Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off by Jim Cockrum

4/5

A very good book. The only reason it gets a 4/5 is that I knew most of the tips already, however, if you're new to marketing, you'll find it more than useful. A few of my notes:

• Go to cafepress.com for custom-made promotional items. I'm yet to use this so I can't personally recommend it.
• Tweetbeep.com, google alerts for twitter
• Create good quality free information to help drive people's decisions
• Have a generous refund policy to avoid negative feedback
• Always write marketing copy as though you're writing to one person, e.g. your mum
• A squeeze page, a one-paged website designed to collect emails, period. Click for example.

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Have a community page, e.g. on Facebook or on your own website. The effectiveness of that community page depends on:

• Community influence: your ability to trigger a response
• Perceived authority: to what degree does the community consider you to be an authority.
• Established trust
• Size of audience
• Degree of ownership
• You can use ning.com to create a community

PHONES

• Mobile marketing has a higher return than email marketing but you must get permission as it might cost the individual.
• Research text message marketing.

eBAY

• You can sell using the classified ads format! ...apparently.
• Blogging tip: do it with passion and personality
• Brevity is good in marketing
• YouTube has a keyword tool just like google to help you figure out what people frequently search for so that you can title your videos more effectively
• Use classfied ads on ebay, apparently they work!
• Press releases are great for building back links even if major news outlets ignore them. And from personal experience major news outlets will ignore them so don't spend too much on press releases. Your press release should answer: who, what, when, where and why. Back up the facts and claims in the rest of the press release. Try to cater to a growing trend in your press release.
• Good press release sites: vitispr.com/blog/free-press-release-sites
• Get people to send you pictures holding your product to get a discount code
• Call yourself "The World's Foremost Expert" in your niche
• Find forum fame but don't sell anything there! (that's on other people's forums). On your own forum obviously you can create a balance.
• On forums, use a username related to your domain
• Create ebooks using clickbank.com
• Understand the power of free. The winners in the "new economy" are those with a large loyal following.
• He emphasised the point that although social media is important email is MUCH MORE important because Facebook can close down your page if they want to!
• Send customers personal birthday messages using techsmith.com/jing
• Use jing.com to send video responses to customer queries
• Create DVD material using kunaki.com
• Protect your online reputation using naymz.com or reputation.com
• Research niches micronichefinder.com or marketsamurai.com
• Have a press kit ready on demand. Include:

1. Bios of key players (with quality, high-res head shots)
2. Summary of business: products, achievements
3. As seen on logos
4. Sample interview questions
5. Best testimonials
6. Articles or TV spots you have appeared in
7. Fact sheet with important dates, appearances, etc. Date founded, date of major product releases, dates of gatherings, seminars and so on.
8. Photos of everything they can use
9. Sample YouTube videos
10. Your story!
11. Contact info

• Some of Jim's case studies / success stories: ladybugwreaths.com, classicvwbugs.com

There were tonnes of tips, I can't repeat them all but these few should be enough to get you going.

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