F-Word Marketing: The 10 Minute Summary

This post was inspired by one of my favorite authors on the subject of marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson. In one of his books he talks about the F-word. "F" meaning Free. He goes onto elaborate on all the free things a guerilla marketer can do to boost their business, several pages worth excellent advice, and well worth the read. However if you don't have the time, or the book, you can take a look at my little summary that should only take you 10 minutes to read, that is if you don't stop to take notes...

People
Let's stop to think for a moment. Seeing as how this post is coming out around the holiday season, I'm sure there have been a lot of school fund-raising catalogs floating around your office. Ever stop to think why? Because its easier to ask someone you know to buy stuff from you than someone you don't.

A parent helping their kid out with sales is going to start with their "inner circle"--friends, family and co-workers at they are on generally friendly terms with. Levinson reminds us that it doesn't cost a penny to market to these people, often a simple conversation is enough to turn them into a customer. And if they are a happy customer, guess what? The will tell other people. People who might give you a try because they are on generally good terms with the person who recommended you. The power of people is often underestimated or completely over looked but always remember, no people, no customers. No customers, no business.

Information
The Internet has spoiled and entire generation of people, myself included, into thinking that if you look hard enough, you can get pretty much anything for free. While that is true to a point, and the quality of said "anything" can be highly suspect at times--the real issue is people like information, free information. If you give out free information, people might like you too, or at least like your business.

But you can't just give out lists of the most common pet names of the last year or stories about your Aunt's bunions and expect people to want to hang around. Free information has to follow some guidelines:

1. It has to be useful
2. It has to be current (especially with facts and figures, anything over 5yrs old is considered out of date)
3. It has to be relevant to your customer's problem/situation
4. It has to be easy to get to, read and pass on

Basically, if you're going to give out free info--say on your website or in the form or a monthly newsletter--make it so good people will think they should be paying for it!

Keystrokes
Keystrokes are free! Well, they are after you buy the computer. So maximize your investment by:

• Starting a blog-its another great way to share information for free, like I'm doing right now
• Creating a newsletter-perfect solution for online retailers because it allows you to announce sales and specials without spending money for a direct mail campaign
• Being social--and by that I mean social media. Advertising on Twitter and Facebook may cost a few bucks here and there but user accounts are free so use them to stay in touch with customers, announce specials, or create a community around your product/service

I'm sure if challenged to, you could come up with more marketing tricks that are 100% free than I have listed here. Good. Think hard and write them down then do them. A good marketer doesn't always need money to spend, just a little time and elbow grease. Reading this post should have taken up only 10 minutes of your time (maybe less!) so there is plenty left over for you to get to work. Good Luck and may the F-word be with you.