14 Free marketing tactics for recession

During a recession cutting costs is required, thus probably you will cut back on marketing spending too. Still history has proved that just during these times you have the best opportunity to promote your brand and products. Thus you need to investigate how to promote your products or services at a low cost.

1. Twitter – posting micro posts
There are for instance Twitter and Plurk
Micro posts are only 140 characters long and in case of Twitter can be send from your mobile too. Thus from everywhere.
The micro posts can generate followers that give you a wider reach. However Twitter is not mainstream audience yet. It is a limited group of early adopters which in many cases are mainly interested in promoting their own stuff.

2. Blogging
Posting regularly interesting content is hard work and requires inspiration and the gift of writing.
If successful, by blogging you can eventually reach many people. It will take time.
Blogs can scale very well as your audience can keep on growing:
- The RSS feed can get subscribers
- Your posts can get replicated or referenced on many more websites
All increasing your Internet presence: brand name, product- and solution names.

The search engines will index your blog posts quickly and thoroughly increasing the keywords related to your products and solutions, all linking directly to your website. This increases the findability and higher Search Engine Results Page.

3. Commenting on blog posts
Posting interesting and related comments will generate traffic but it doesn’t scale. It is piggy backing on the success of a well-known blogger in order to capture a part of his traffic.
The number of clickers will be very limited.
Additionally your blog post needs to be approved by the blogger, thus advertising like comments are not possible.

The ‘Nofollow’ tag stops the search engines following the link to your website.
However there are blogs without the “Nofollow” on comments, thus being more interesting to comment on. You can search for them on InlineSEO.com or on this Do Follow directory.

Seldom will your comments show up in searches, but occasionally they will.

4. Publishing articles on article websites
The content effort is similar to blogging, but it doesn’t require frequent postings like a blog. The disadvantage is there will be no subscribers or followers.
The content will be indexed by the search engines allowing finding your article, but not immediately your website.
Still the page rank of the article directory is important for the article getting found and this you can’t control as Pageranking will change over time.

5. Free eBooks
If you have written enough interesting blog posts, articles or a complete book, you can bundle them into one eBook and make it down loadable for free from your website requiring registration. This will not only increase your expert status, but will also create additional interest and you obtain email addresses.

6. White paper using free syndication
As only the title and a short summary is available to the search engines the chance of being found is limited. There is no direct link to your website as the link is inside the white paper pdf-file.
Thus people need to download the white paper and then find your content sufficient interesting or intriguing for visiting your website.

7. Press releases
Your press releases can be distributed by free services. These free services will have less impact than the paid services. Still using the free services a lot of impact can be made.
The additional benefit is that press releases can get into print media too if getting picked up by a journalist. This is something very unlikely for the other solutions mentioned.

8. On-line industry forums or bulletin boards
Participating in on-line industry forums or bulletin can generate interest in your products or solutions.
Links can be posted and these will get indexed.

9. Panellist
Taking part as a panellist at industry conferences will bring interest and a certain expert status. As a panelist you are not completely exposed and examined on your own content, but by the participation in the panel discussion.
The main problem is you need to get invited thus you need to do marketing about yourself for getting invited to a panel. This could be done by applying some of the other solutions.

10. Speaking at conferences
In order to speak at conferences you need to get an invitation or you have to pay.
Some conferences there is a “Call for papers” on their website or they send out an email asking for speakers.

If you manage to speak at an industry conference, it will promote you as an expert if you present well and have interesting content. If you are not able to present well and don’t have interesting content, you will be quickly classified as boring or not interesting.

11. Getting interviewed
In order to get interviewed by the media about an event or problem, you need to have status. Thus this requires have applied one or several of the other communication methods.
Getting interviewed for an industry magazine will bring inquiries.
Getting a radio interview will bring a multiple of interests.
Getting your head on national television will change your life for a while, thus the highest level of interest.

12. Editor
If you have a certain status as expert you can be asked to write for industry magazines or you just can apply for becoming a part-time editor. Writing articles that get published, will generate more name and fame for yourself and your company.

13. Audio podcasts
If you know how to tell and explain verbally and if you have interesting content or a great story to tell related to your products, you can make an audio podcast and put it on-line.
The problem is you need to promote your podcast as only the short summary is being indexed by the search engines. Thus there is minimal findability of your audio podcast.

14. Video
Making a video is feasible thanks to technology.
The content can be the same as the content for writing an article.
The difference with a video is you need to present your content that keeps the interest from the viewer.
Making yourself ridiculous is as feasible.
Putting the video on-line is no longer a problem Youtube.
Getting your video found is the largest problem as the content isn’t indexed in the search engines, but the short write up. And there is a lot of competition of all kinds of video. Thus how to stick out of the crowd with the short summary?

Generate interest

All of these can help to generate interest.
Some of them require daily effort and inspiration, whereas others require only efforts at certain times.
It is like a vortex as you probably need to mix several of them as they support each other and thus increase the interest.

If you know other marketing tactics or communication methods please let us know.

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