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Free Marketing Channels
Whenever we think about using the term “free” in business, there needs to be a broader context. I often find it very intriguing how people just look at “free” channels and never find anything that satisfies them. Here’s the deal: Marketing is all about getting the word out there about your business, but sometimes that can cost a pretty penny. That’s where free marketing comes in. It’s like a magical unicorn that can help you reach new customers without spending a dime. So if you are here for a quick look at free channels and want to know your answer quickly, skim through my subheadings. I’ll put the important parts in bold.
Table of Contents
Social Media For Free Marketing
There are plenty of social platforms in this sea. Most of them are small fish, and the sea is dominated by big players like LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, and a few others, with a special mention to that one fish that is trying to swallow other big fish: Meta.
How to find the right social media for your business?
This is a question that every marketer or business owner seeking entry into social media marketing wants to know. The question you need to ask here is: Where does my audience hang out?
If you know your customer, then this is an easy question to answer. If you are still struggling to narrow it down, maybe creating a customer persona can help. Check out our customer persona template to learn more.
Influencer Marketing
This is another avenue of low-cost marketing that might be effective for you. As the world grew closer to the internet, so did influencers. People with particular interests attract others with similar interests, forming groups of followers. These influencers showcasing your products can be what your business needs to get more sales. This could be high or low-cost based on your product, the influencer, and what they want.
Referral marketing
Referral marketing is like having a bunch of salespeople on your payroll without actually paying them a dime. How cool is that? Here’s how it works: You give your customers an incentive to refer their friends, family, and coworkers to your business.
And when those referrals turn into customers, you reward your original customers with discounts, free stuff, or whatever incentive you promised them. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved!
It’s like having a secret weapon in your marketing arsenal that’s super effective and doesn’t cost you a penny.
So, if you want to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing without breaking the bank, give referral marketing a try. Who knows, you might even create a referral frenzy that takes your business to the next level!
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where businesses reward affiliates (people or companies who promote their products or services) for each customer they bring in through their unique affiliate link. Essentially, affiliates act as middlemen who refer potential customers to the business in exchange for a commission or a percentage of the sale.
However, it’s important to note that affiliate marketing does require effort and strategy to be successful. Overall, affiliate marketing can be a great way to earn money online while promoting products or services that you genuinely believe in. It’s a win-win for both the business and the affiliate, and it’s a free marketing channel in that anyone can participate.
Content Marketing Channels
Ah, the crème de la crème of marketing in 2023. Well, maybe you think it’s an exaggeration, as it is all a matter of personal preference, but content marketing is the kind of marketing that appeals the most to me.
What is content marketing?
The shortest explanation I can give of content marketing would be that it is offering value and gaining value in return. Content marketing comes in the form of blogs on a website, content creation on social media, vlogs, podcasts, etc. Everything at this point is content, and content can be used to market. But for a second, let’s talk about content without capitalizing on it.
Content creation, when it comes to a business, is creating information that would be beneficial (offer value) to its target audience. If you want to look at a company that does this really well, look no further than HubSpot. HubSpot offers CRM tools to businesses, and it offers content on every avenue possible that helps marketers market their businesses.
Know your audience
Your business probably offers a solution to some problem that your customer is facing. Think bigger, think about other problems they might be facing. But don’t just stop there, go even bigger, go creative. Own a coffee shop and are you passionate about coffee beans? Let the world know your expertise. Write about it!
Play to your strengths
You might be a small business, or you might be a big company. However big or small you are, think about creative ways to express yourselves and your knowledge. Think about how you can show that to your target market and make sure they enjoy it. If you are a small business that has an employee who is good at writing, but you don’t want to try writing and instead want to know if you can crack its reels, go for it. But, make sure that it is something you can integrate with your business and not something that you are forcing yourself to do too much of. The reason for this is that content marketing needs to be consistent, and you should aim to see long-term results and not short-term ones. So make sure to play to your strengths as a business.
Email Marketing
Emails can sometimes feel like a burden. But trust me, when done right, it can be a powerful marketing tool. Start by building a list of interested subscribers, creating some catchy subject lines, and sending out newsletters or promotional emails to keep your audience engaged. And hey, if you’re feeling really creative, you can even throw in a few memes to spice things up. When it comes to email marketing, honestly speaking, the sky is the limit. Brands do amazing things with it, and why would they not? It is very interesting to see all the marketing tactics various companies use to stand out from the next person doing email marketing.
Search Engine Optimisation
This is all about making sure your website shows up as high as possible in search engine results, without having to pay for ads. It’s like playing a game of hide & seek with Google – except you want to be found!
The reason SEO is so important is that most people use search engines like Google to find products and services online. And if your website isn’t showing up on the first page of results, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic and customers. If you’re in business and you have a web presence, chances are you’ve heard of this term before. If you haven’t, then it’s high time you start paying attention to this.
Well, consider this free marketing in the long run. SEO is too broad a term to fit under content marketing or any other topic. It’s so broad that it deserves a section of its own. There are various strategies that you can take here, and if you’re going to do this on your own, let me warn you: making mistakes is the only way you’ll learn. And it will take time…Alternatively, you can go to agencies like ours with experts who can give you a good insight into this space.
Why did I call it free marketing? Well, once you crack the code, having a great SEO strategy means that you won’t have to spend much more on advertising. When someone goes into Google and searches for, say, “Which is the best [insert what you sell here] in [insert where you’re from]?” And your business can come right up top next to their finger, inviting them to click on your website.
Community Marketing Channels
Community Building
Building a community around your brand can be a cost-effective way to generate leads and increase brand awareness. Community building is like a big, fun party where everyone’s invited! The goal is to bring people together around a common interest, whether it’s a product, a cause, or just a shared passion. By creating a space where people can connect, share ideas, and learn from each other, you’re building a community that’s strong and engaged.
Public Relations
Public Relations is like being the quarterback of your own personal cheerleading squad. You want to get people excited about your brand, product, or service, and make sure they know all the amazing things you’re doing. With great PR, you can build trust and credibility with your audience, while also raising awareness about your brand. You want to be the talk of the town, and PR is your secret weapon to get people talking about you in all the right ways!
Hosting Events
Hosting events is like throwing a surprise party for your friends (except they know about it, of course!). You want to create an experience that’s memorable, fun, and engaging, where people can come together and have a great time. Whether it’s a launch party for a new product or a networking event for professionals, hosting events is a great way to build relationships, create buzz, and showcase your brand. And let’s be real, who doesn’t love a good party?
The (un-)official conclusion. I guess…
If you’re here to just get information while skimming through blogs, then this would be where we part. However, if you want to get a little bit more understanding of this space and if I’ve piqued your curiosity a bit more, keep reading. I promise it isn’t too long.
What makes these “free” marketing channels “free”?
Let’s start with social media, as this is the easiest to explain. How do social media platforms work as a business? Most of their revenue comes from advertising, and to advertise to their users more, they need their users to use it for longer periods. We could easily see the word ‘trending’ becoming more popular as social platforms that have a very wide range of users push up posts that are liked by more people in the hopes that people will ride the waves (using their platform more, giving them more avenues for advertising).
Let’s move on to the other elephant in the room. The bigger one, which is even more integrated into our lives than any social media platform, is Google. Google, again, is an advertising agency in its most limited terms. While they have built various other channels of income over the years, advertising is still one of their primary foci, and here’s where the Google search engine comes into place. Search engines work by leading their users to the information that they’re looking for. They are our entry point into the internet, and the competition there (even though Google dominates most of it) is getting people the most appropriate and accurate information in the fastest time possible. If you work in marketing or SEO, you can make more sense of it as all the recent algorithm updates at Google have pointed in this direction.
The entire point of this conversation is that when you are looking at free marketing channels to use, make sure that you know their purpose and their intention. Why do they want you there? What’s in it for them? Knowing the answers to these questions will really help you spruce up your marketing strategies for the channel you are using.
