If you want to lower your costs, increase your sales and boost your profits, you need to get the most from online marketing. This post focuses on 2 forms of FREE online marketing, which you can use to achieve amazing results for your business; Blogging and Newsletters!
Online marketing is changing
Not that many years ago, online marketing reached a relatively small, fairly select group of people. These were either technology enthusiasts, businesses run by technology enthusiasts or multinationals. Because only certain groups of consumers and businesses used the Internet regularly, online marketing was of limited use to the average small business.
Of course today, that’s all changed! Almost everyone in a ‘developed’ country now has Internet access at home, work or both. This means it’s now possible for you to use online marketing to generate either sales or leads, for just about any kind of product or service. It also means it has never been quicker, easier or less expensive to market your business!
Free online marketing
Right now, armed with nothing more than an Internet connection and a blog, you can generate leads or sales for your business for free. Moreover, these can be highly targeted leads and highly profitable sales too.
Practising what you preach
I have not used any form of paid marketing for my business for years.
That’s right – 100% of my non-referred business comes from either my newsletter, my website or this blog!
All I have to do is make sure I give away as much valuable marketing information as possible, to as many small businesses as possible. Then, when these small businesses want someone to help them market their products or services, they give me a call. When they want their blog or website transformed into a goldmine, they already know my work and that I get results – so they get in touch!
Fast results?
Oh yes – You can see results in seconds! For example, once you build a list of newsletter subscribers or a group of regular blog readers, you can start generating either sales or leads, less than a minute after you send a message or post something to your blog!
Of course, most people with newsletters or blogs have very few readers. Just as with everything else, you need to do the right things, in the correct way, if you want to achieve the desired results. That’s why it’s important that you spend a little time doing some research, before you start!
Blog marketing
There are lots of online networking sites and ‘social media’ tools you can use, to build up a targeted network of prospective clients or valuable contacts. In fact, the number of websites offering these facilities is so vast, that it has become a problem in itself.
In my experience, the foundation of your free online marketing should be a blog.
A simple blog, if used correctly, can help you develop a massive community and allow you to showcase your talents to your prospective clients / customers. It can help you find out about the needs of your marketplace and also develop a special relationship with thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of prospects.
Getting a blog
You can get yourself a free blog right now, from wordpress.com or blogger.com, and be blogging in minutes. Each blog platform has pro’s and con’s. I use a paid-for version of wordpress for this blog – you can see the benefits of a paid wordpress blog here.
Blog marketing is a massive subject and I can only scratch the surface in this post, but there’s going to be a LOT more information to come – So subscribe to my RSS feed, using the button on the top right of the page and make sure you don’t miss a thing!
Newsletters
By far, my biggest ‘network’ is the readership of my marketing newsletter. The newsletter has been going for almost three years and has thousands of valued readers, spanning over 100 countries around the world. Each newsletter is sent just a couple of times a month and contains an original marketing article (like this one).
I use the same principle to grow my newsletter, as I use to grow this blog.
I provide high value content, so people share it with their contacts. These contacts then subscribe and they share it with their contacts…
Which businesses can benefit from Newsletters & Blogs?
Any business, in any industry can benefit from a Newsletter and / or a blog. That’s because the same process outlined above is universal. Just make sure your blog or newsletter content is designed exclusively for YOUR target market.
In other words, if your business offers web design – write about great web design ideas, tips and tricks. If your business offers insurance, write about how people can lower their premiums or get better cover or share some funny insurance stories. If you are a coach or consultant, blog about your subject and give great tips and ideas to your readers. Most newsletters are little more than advertisements and because of this, people do not forward them on and they fail to grow.
Make sure you pump as much valuable information as possible into everything you write. This showcases your talents, positions you as an expert and shows the real value of your products or your services. It also makes choosing you as a provider almost risk-free to your readers.
Conclusion
I know people in just about every industry, who get the vast majority of their leads or sales through free online marketing. I also get emails from people every day; who are wondering how to generate the leads or sales their business needs in order to survive.
If you want to know more, take a look at the free resources mentioned above and also check out the guides and articles in this blog. You might also want to look that this, it’s all about how to build a successful newsletter.
If you have found this post useful or you have anything to add, please leave a comment and share your feedback with everyone!
Hello Tim,
Thanks for your comment.
As I said in the post, a wordpress.com blog or blogger.com blog is free. However, there is an investment of time required if you want to achieve anything.
The post you linked to is about social media and highlights facebook – not blogging or newsletter marketing. I am happy to allow people to post relevant links in my comments section, but please keep links on-topic.
If you have anything on newsletter marketing or blog marketing, you are extremely welcome to add it here Tim.
Great tips here Jim. I have seen results in consistently sending out newsletters to my customers. Staying connected builds trust and when my customer knows they can trust me as a person, they know they can trust my product to deliver what it says it will. Recently began blogging as well, another great way to connect and assist.
Thanks for being a great source of useful information.
Hello Kelli,
Thanks for getting in touch.
I like the look of your blog
http://parisianspureindulgence.typepad.com/my_weblog/
Glad you find this useful – keep in touch!
Blogging is a great way to reach out to your customers but it is far from free.
I wrote about this misconception awhile back.
Jim. I love the way you dont just give free sales advice here you also promote other people and blogs and such.
Im setting up a blog and will post about what you are doing here. You rock man
Very good stuff, and right on the money. Truthfully, you probably could have turned this post into three posts. If I may, I’d just like to add that everyone always needs to think about whether they have enough to say to write either a blog or a newsletter; nothing ticks the rest of us than getting into something that suddenly ends. Great stuff all around.
Hello Scott,
Thanks for the comment. This blog is about sharing great marketing and business development ideas.
I share them from wherever I can find them and am always happy to plug a great resource.
Hello Mitch,
Thanks for the comment. If you read the whole post, you should have seen that I already answered your question – This post IS going to be added to!
Regarding your second point Mitch, in my experience, most people are able to provide enough content for a newsletter or blog – so long as it’s about their specialist area.
I assumed it went without saying that if someone doesn’t know enough about their area of specialism to write about it – then blogging or newsletters are probably not for them.
Excellent post again Jim. You have a knack of making this stuff seem easier to understand and less daunting.
Just subscribed to your email rss feed.
Hello Leigh,
Thanks for your kind words. The email rss feed is becoming really popular – enjoy!!
The only reason I didn’t assume that is because so many people start both blogs and newsletters, believing they have something to say, and then they suddenly stop because they either realize they didn’t, or realize it’s actually a lot of work to do.
Hello Mitch,
I was talking to a ‘blog coach’ about why some bloggers just seem to stop. He seemed to think it’s because they were not seeing the results they wanted, as quick as they wanted.
Great content is important for a blog, but you also need to market the blog if you want it to be read and shared.
SEO is one way to get visitors, but the majority of successful blogs achieve great numbers using effective online marketing too.
In fact, in the above post I gave links to four other sites; two of whom are bloggers. They will have got some new traffic from my links and that’s because I was able to find their content, read it, love it and want to share it.
With a new blog, there’s a lot of work involved at the very beginning, but once the blog is established, it’s really easy.
For example, this blog takes very little of my time, yet it has a wonderful community of brilliant people who comment here, forward the blog to their friends and even blog about it.
Thanks for adding to the conversation Mitch!
[...] Jim Connolly writes about the 3 ways he does free marketing to get business: his newsletter, website or his blog. I would mention that this is not free. It takes an incredible amount of time, energy, effort and research to maintain all three sources. On average, it takes me about 3 hours to write an intelligent, researched blog post. A little more for an article on 500 words. So when you say free marketing methods, I say, it still costs you something — time. And time is money. So is it really free? [...]
There seems some confusion about what what I was referring to by FREE online marketing.
The blogs I mentioned are free of charge and you can start-up a newsletter free of charge too. That’s the kind of free I was referring to; free of charge. Not free of charge and free of any kind of work / input.
I write exclusively for small and medium sized businesses. right now, during a serious economic downturn, many of my readers are looking to reduce expenditure.
They will happily work hard – but many lack the money to pay a professional.
A free of charge blog or free of charge newsletter can produce amazing results; as I said in the post, if used correctly. This does, of course, mean investing some of your time.
Hello there Tim,
Thanks for reiterating the point I made in the previous comment.
I’m unclear why you are so extremely negative about the small amount of time required to blog – yet you find time to write one yourself?
I’ve been in marketing for 22 years, both here in the UK, as well as Manhattan and Paris. I currently get over 100 emails every day from small businesses, spanning over 90 countries around the world. Many, many of them are seeing their businesses REALLY struggle right now.
They do not have the luxury of too many clients to work for, that they can’t spare some time. Quite the opposite in fact. They REALLY wish they were as busy as you seem to be!
Incidentally, I had thousands of views for a post I wrote a few days ago about twitter, which took less than 40 minutes to write.
http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2008/10/21/37-marketing-ideas-in-140-characters/
Thanks!
Thanks for the clarification Jim.
Important thing to remember though is that time is money to a lot of small businesses. Time spent blogging is time not spent on client projects and generating direct income.
Writing enough content for a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter also takes time away from client work.
Just because you’re not paying an upfront monetary fee for something doesn’t make it free. There’s always the cost of that invested time.
Oh man!
So, ya want to know why that guys so pissed? read his blog. the posts are like 2 paragraphs long. hes just jealous coz he can’t write like you.
Hello Dale,
As they say, size is not important
I sometimes write short posts myself. There’s no point writing copy just for the sake of it. If you can get a point across in 100 words – that’s actually a lot harder than using 1000!
Thanks for the comment.
Thanks for the inspiration (and nice tweeting with you today)!
This is an often-repeated theme, but so slow to catch on, it can use every one of us picking it up and putting it into our own words to share… here’s my version.
Hello Dale,
Glad you found inspiration in the post.
I’m all about sharing great marketing ideas – glad you are passing them on, with your unique ‘twist’ for your readers.
The simple email is a powerful tool. I have a friend who literally decides, “time to make money!” Sends out his newsletter and instantly sales are generated. Granted it’s taken him some time to get to a decent sized database of targeted email addresses. But now that list IS his business.
Thanks for the article.
Hello Robert,
You make two excellent points!
Firstly, once you have a big enough list of subscribers, as soon as you send a mailing (if done correctly) you can start making sales (or attracting leads) in seconds.
Secondly, it does take time to build your subscriber list. However, the time and effort required is highly rewarded.
Thanks for the comment.
@ Jim. Thanks for the great write up.
Well that’s the way I see it. Your subscription list really is a fantastic investment. Invest your time and effort into maintaining one that is effective. In time this becomes the real worth of an online business.
Hi Jim, Another terrific post, and very relevant for me as I just launched my blog and newsletter 3 weeks ago and already have started to see the value you talk about.
I really like that you stress research before starting these efforts. I did A LOT of weekend reading of various blogs I think ‘do it right’, strategies on blogging for biz, best blog platforms (I also use paid version of WordPress), best ways to write and deliver newsletters, studying examples of great newsletters, and other before starting, and it really helped.
I agree that these efforts don’t have to take a lot of time. I keep a list of topics and ideas for blog posts and newsletter articles on my desktop, so anytime I think of an idea I jot it down, and anytime I run across info I’d like to include or link to, I pop the links into the list so when I’m ready to write all info is together in one place.
Like all activities that go into running a biz, it’s about balancing the time spent on client work vs. marketing and biz development efforts. Too much time or too little spent on any one aspect of a business isn’t good, as you’ll either have no clients or unhappy ones.
Hello Kim,
Thanks for your comment and all that useful advice.
I have not had a chance to read your new blog at but if it’s as good as your comments, it’s going to be a huge success.
Hey Jim,
loots of great ideas in your post and also in the comments section.
This blogs been more use to my business over the past few weeks than any of the marketing programs I have bought.
[...] http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2008/10/26/blog-marketing-newsletter-marketing/ [...]
I am clear about the value of a blog, but struggle knowing how to develop one when you are not selling a service or expertise, but rather product? I sell gourmet gift baskets and for the life of me, can’t figure out how to blog about that! Any advice from you or readers?
Laura
This is a good article, but I would like to get your opinion on my situation. I have a furniture company in Poland and we are planning to set-up a e-commerce website and although I can see how a newsletter will help but, how can a blog help me there to boost sales..??? meaning what do I write in a blog about my furnitures that attracts buyers..??
PS: I am a subscriber of your NL too
Response to @Laura and @udit
You to imagine the customer side because they are simple.
for Laura you can put on the blog how to get the nice customization of a nice Basket to the Easter.
For Udit, you can put a nice article to combine and perserve the old furniture with a new one.
“Turn to Simplicity”