Monday, May 26, 2008

Doing Your Marketing For Free

I’m a great believer in doing things for free – without compromising on quality or getting what you want. In this day and age, I think it’s perfectly possible to have your cake and eat it, but you’re going to need to think about things in a different way. Here’s how:

Do you really need it? The first mindset you need to adapt is asking yourself the question of "Do I really need it?" when you’re looking to spend some money on something. Most of the stuff we buy is because we WANT it rather than NEED it. There is a big difference and if you’re already saying to yourself "I need it", it’s likely that you’ve already talked yourself into it. Try to stay objective and think about whether you do actually need it or whether you just want it really badly. Then think about:

Is there a different way to get it? Can you get the same item or the same result without spending money on it? If it’s an item you’re looking at purchasing, find out the price in the shops and then search for it on the Shop Bots like Kelkoo that are out there to see if you can get it for less. Have a look on Ebay too and also register on Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org/) – people post unwanted items on this site and you can get them for free, provided you pick it up. You’ll be amazed at what is posted on there. To get the same result for something – let’s say you were thinking about going to an exhibition – could you go and work on someone else’s stand for free and be able to promote your business in exchange? If it’s an advert, could you write an article in the publication instead of paying for an advert?

Have the mindset of not spending money You see, doing your marketing (and other things) for free is all about having the mindset of not spending money. A good tip to try is to reduce your marketing budget to £500 a year or less and stick to it. That means if an advertising opportunity comes up that costs £1000 you’re going to have to think much more creatively about how you do this since you don’t have the budget. So could you barter with the publication to reduce the cost; could you write an article instead; could you team up with another business and advertise together? The possibilities are limitless – you just have to be creative.

Be creative If I said to you – come up with 10 ways to promote your business – you’d probably find that easy to do. You’d be likely to include advertising, sending out mail shots and so on. If I said to you though – come up with 10 ways to promote your business for free – I know you’d find this harder to do, but just thinking through this, you’ll be amazed what you come up with and you’ll have 10 ways to promote your business that don’t cost you a penny. Be creative, you never know what the results will be.

Not spending money is just a mindset. It’s hard to think this way if you’ve been used to spending but when you put your mind to it, you’ll be amazed at what you can come up with. My philosophy is "Why spend money if you can have it for free?" Try it, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Google Adwords – Understanding Your Bids & Keywords

When you set up a Google Adwords campaign you particularly have to place specific attention on your keyword choices as well as your bids. After all, you don’t want to be charged more for a bid that you could have avoided paying. So, who controls the bidding process? Google of course! I know, we would love to control it but the powers that be have the last say. So, how does this bidding process really work? Well, let me explain: If you are running a Google Adwords campaign sometimes you may find that the information on the Google ad group 1 can sometimes have no ads showing for a particular keyword. This keyword obviously has a low quality score from Google so the bid on it can exceed your current bid. What this means is each keyword is given a quality score based on its relevance of the keyword, ad text, and landing page. If your quality is low, the minimum cost per click bid required to show your ad for the keyword will be high. Conversely, high quality keywords have a lower minimum cost per click bids. If for example the minimum cost per click bid for the keyword is greater than the bid, the keyword(s) become inactive and your ad stops showing for that particular term. It is extremely important to always monitor your ads performance while you are running your ad and after you run your ad. This will allow you to test and gain accurate results that can be tweaked and improved for the future. Also, a very important thing to remember is to never get emotionally attached to any of your keywords! This is a big no-no. There’s tons more keywords out there that you can find that people are searching for. One of the best tips when creating a Google Adwords campaign is this... if you are running your ads and you develop many inactive keywords, you’ve got two choices – one, take all the keywords and delete them and then just re-add them in there or secondly, raise or increase your bid. There’s really no other choice. Having inactive keywords happens to everyone but it’s good to know what to do in this situation. There’s no other choice you pretty much have, unless you have the keywords on your webpage. Now you can’t do this with all of your keywords because it just won’t make sense – but you can take some of your keywords and add them to your page. If you have the keywords on your page, what happens is Google sometimes – not all the time – Google can sometimes give you a better quality score. If they give you a better quality score, your bid price will go down. These are just some tips that will assist you when creating your ad campaigns and hopefully you’ll gain the upper hand using these strategies.

Good luck!
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