Instead of spending big bucks to advertise in print publications and participate in other costly offline marketing venues, many businesses of all sizes are turning to free to low cost internet methods and strategies to invest their time, effort and branding for a greater outreach. Because for much less than the price of one print classified ad, a company can generate many more leads, targeted leads, with methods that are free to very low cost on the Internet, while responses from print campaigns, if any, are often not worth the return on investment (ROI) in comparison.
Some of the more popular free to low cost internet marketing methods out there today follow.
1) Free Press Release and Article Directories – Well written articles and press releases help draw targeted Internet traffic to websites. Simply insert a link in the body of the press release that invites readers to visit a website for a free report or other offer in the last paragraph, and add a similar call to action in the resource box or byline or an article. Then submit the press releases and articles to free online article directories and press release sites. Find them by entering keywords like, “free article directory,” in Google or other top search engine.
2) Hire Ghostwriters – Hiring someone to write content for your blog, website, article and press release submissions work is easy to day and inexpensive when you outsource your work to ghostwriters. Find experienced, qualified writers on freelance bid sites like Elance.com and on forums in your niche and in the Internet marketing arena, like at WarriorForum.com.
3) Establish a Presence at Free Social Networking, Bookmarking and Other Sites – There are many places online where you can register for a free account, set up a web presence there, often with the ability to upload digital media to share with others, post on a blog and more, while also networking with fellow members and / or visitors to the site, as they make comments on your content, share their info and more. Some of these sites are:
Squidoo
Hubpages
Blogger
WordPress
MySpace
Twitter
Find many more by searching Onlywire.com for starters. And sign up there to bookmark all your content for sharing with multiple sites and to learn more.
A couple points to keep in mind with these sites are: follow the rules at each, don’t spam and don’t go over board there. For example, Hubpages only allows two links to your sites, at the time of this writing. Don’t add three, trying to fake them out with an affiliate link. And don’t spam comments all over on other Hubs just to get links. This type negative activity can get you banned, your account closed.
4) Free Classified Online Ads – Search for “free classified ads” in Google and many sites show up. Some of the more popular places to submit your ads are:
a) craigslist
b) backpage
c) kijiji
d) gumtree
e) loquo
f) classifieds.myspace
g) expo.live
h) adlandpro
i) usfreeads
j) oodle
For help writing your ads and even submitting them and keeping them up to date on each site, consider hiring help, outsourcing with a ghostwriter experienced with sales copy, and a virtual assistant who can open accounts at each place, submit your ads and follow up as they expire to renew them, revise them, etc.