FREE Marketing Tactics Just For You

Guest blog Tanya Williams

Estimated 3 min read

Marketing takes many forms and often the focus is put on paid marketing. But the best marketing is FREE, and it often gets pushed aside as it takes a little effort to make it work. But when it works, it can work BIG!

If you have no budget (or a very small one), it is possible to can make yourself more visible to your potential customers. Here are what I call the 6 C’s. They are simple, practical, and actionable. They are not going to bring you riches overnight and they are not glamourous but IF you do the work, you will see results.

These tactics can be a powerful tool for you to use (while your competition is focusing on all the wrong things). Ready for them?

• Commenting strategy
• Create Employee Brand Ambassadors
• Channels that you own
• Collaboration
• Curated content
• Capture, nurture, and convert

Now let me explain in a bit more detail.

Commenting strategy

Basically, it is a simple way to benefit from existing communities & groups to get you and your brand noticed. A commenting strategy is based on you commenting on the posts of others. You want this to be strategic so comment on the post of businesses or people you want to do business with into the future, aka: your ideal audience.

It needs to be genuine so posting a bunch of comments just saying ‘thanks for sharing’ isn’t going to cut it. What it does is to put your name in front of the people you want to see it.

Create Employee Brand Ambassadors

Employee brand ambassadors are the staff whom you empower to share your content and sing your praises. This is an effective way to leverage each of your staff’s connections (obviously this one is only relevant if you have staff).

The general concept is to get employees to share your company content with their connections. When they share content, they need to add commentary to create context and relevance. The numbers for this add up quickly. If you have 10 staff and they each have 1000 connections that is 10,000 people whom you can potentially reach that might not be aware of you or your product.

Channels you own

Your ‘owned’ channels or marketing assets that you 100% own and control. (NB: That does NOT include your social media pages). Focusing on how you can use and improve these marketing channels makes good business sense. That means making your website work for you, growing your own database, creating and posting regular blog articles, and creating branded content that is valuable.

Collaborations

Collaboration is focused on working with like-minded partners who complement your product or service offering. They should have a similar audience who needs your product. Collaboration is a faster way to get eyes on your product or service and this ‘one to many’ approaches has more value to your ideal prospects because a business they trust is referring you.

Curated content

You don’t have to create every piece of content you need for your marketing. Curated content is content of someone else’s that you share. These could be industry articles, other staff’s LinkedIn post, an article from a news source, or even a TikTok video.  I have been experimenting with curated content across channels and it is consistently outperforms created content.

Capture, nurture & convert

Let me ask you this one question – are you capturing website visitors’ data? If your answer was no, then you need to put more time into making sure your website is working for you (not just looking pretty).

There is no point in spending a fortune on Facebook or Google ads to send people to their website but then have no way of capturing their details when they arrive. A simple way to do this is with a FREE PDF guide or video series they can sign up for. (that’s what we call a lead magnet). The prospect gets valuable information and you get a new name on your database. Win–win!

Once you capture their details you need to nurture them. That does not mean start selling to them. It means adding more value, getting to know them (and they you), and building a relationship with them.

Free marketing can take time to get traction and results, but consistency is key. Start these tactics for a week or two then deciding they don’t work is a mistake. Choose 1-2 of them and consistently action. (yes another C-word).

If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into each of these tactics, and get tips on where to start & how to measure the results, download this FREE PDF and get started. There is no time like the present.