Free Marketing

101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

Jim Cockrum

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781118034712
• eBook ISBN: 9781118120040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Simple, powerful marketing strategies every business can afford to implement

There's never been a better time to be a marketer or entrepreneur than right now. Thanks to the Internet, a new world of free and inexpensive tactics can help get the word out to the prospects of any business with a limited marketing budget. Free Marketing delivers more than 100 ideas to help any small business owner or marketer generate new revenue—with little or no marketing budget.

With both Internet-based and creative offline ideas, you'll discover ways to turn your top customers into your unpaid sales force, get your competitors to help you promote your new products, and other innovative ways to get the word out.

• Create a "squeeze page, " the most powerful one page website you'll ever build
• Use simple YouTube videos to grow sales
• Hold an eBay auction for publicity purposes (author Jim Cockrum made $30, 000 and earned tons of free publicity from just one auction)
• and more!

Grow a successful business without letting your marketing budget tell you "No." Jim Cockrum has proven that the most powerful marketing strategies are the cheapest.

Part 1

Build Your Reputation–Or Your Brand–For Free

Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

–John R. Wooden

Icouldn't agree more with this quote from the late great coach Wooden. The reality on the Internet is that very few prospects will ever care to find out who you really are deep inside as an organization, business, or individual.

The busy, overwhelmed public will make snap decisions based on a quick glance at your online reputation.

Whether your online reputation or brand is accurate or not matters very little to the masses. Which is why you can't afford to ignore it by thinking that it's entirely based on your good character, or the handful of testimonials on your own website.

Monitoring and managing your online reputation has recently become just as vital as any other marketing you may be doing. It's time to play defense.

The term reputation management may be new to you, but it's a term that you must embrace because of the new rules of the Internet economy. Under the old rules if you upset a customer we were all told to expect that they would tell seven of their friends. The implied conclusion was that an occasional upset customer was acceptable and expected, but certainly not potentially devastating.

Now things have changed. If someone has something bad to say about you, their comment could be posted semi-permanently on page one of Google for months or years. This seemingly insignificant act on the part of one customer could potentially impact you negatively in front of hundreds or even thousands of prospects. The fact is, people are increasingly using search engines to research the industries, people, or businesses they are considering doing business with and, like it or not, your business, name, or organization is on the list of those that will be impacted. And it gets worse before it gets better, because on Google bad news floats.

The stakes are high. All it takes is one angry customer, one disgruntled employee, or one bad business partner acting on your behalf and your reputation could take a semipermanent hit. Maybe it already has and you don't even know it.

Tough Reality

A public that rarely takes time to investigate the background of the news reporters they listen to isn't likely to devote any time to researching the motives of the random strangers they encounter online who have something negative to say about you or your company. They'll just believe the negative and move on.

But there is good news. Take a deep breath.

You can proactively manage your online reputation whether you are a small local business or a big player with customers worldwide. You don't have to be perfect either—which is good news since none of us are.

In my online businesses I've sold services, products, and downloadable goods to well over 100,000 customers in the past few years with my name and business name proudly attached to every transaction. The price points have ranged from $7 special reports to tens of thousands of dollars for multiyear coaching or consulting contracts. In other words, my own business has been a good testing ground for my theories of reputation management.

The big question: Is it possible to keep 100,000 people 100 percent happy on that many various transactions? The answer is no—that's impossible. No person or organization is perfect.

The realistic goal for your business should be to fix every problem fast, and allow no one to become so upset that they post glaringly negative things about you online. On the occasion where a situation gets away from you, you need to be prepared to combat the negative comment strategically. It is possible to manage your reputation through a large numbers of transactions and customers even if you have only a tiny staff like I do.

The other component of a good strategy involves intentionally flooding the Internet with the good news and testimonials about you and your company to help drown out the inevitable bad news. You'll need the help of loyal customers to do this part correctly (and of course 100 percent ethically).

So, how's my online reputation doing with the odds stacked against me?

One popular watchdog site that monitors those of us claiming to teach Internet business has over 40,000 voting members and ranks over 2,000 industry experts. At the time of this writing I'm thrilled to be consistently ranked in the top five most trusted and have spent a lot of time at number one. Also, the first several pages of Google and other major search engines are filled with positive comments and feedback about me, my websites, and my businesses. It's all because of what I'm about to show you in the next six chapters—my six rules for maintaining a good online reputation. I believe these rules will serve any business very well.

CHAPTER 1

Supercharge Your Online Reputation

If you read books the way I do, you may be starting out by jumping over the intro and other stuff by going right to Chapter 1. That's a big mistake. You really need to check out the Introduction in order to get what I'm saying.

Virtually every customer has a megaphone and an audience—give them a reason to say great things about you.

This era of instant online relationships and limitless information is the best time in the history of business to run an honest business that also wows your customers. Customers today have the ability to spread the word to unimaginable numbers of potential prospects if you'll just give them a good reason to. In my business I teach anyone who works for me the power of testimonials and feedback with this simple philosophy, “Any positive comment sent to us or posted online is worth $1,000 in our pocket. No amount of marketing or advertising that you will ever do can compare to the viral power of your audience as they share their experiences and impressions of your business online.”

The network of potential contacts that your customers are all a part of is unlike anything we've ever seen in business, and it's growing at an unimaginable pace. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country on earth, and it's still growing rapidly as I write this book. You simply must find creative ways to tap into the pool of prospects that are directly connected to your current customers.

Even if you don't have a website. …

It's no longer good enough just to be good at what you do. In order to supercharge your online reputation you must proactively encourage your customers to spread the word. You must lead and encourage them instead of waiting on good things to happen on their own. You need the help of your most loyal fans and customers in order to flood the web with good news that will counter and drown out the inevitable bad review that will eventually show up—if it hasn't already. While you can't put words in the mouths of your customers, you can give them every opportunity to say great things about you, and you can encourage them to do so.

Make it easy for your customers to leave feedback online both in front of their online network of friends and contacts, and on review sites. A few examples of this in action:

• Have an Internet-connected laptop or iPad on hand in your business lobby or waiting room and post a sign nearby that reads, “Free Internet access. All we ask in return is that you tell your friends about your experience with us today on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail us your story at this e-mail address: [email protected].”
• Post a sign in your business targeted at customers with smartphones, requesting that they leave a review or post a comment on your blog, website, a popular review site, Twitter, Facebook, and so on while they wait. This little prompt could start a viral wave of activity from just one customer participating.
• In every e-mail or correspondence you send your customers encourage them to send you stories of success or mention your services to their online network of friends. If you give instructions on exactly how to help you it will be very well received by your most loyal customers.
• Most cell phones now have built in powerful cameras, and as a result pictures have become nearly as easy to share as the spoken word. We all know that a good picture is better than a thousand words right? Encourage your customers to use their cell phones to take and send you pictures of their experiences with your business, employees, and products. Encourage them to post them online in their social networks and on review sites (be specific as to which sites).
• Hold contests that encourage your customers to create a simple YouTube.com video talking about you and your business. Reward the most creative entries with a prize. I did this activity with my mailing list of top customers about a year ago and created a great viral wave of new activity and publicity on YouTube.
• Create a high quality T-shirt or other branded items that reflect the marketing message of your business and give them away to top customers and sell them to others, but take it a step further. Request that customers send you a picture and post a picture of themselves wearing or using the items somewhere online. These photos make for great eye-candy for any website as well if customers send you a copy! If your customers aren't local, use a service like Cafepress.com to manage the printing and shipment of your T-shirts.

Caution

Most of the legitimate feedback and review sites online now use IP tracking to help prevent abuse. This means they can tell if one computer is being used to pad the stats for or against a business. More tips and rules for staying legit are posted at the end of this chapter.

Once we've pulled in positive feedback or testimonials, we post them to our own website where the public can see them almost instantly. We also ask anyone who sends us a great testimonial to please jump on the appropriate feedback sites and leave their comments there. We make it easy for them by providing a link and instructions.

Feedback and reviews posted online from a third party that lacks an agenda will be trusted far more than if you post anything positive about yourself. Honest feedback and conversations left on neutral territory, such as a trusted review site, are worth their weight in gold for your business.

Alternately, it's just as easy to use the Internet to tell the world how rotten you are. Online, bad news floats. This means that if 1,000 people love you and one doesn't like you, the comment from the one angry guy will probably find its way to the top. It's not a kind truth, but it's a truth nonetheless. This truth will guide many of the other rules I show you in the five following sections.

You will have customers post bad things about you online eventually. You need to prepare for this reality. Nothing quenches the pain of a complaint posted online like a host of happy testimonials standing nearby overwhelming the lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsenment
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Marketing Is Now Free!
• Part 1: Build Your Reputation–Or Your Brand–For Free
• Part 2: Simple Inexpensive Websites You Might Need
• Part 3: The Habits of Online Marketing Success
• Part 4: Standing Out Online
• Part 5: Draw Your Business on a Napkin
• Part 6: Start Hanging Out Where Your Prospects Hang Out
• Part 7: Get Creative with the Media
• Part 8: Smartphones Are Taking Over the World
• Part 9: Inch-Wide, Mile-Deep Marketing
• Part 10: Video Is No Longer Optional
• Part 11: Deliver Current Content Constantly
• Part 12: Social Media Marketing
• Part 13: E-Mail Marketing Is Autopilot Marketing
• Part 14: Who's Driving Your Business?
• Part 15: Spoiled Prospects and Customers Are Loyal
• Part 16: Powerful Marketing Partnerships
• Part 17: Make Your Story Powerful
• Part 18: Actually, You Are Selling You
• Part 19: We Like to Buy from Experts–So Become an Expert
• Part 20: Grab Bag of Ideas
• Bonus Chapter
• Acknowledgments
• Index