Free and Paid Marketing Methods

Marketing

Definition of Marketing that were approved by the American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors as of October 2007 (Marketing) and October 2004 (Marketing Research).

"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."

"Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information--information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications."

Free or Paid Marketing Methods?

As an affiliate marketer, it's crucial to continuously look for strategies to advertise our company and entice new members. Paid advertising can be successful, but not everyone can afford it. Because of this, it's crucial to take into account using free advertising techniques as well.

Here is a general overview of 5 tried-and-true methods that have been shown to be effective in driving traffic and generating Leads for businesses.

Social Media:

Using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for marketing purposes can be an effective approach to reach a sizable, focused audience without spending any money. You may draw potential clients and promote your goods or services by setting up a company page and adding interesting content.

Blogging:

Creating a blog and posting excellent information regularly can help you become recognized as an authority in your industry and increase traffic to your website. Additionally, maintaining a blog can help consumers find your company online and boost your search engine results.

Referrals:

Marketing through referrals: Encouraging your current customers to recommend their friends and family to your company can be a potent and economical strategy to attract new clients.

Mailing services:

Traffic Exchanges, Safelists and viral mailers: Safelists and viral mailersare email lists where subscribers can send messages promoting their goods or services. Even while these techniques' efficacy can vary, they can still be a fantastic approach to reach a sizable audience for nothing. Traffic exchange websites allow marketers to earn credits to have their websites advertised to a whole community of many thousands of users within the exchange.

In order to achieve the best results, it's crucial to be constant and persistent in your marketing activities. So don't be scared to experiment with a few various approaches to find which one suits your company the best.

Understanding the difference between Free and Paid advertising

The free advertising requires a lot of personal man hours (woman hours). With paid advertising, the work load is outsourced. Also, one should look at the demographics of who visit free ad sites and who visit paid ad sites and why they do so.

If you advertise in a free traffic exchange site where everyone is there basically to advertise their money making site, you might luck up and get a few people who see your site because they are free members and are forced to look at your ad - they just might think what you have is working better than what they have. However, those type of people are usually jumping from one program to another and blame the program for not working when it is they who is not working the program. That don't mean that you may get a few good prospects out of the free advertisements - its just not the norm.

In a paid advertisement, it is normally in a place where the people is reading and searching for specific information about a benefit that they can use. If your ad is position right and meet the needs of the audience, there is a much better chance of your ad pulling a lot of conversions.

In any advertisement, if you place an ad for only one day or one month, you are not likely to get any good results. The ad needs to be seen for, at the least, three months in order for the viewer to believe that it is a good offer. Any thing less will give the impression of being a "fly by night" offer with no value.

Those things you mentioned is the way one test the results of the different advertising campaigns. That has to be done on each campaign, no matter if it is free or paid advertising. Both free and paid advertising works. How well either of them work depends upon how well the ad is matched with the advertising company and if it is presented to the right targeted audience at the right time of the day and time of year.

So, there is a lot to look into when judging whether or not to use free or paid ads.

The only reason that I discuss the subject of free vs paid is because I have used both methods for more than 30 years. And, I have studied marketing as well as Ad Copy Writing. Most of all, I studied how to test which places pull the best results.

I want the readers to be aware that any claim that free or paid, in that simple sense of the terms, are misleading. If one desire to market their own business, I admonish them to learn the ins and outs of marketing. If a person luck up on a good free advertising site and does well, it is no indication that all free ad sites will make you an overnight success. If anyone buy into the idea that they can just post a bunch of free ads, they will be sorely displeased.

Even if one does not write their own ad copy, it is good to study Copy writing, it will help the person to understand the mindset and emotions of how people respond to certain advertisements. It will also help one to learn how to choose the best places to place their ads, and whether to choose free or paid ads. And even then, they need to test different ads at different places.

It requires analytical skills and a lot of work but it is worth it. Without the proper knowledge, one would not know the cause of their bad results. However, if you luck up and you are getting good results with a specific ad in a specific advertising media on the first try, keep using it until it no longer works.

Free advertising require a lot time spent placing ads that only reach a relative small number of potential buyers. Out of those hits to your ad, only a fraction will make a purchase.

With paid advertising, meaning paying a reputable advertiser that can reach thousands or hundreds of thousands of potential buyers, you place the ad with the company one time that only takes a few minutes and the potential of reaching a lot of conversions to sales is much higher in a shorter period of time.

Just because everyone know how good paid advertising is, does not mean that everyone can or do use paid advertising.

Free advertising is effective, just not as fast as paid advertising. And, there are ineffective paid advertisers as well as ineffective free advertisers. A good paid advertisement will out pull a good free advertisement. If for no other reason than volume. Paid advertising also gives you more control over the information that reaches consumers. Whether to use free or paid advertising depends on your budget and how much time you wish to spend of your personal time on advertising.

Personally, I use both free and paid advertising.

Basic Methods to get Customers to your affiliate product or service

Use as many of these methods as you want to refer customers. You can get started immediately and at no cost with many of these methods. Then, start implementing additional methods as you can afford to pay for them.

1. Promotion on Other Sites (blogs, other traffic sites, etc...) - List your website's URL or Banners on free traffic exchanges or free ads sites.

2. E-Mail Signature - A passive way to take advantage of your email is to set an email signature, where you set an appropriate one line message and linkreferral link at the bottom of all your email messages. Check with your email documentation (MS outlook, eudora, hotmail, etc..) on how to set an email signature. Build your business with Email Marketing and Online Surveys.

3. Tell your friends and family to check out your website. Have them Recommend your Affiliate Products; such as for - Children, College, Consumer Electronics, Email Marketing, Health, Marketing, Mortgage Loans, Music or Toys etc.

4. Leave business Cards with your bill/tip each time you dine out at a restaurant.

5. Put your business Card in every outgoing piece of mail you send out (like electric bills, water bills, NetFlix/Blockbuster DVD returns, etc.).

6. Post a flyer about your business on public bulletin boards in your area grocery stores, fitness centers and gyms, college student unions, Laundromats, and anywhere else that has boards for public postings.

7. Send promo postcards to potential customers.

8. Build an email list of potential customers.

9. Online Magazines Advertise in Ezines, Newsgroups

10. Direct Mail Advertise your site or product using Direct Mail such as Adsheets

11. Place your logo or company information on clothing and wear or have others to wear T-shirts and caps with your information on them.

12. Make a poster using the web address of your business and put it in the back window of your car.

13. Free Guides Generate useful reference material for your website such as free how to guides to bring people to your website.

14. Your URL Put your URL (your Web site address) on everything: your companys letterhead, on your business cards, on the front of your building or the door to your office suite, any print advertising that you do, including phone books, brochures, flyers, and direct mail pieces.

Note: While you've been reading the above, thousands of people all over the world have been working to put money in my pocket. I even make money while I sleep! By this time next week, so could YOU. Get full info here: SFI (Strong Future International) Marketing Group

 

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