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No matter how great your products, services, or websites are, you’re not likely to succeed in your online business if you don’t use at least basic marketing tactics. Marketing is how you make customers, clients, or visitors aware of your online business, and how to convince them to buy or keep coming back.
Here are five cheap and free Internet marketing tips for your online business:1. Offer something for free – No matter what your online business is, customers and visitors love to receive something for nothing. Create an e-book, short report, white paper, software application, collection of articles, or something similar that can be given away for free. If you create it yourself, it’s an easy free marketing tactic. If you need to hire a writer or developer, it can still be a cheap marketing tip for your online business. You can also use your free giveaways as an incentive for visitors to sign up for your email newsletter.
2. Offer an email newsletter – Having an opt-in email newsletter is a simple Internet marketing tip that can be run for free if you handle mailings yourself, or inexpensively even if you use an email management service to track campaign results. The key to successful email marketing is to focus on the reader or customer rather than yourself. Offer an incentive (like a free e-book) for signing up, and continue to offer information in your newsletters that would interest your readers and keep them coming back. Promoting your online business can be done in informative newsletters, without focusing the entire message on yourself (therefore decreasing your newsletter’s risk of appearing to be spam).
3. Offer an incentive for repeat business – One-time visitors, clients, and customers are nice, but it’s even better if they keep providing you with repeat business. A cheap marketing tip for your online business is to offer a small discount on a future order, advanced notice of a new product or service launch, or a restricted area of your website only viewable to repeat visitors where you track them (such as running a forum where certain resources are only available to registered members, or members with a certain number of posts).
4. Offer something newsworthy – If you want to make more money online, you need to keep your company’s name on the minds of your visitors or customers. You can do this inexpensively by sharing significant news through press releases. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a press release, and even hiring a public relations professional to write one for you can be cost effective compared to the exposure they can bring. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to distribute every press release. Several cheap or free online press release distribution sites will get your news listed in search engines, and emailing a copy to relevant journalists and bloggers is free.
5. Offer your opinions – Many online business owners and webmasters don’t understand the value of a review. No matter what industry you’re in, and no matter what type of online business you run, there’s something or someone that you can review. You can review books, industry products, podcasts or seminars by industry professionals, blogs, or other websites in your niche that aren’t in direct competition with you. Reviews will often cost you nothing, although you’ll occasionally spend a small amount on a book or other product to review if you can’t get a free review copy. Here’s the marketing benefit of reviews: Don’t only review something, but then send a link to the reviewed site, publisher, or manufacturer’s public relations person or owner. While you don’t have to, you can gently suggest that they add it to their site’s press section if you know they have one. PR people love reviews, and you’ll likely get high quality backlinks to help with your SEO efforts if nothing else. In some cases, it can lead to more exposure, especially if your reviews are eventually converted into a “top picks†series, yearly or monthly rankings, or something similar.
You’ll notice that every one of these cheap and free Internet marketing tips began with the word “offer.†That’s because effective marketing often means looking beyond yourself and your online business and instead focusing on the needs of your target market. Your visitors and customers will recognize and appreciate the fact that you’re providing something extra of value to them, and it can help your online business stick out in their minds. Give a little; get a lot.
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