FREE Marketing?

FREE Marketing?All this rambling and raving of free marketing. Facebook and its mass traffic of 750 million searchers Google+ and its newness and simplicity Email and its no delivery charge And the list goes on. But is there such a thing as free marketing?

I have a client that has just under one million names on his email list.

To sell 500 of one of his products he has to email that list daily for 6 weeks. He doesn't really care about the unsubscribes, thinks it worth the effort.

I have another client who also sells something almost the same as the guy above. He used to have an email list but he is smart. His list was around 200,000. Notice how I said 'USED TO'

I called him and we spoke. He's a numbers guy. I said to him it's been a while since I got emails from your business. He told me they had stopped using email and gone back into direct mail.

Interesting so I asked why. He told me to sell 500 units to his email list of 200,000 was almost impossible on any campaign. To sell 500 units to his direct mail list needs just a list of 5000 names and addresses.

I said to him but doesn't that cost you more? He replied not at all how can it. I would spend 6 weeks emailing to get less than 500 sales. Now I direct mail and within a few days we have our sales. The reality is with new products we now sell SIX TIMES MORE than previously because we use direct mail only (at the moment)

Interesting right? I did say SIX TIMES MORE! Back to FREE marketing?

I get clients email and call me asking for direct marketing strategies that cost as little as possible or almost FREE. Let's think about this because if the above is anything to go by the cost is really in lost sales, lost time, lost efforts and frustrations trying to sell to a million people on an email list with little response.

I haven't done the numbers but I wonder how much cash the guy with the list of one million is actually leaving on the table?

So the bottom line for you is this. Don't be swept up in the hype of free marketing. Yes free marketing can be good for you and your business but it has to be part of a timely, precise, measurable campaign that delivers results.

• Make sure you know what your buyers are actually asking you for.
• Forget free unless it's part of a bigger strategy.
• Think about real results that can be measured.
• Look for conversion ratios.
• Can you really define your marketplace?
• Can you really refine and refine your target marketing?
• Measure time per hour and do comparisons.
• If it don;'t work, drop the ego and drop it
• If it does work, don't try and fix what's working.

Does that help you? I specialize in consulting, feel free to take advantage of a 15 minute free evaluation. Simply hit reply to see if I can help you grow your business fast.