing

[Linda Zukowski Muhammad]

I am curious as to what avenues provide the best, low-cost advertising option for new businesses with limited advertising budgets. What do you feel has given you "the most bang for your buck" ?

[Steve Hand]

Effective word-of-mouth marketing is always the best from my experience.

[Ina Stanley]

I think it really depends on the type of business and who you're looking to target. But to take word-of-mouth marketing a bit further, social media can provide the the highest ROI there is (targeted results for FREE) so long as you know how to properly use it. It has definitely given our company a presence that would have otherwise taken many months to a year or 2 to build (but instead, we were able to do it in just about 3 months). Not only are the results fairly immediate, social media is usually free, provides great opportunities for raising your search engine rankings and it's interactive, allowing you to grow and change along with your target market!

[Leslie Flowers, Change Agent]

I agree with Steve and Ina. Word of mouth and social networking are two excellent ways to advertise what you do.

Also, you don't have to have a lot of money -- or know HOW you are going to market yourself to begin.

Innovative ideas will COME to you via your intuition if you are quiet and very focused on what you w

Leslie

[Justin Lukasavige]

Referrals can be great and very low cost Linda. It's interesting that most people pursue advertising as their favorite form of marketing. It's almost always the most expensive and least effective form of marketing.

Many of the outlets I use in our company are free, such as speaking and writing.

[Brandon M. Nokes]

Linda,

Email can be a very powerful way to market your products and get your advertising done as well. That has always been a critical part of my sales process in most the markets that I have worked in. When used correctly you can generate good response with very little investment in both time and money. If you have questions about that I would be more than happy to help you out with it.

Brandon

[Linda Zukowski Muhammad]

I would be interested in learning more about how to utilize social networking groups for marketing. I know there have been some workshops, but they all seem to happen when I have clients scheduled.

I tried doing some targeted facebook advertising, and all that did was cost me money....I did not get any clients out of the clicking.

[Ash Waechter]

Starting an e-mail list with an e-mail campaign would prove to be very effective for you.

Social media is great and can be highly effective form of marketing. However, before you invest in any more advertising or marketing schemes, you should have a good idea of how your customers are coming to your site. The best to do that is through an analytics package. Google offers one for free. Without knowing the results of any marketing or advertising campaign, doing another one is just a waste of money.

By the way, was your Facebook advertising targeted to your geographic area?

[Linda Zukowski Muhammad]

Yes, the Facebook advertising was targeting to the Triangle area.

I also have an email list....on my intake form, I ask for an email address and permission to send people special offers. I send out announcements of monthly specials, as well as lost-minute specials.

I have an analytics page. It seems like most people come through google, whicih is where most of my marketing costs go.

[Pugal Natesan - Cary SEO]

Linda,

if you have analytics setup, try to see which of your marketing efforts are working better, and where most referrals to your website come from.

Also, take a look at your website's bounce rate (percentage of visitors who came to your website, but left the site without clicking any links).

Analytics is so versatile, you can almost know everything you need to know about your website.

If you need any additional information, or have any questions, please post here.

Pugal