7 Tips for Seeking Out and Seducing the Best Influencers to Love Your Brand

The influencer marketing gold rush is underway, and recent surveys confirm that budgets are continuing to grow in this area. Unfortunately, when a lot of money is headed in one direction so quickly, some of it gets thrown out the window. To avoid wasting your budget, it's more important than ever to form relationships with the right industry influencers.

Through mistakes and many lessons, I've learned that remembering these seven things can help you seek out and attract the best influencers to become long-term advocates for your brand:

1. The best influencers aren't always well-known.

Sometimes, higher-profile influencers are in the business for themselves. They've had people cater to them for years and expect you to bend over backward for them, too. For example, one of my more well-known relationships emailed me on a holiday weekend just days after my daughter's birth to ask me to do something for him. That's not a healthy relationship. But lesser-known influencers usually aren't sidetracked by self-promotion or fame, which makes them more likely to become true brand advocates for you.

2. The one thing influencers love more than money is more influence.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Influencers are naturally attracted to influence, so do everything you can to build your own influence before seeking partnerships with them. In your own content strategy, do what you can to include these influencers in your work. Source their content, quote them in an article on your blog, mention them in your speeches, etc. My approach is to draw attention to those outside influencers who deserve more influence--those who are leaders and experts in their industries. As a result, I've formed solid relationships with many of these people.

3. Seek out influencers who are helpful people.

In one conversation with someone, I'm able to determine whether he or she is a helpful person. Helpful people listen to you and lend a hand because it's the right thing to do. They value the relationship and want you to succeed--and that makes them great influencers to work with. But if ego is involved or they clearly have an agenda, they probably won't help you unless there's something in it for them.

4. Earn the relationship before you pay.

Think about this: If you pay somebody $10,000 to be your best friend for six months and then ask him to stay your best friend even if you can't pay him again, do you think he'll be there for you? No. You should do all you can to naturally earn an influencer relationship before spending thousands of dollars to buy it. (Note: Sometimes, you have to pay up if there's no option, but at least attempt to earn it first.)

5. Make sure they actually have influence.

One of my friends who consistently shares my content on Twitter has about 250,000 followers. Fortunately, there are tools to help me track engagement, and I can see that almost no one interacts with our brand or my content when this person shares my content. However, I have another friend with about 5,000 followers on Twitter, and some kind of opportunity always comes when this person shares my content. Don't be fooled by the perception of influence.

6. Care about people beyond what they can do for your business.

One of our clients, John Ruhlin, is one of the leading appreciation specialists in the U.S. He and I had lunch recently, and I told him that my wife was having a birthday party. From the same conversation, he remembered a certain type of gift he once gave us that I told him my wife really enjoyed. On the day of her party, that gift arrived at my doorstep with a handwritten note to say happy birthday and that he appreciated our friendship. John Ruhlin is cemented in my mind as someone who cares about me beyond what I can do for his business and vice versa. And in return, I'll probably always be an advocate for him.

7. Remember the small things.

Just like any relationship, the small things matter most. The other day, I noticed that Jay Baer received his speaker's certification. Jay's received a lot of recognition in different ways as an influencer, but this time, he was being recognized for all the hours he's spent on planes and speaking to people and the positive reviews he's received for putting the time in. Right away, I sent him a personal note to congratulate him. I like to do small things like this for people because when someone does something small for me, it always sticks out.

Influencer marketing will only continue to grow, and it's up to you to make sure your budget is spent on building the best relationships with the right influencers. Whether it's mentioning an influencer on your blog or sending a small message about an accomplishment, it's important for you to build trust and stay top of mind in the right way to seduce influencers into becoming your long-term brand advocates.

Source : http://on.inc.com/2b0QZSC

How to Grow Your Startup Without a Budget

Here are 4 things you can do right now to grow your startup without a CMO or budget:

1. Use Free Resources to Spread the Word

There are some high-quality blogs and forums with a large and relevant audience that can be your content distributor and promote your startup. Popular blogs like ProductHunt, Betalist and startupli.st are ones that are being visited often by potential customers, tech industry members (including possible future investors or employees) and reporters. Promoting the launch of your startup in one of these blogs can generate massive traffic to your site and even spark interest in tech reporters who can, later on, cover your startup in large tech news outlets.

2. Reach Out to Bloggers and Reporters Yourself

Having a small or zero dollars marketing budget probably means you won’t be able to afford a good PR agency. Don’t be tempted to work with cheap agencies that can’t deliver (for reference, good PR agencies in the U.S charge somewhere between $5K-$10K/month), but rather do the outreach yourself. Whenever you are ready to spread the word about your company, prepare a pitch or a press release and send it to reporters who you know cover your field. Like anything in marketing, the best results are the targeted ones. Most media outlets publish their reporters’ emails, and there are some great templates you can use to draft a release. Before sending, do your homework on what a reporter is interested in. Influential reporters and bloggers receive hundreds of pitches a day, so the major part of your work is to plan and create a great pitch. To make sure it’s appealing and interesting, run it by your friends first to solicit feedback.

3. Use Your Personal Network

Not all marketing and growth has to do with SEO, conferences and buying media. Your personal network is valuable and can lead to even more valuable second and third-degree connections. Maintaining a strong personal network is important for any entrepreneur, as it can be tapped into from the brainstorming stage – advising with friends on aspects of the product, name, etc. – all the way through to the launch stage and future partnerships.

4. Use A/B Testing Methods to Increase Conversion

A/B testing is something that can really help you grow, without investing a lot of money. By using tools such as Optimizely and Unbounce, you can maximize the potential of users who are already visiting your site. A/B testing can be tricky if not done right, as you don’t want to be overwhelmed by numerous variables. Simplify the tests, and each time, check one variable or two. You will be surprised how a small change in the color of a button or the size of your header image can boost your conversion rate, sometimes by 20%-30% or even more.

Source: http://bit.ly/1UoWjNg

Bad Idea Killers

You Won’t Be Successful Online Without Mastering These 7 Skills

I get that most people don’t want to spend all day every day learning how to be a web developer but these 7 skills are absolutely necessary if you want to earn good money on the internet.

1. SEO

I’m a huge advocate of SEO. SEO is amazing because if you can get to the top of Google, you can get free targeted traffic to your website all day.

And because those people are searching for what you offer, that traffic will convert.

But how do you master the art of SEO? There are many resources out there that will teach you SEO. I’ve personally been doing SEO professionally for 14 years and the person I trust the most to give you the most up to date information that is working right now is Brian Dean at Backlinko.

He gives no-nonsense training and backs it up with data. In other words, he’s not guessing.

One strategy that I invented myself and have been seeing a lot of success with is what I call building link maps. This, in essence, is the art of doing link building and then building links to those links (link stacking) in a strategic way so they become more powerful.

2. Email Marketing

It has been proven over and over again that nurturing leads through email will dramatically increase your conversions. People like Ryan Deiss teach very specific methods on how to do this.

There are a few good email marketing platforms that will make your job a lot easier. Here are the tools I actually use:

Aweber – I use them to collect email addresses and send out follow up emails automatically.

Mailchimp – these guys have pretty much the same features as Aweber.

Lead Pages – these guys have pop-up windows to collect emails that have been tested and proven to increase subscribers.

SumoMe – similar features to Lead Pages but they do have other tools as well.

In my own businesses, I have seen email follow up increase conversions over and over again and in many different niches. This is something that will mean more to your bottom line than anything else.

3. Evaluating Potential

If you’ve ever spent any time over at my Prosperity blog, you know that I love buying undervalued websites. I am only able to do this if I can evaluate the potential of a website and understand that it is actually undervalued.

Even if I’m not buying a website, if I’m starting an online business from scratch it is the same principle. I always look at what the market looks like, and then I look at what the competition is doing online. Are they proficient in SEO? Do they understand basic internet marketing principles?

When those key indicators match up, I know the potential is there and I feel confident moving forward. If the competition is extremely knowledgeable and deeply embedded in the industry, I will typically move on.

On the other hand, when I find a website that is trying to sell donkey socks, I am able to filter that out quickly because

4. Backend Website Administration

I hesitated including this one in this article because let’s be honest, you started falling asleep as soon as you read the heading for this section.

The reality is, if you really want to be successful online you must get a sound base in html. You must learn how FTP works. At the very least you need to become a WordPress master.

You also need to become proficient in working with images. I use a program called Fireworks from Adobe, but many people use Photoshop as well.

If earning a living online is something you are really serious about then you need to learn how to be a webmaster. Youtube tutorials need to become your new best friend.

5. Increasing Conversions

The only thing better than getting more targeted traffic is taking the traffic you already have and getting more of those people to give you money.

The reason this is so great is because it is completely in your control. If your website converts at a typical 1%, all you would have to do to double your revenue is to increase conversions to 2%. Easy.

How do you do it?

Split test, split test, split test. Also known as A/B testing, this means you show one version of a page to half of your visitors and show another different version to the other half. Then you see which version generated more sales.

I bought a website with traffic one time and just made a few (but significant tweaks) to the site and in less than 30 days the monthly revenue jumped by 968%.

Google Analytics offers a free AB tool in their software. There are other paid options but I will typically just use Google’s AB tool.

6. Pricing

If you don’t price a product or service correctly, this can quickly put you out of business either because you’ve overpriced your product and don’t get any sales or because you’ve underpriced and can’t cover expenses.

You must learn how to arrive at the perfect price so that you maximize revenue and customers. After all, it is so much easier to sell to a previous customer than to a new one. Maximizing number of sales along with revenue is extremely important for the long-term growth of your business.

This goes back to the testing part of this article. You need to test different prices to see which one performs better. This is not something you should guess on. There is too much at stake.

Get the price right.

7. Monetization

When I am looking to buy an undervalued website, one of the first things I look at is whether or not I can monetize the website in a way that will either greatly increase revenue or at least give me a good return on my investment of time and money.

Any site can be monetized by putting Google ads on it, but to me that is short sighted thinking. It has been my experience that Google Ads have generated the lowest amount of income on websites that I have owned.

So you need to learn what people want and what they will pay for or how to find good affiliate programs that are worth promoting.

For example, I used to run a website that was a directory of lawn care companies in the US. I sold advertising on the site and didn’t make very much money ($30-$100 a month). I had awesome traffic from SEO and knew I should be making a lot more money than I was.

I created a “how to start your own lawn care business kit” packaged with everything a person would need to know to start their own lawn care business. I priced it $97 and people bought like crazy.

Once I started selling the kit, the website made me from $30k-$50k every year.

It was a powerful lesson on monetization. I learned that I should always be trying to come up with new and better ways to monetize websites that I owned.

So those are the 7 traits I think are most important to master if you want to be successful online. Am I missing something that has been critical to your success? Leave it in the comments below.

Source: http://bit.ly/1S3W90E

How to Survive Your First Year of Entrepreneurship

The first year of entrepreneurship is the crucial one. It’s where your company will either grow at an incredible rate or immediately stagnate. It’s true that most entrepreneurs give up in the first year,according to a number of studies. This is not difficult to understand why because it’s notoriously difficult to thrive in one of the most competitive areas of business.

But this doesn’t have to convince you that this is a bad idea. You can start your own business and you can succeed. This guide is going to show you how you can go about surviving your first year of entrepreneurship.

Have a Goal

The only way you are going to make your strategy succeed is through having an actual goal. A common mistake is that people have no real idea what they want to accomplish or why they are doing this. It leads to them doing something without any meaning or purpose in mind.

If you can’t articulate your goal, you are never going to make it through the hard times. A good goal is something that you believe in and that you are doing for the greater good. Yes, you can make money and get rich, but a good goal embraces something more than that.

The Right Work Ethic

It’s easy as an entrepreneur to take the slightest hint of success and turn it into something that it isn’t. For example, it’s easy to see an increase in sales and then to relax and soak it all in. There’s nothing wrong with reflecting sometimes, but if you are compromising your work ethic in order to do this it’s a mistake.

The best entrepreneurs are passionate people with a big work ethic. They are so passionate that they never stop working. If they have to work 18-hour days, they relish it because they believe in what they are doing and they are passionate about what they are doing.

Remember, entrepreneurship is primarily about hard work.

Be Willing to Delegate

It’s easy to try to take on all the responsibility alone. This may work for a time, but it’s quickly going to lead to burnout. The chances are you are also not going to do the job as well as you could have. Be willing to delegate different tasks to people with more expertise than you.

It may require an outlay to begin with, but you are going to make your money back because the job will be done right.

Love Risk

Entrepreneurs can never afford to be conservative. The nature of the business means that they have to go further than others in order to achieve success. In other words, they have to bring something to the table that has never been seen before. And with that comes risk.

The problem with a lot of entrepreneurs is that they come from conservative backgrounds. They may have worked in a large company where taking unnecessary risks was actively discouraged. As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford not to take risks because otherwise you are never going to discover something new.

You can never guarantee that it will come off well, but the point is you are trying new things. You are always going to miss the shots you never take, as the saying goes.

But how do you take risks without putting your whole business in jeopardy?

This is quite simply because the idea is to not take these risks. The daring acts that many businesspeople take may look crazy from an outsider’s point of view, but in reality, they are incredibly calculated. They have weighed up the pros and cons and they know that they have a reasonable chance of success.

Be Content with Living Cheap and Uncomfortable

The life of an entrepreneur is rarely glamorous. There are many entrepreneurs who have been homeless while running their businesses. They have worked minimum wage jobs and they know the meaning of hard work. There are no shortcuts to success and very few people are lucky enough to come up with a great product that goes viral.

Many entrepreneurs simply can’t stomach the idea of living lean and living with a constant jittery feeling that they are going to fail. Comfort is not something you are going to experience often in this line of work.

The End Goal: a Happier You

But you’ll be happy to know that it all pays off in the end. Many entrepreneurs report being happier than they have ever been, despite the stress and discomfort that comes with being an entrepreneur.

Is the life of an entrepreneur for you?

 Source: http://bit.ly/20Bg2P1

5 Ways Small Business Brands Can Use Instagram Video

So it happened. Facebook owned Instagram released video functionality on their app to go head to head against Twitter’s Vine app. The battle lines are drawn and people and brands are already choosing sides. But what does this mean for your small business?

With Instagram already boasting more than 130 million users, there was already a case to be made that your company may want a presence on the photo sharing platform. That said, there are some stories that a still image just can’t capture. The addition of a video feature (even at a max of 15 sec.) provides even more flexibility to the message that your brand can share with your audience.

Still need more convincing? Instagram’s videos can be directly shared on your Facebook page. When posted to Facebook, they appear in a large, timeline filling thumbnail, there is no doubt that your fans will take notice.

If you are considering adding Instagram videos to your social media marketing mix, here are a few creative ideas you should try:

1. Before & Afters

Although not applicable to every business, before and after videos are a wonderful testament to the effectiveness of a product, or service. Showing a potential customer the end result of working with you may prove to be the final push that causes them to reach out. Unlike a before and after photo, video will allow you to show multiple angles, or focus points of the true difference you offer.

2. Previews

Are you about to launch a new product or service? A 15 second sneak peek behind the curtain may be the perfect way to build excitement and anticipation about its release. If you can show your existing and potential customers the value of your new release, you may be able to get a few pre-orders, or at least create a list of interested parties to eagerly anticipate your launch.

3. Comparisons

Is your product, or service really better than the competition? If so, it’s time to prove it! Show your solution toe to toe with the competition. If you can outperform them on video, it will be pretty hard for viewers to choose your rivals over you.

4. Mini Commercials

It’s time to get creative. Just because you are a small business doesn’t mean you can’t have commercials. Instagram’s video capabilities give you everything you need to produce short, free, and meaningful communications with your audience. Don’t be afraid to try something. If you don’t like what you’ve produced, simply delete it and start over. You never know, maybe you’re a regular Ron Howard.

5. Customer Testimonials

Customer testimonials may be the most powerful use of Instagram. Who has the budget to send a film crew out to every satisfied customer? Now you do. Anytime a customer brings up how your product, or service benefits them (saved time, saved money, increase production, improved sales, increase ROI, peace of mind, etc.), simply take out your phone and ask them for a 15 second testimonial on the spot. Not everyone will say yes, but the ones that do will be giving you pure video gold.

No matter if you decide to use Instagram and its video feature, or not, the addition to the app will make an impact on the way brands tell their stories. You have the chance to take advantage of this new feature and use it to tell your brand’s story. Will you accept the challenge?

How will your use Instagram videos to spread your message?

 Source : http://bit.ly/1RHWB6u

More about me. Be curious.

3 ways marketers can improve customer experience

Customer experience is a hot-button topic in marketing.

As more and more marketing pros seek to add this skill to their toolkit, advice from one of the leading minds in the field, Brian Solis, can help.

I met Solis, a former public relations and digital media executive, a year ago. My blog post about our conversation, Is Customer Experience the Next Killer App? was one of the most widely shared, liked and tweeted blogs that I have ever written. Since then, marketers are chiming-in everywhere you turn about improving CX.

I was talked to Solis again while he traveled to one of his worldwide speaking engagements discussing CX, and gathered more insights. Here are three main ways that Solis says PR and marketing pros can improve customer experience:

1. Uncover points of friction.

The first step is the most difficult. It requires that you recognize that customers’ experiences could be improved and requires you (and others) to step outside of your roles and collaborate to bring about sweeping change. But, it can start with small steps.

Any employee or manager can address customer experience by looking within their domain—whether it is sales, marketing, product development or customer service.

A good place to start is uncovering points of friction. This can be done personally or with the help of other team members and customers. Look at the experience within and outside your department, paying attention to what happens before and after your department becomes part of the customer experience.

When you involve your customers and other departments, interesting developments can appear, enabling you to identify things that are broken and how to fix them.

2. Place innovation over iteration.

Changing the customer experience may not require a complete product or customer journey redesign, but every aspect can benefit from a benchmark review through the eyes of the connected customer.

To make meaningful changes, you need to look at the experience from both ends. This leads to improvements and opens the door to innovation. It’s important to find a balance between innovation and iteration. Both are required for success.

Take a note from Steve Jobs and the development of the iPhone. Jobs didn’t want designers with traditional cellphone experience on the team, because he didn’t want any previous biases. Rather than focus on what a phone was, Jobs looked at what it could be.

3. Rethink what success means to CX.

Improving the customer experience can have widespread value. It is important to determine goals and how to measure them early in the process. Goals should focus on business value as well as how they affect the customer experience.

What’s the ROI of customer happiness? You can use existing metrics, but to truly track experience, rethink what success means and develop additional metrics that ensure how the two align.

Track key performance indicators related to customer satisfaction, shared experiences, customer paths and conversions. Focus on new customer growth baselines, looking at revenues and return on revenues once changes are completed. Also look at the journey and whether or not it is efficient for customers based on intent, context, device and immediacy.

The more tangible goals that you set, easier you can measure success.

  Source : http://bit.ly/24Uyndd

Free Marketing tips.

20 People Who Only Achieved Success After Age 40

As we look at actors, businessmen, and other geniuses who found success at a young age, we sometimes cannot help but wonder what we have been doing with our life. But not everyone hits their peak in their 20s to 30s. Here are 20 famous people who achieved success after the age of 40, and what they did to get where they became.

1. Samuel Jackson

The famous movie star was 46 when he played his role as Jules Winnfield inPulp Fiction. Before then, Jackson had struggled with drug addiction for two years until he got his first major role in Jungle Fever in 1991.

2. Martha Stewart

Stewart worked in catering for years, but her role as “America’s housewife” did not materialize until she started writing cookbooks and other pieces on domestic living in her 40s.

3. Ronald Reagan

Reagan obviously had a successful acting career, but he first came onto the political stage when he delivered his famous “A Time for Choosing” speech during the 1964 election at the age of 53. He leveraged his past acting talents to become one of the most respected presidents of the 20th century.

4. Henry Ford

In his youth, Ford worked as an engineer under Thomas Edison, where he worked on ways to improve the then new automobile. It was not until he was 40 that he founded the Ford Motor company, where he introduced the Model T five years later.

5. Abraham Lincoln

At the age of 40, Lincoln left the House of Representatives and went back to practicing law, his young political career seemingly over. He jumped onto the just-founded Republican Party seven years later, and then was elected President of the United States four years after that.

6. Reid Hoffman

Not every social media website was founded by some young tech genius. Reid Hoffman founded SocialNet.com in 1997, a precursor of sorts to Facebook. But he founded LinkedIn in 2002 at age 35, and then worked for years to make it the professional social networking site. When Hoffman took LinkedIn public 8 years later, he became a billionaire.

7. Lee Ermey

Ermey’s infamous performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket was his first major acting role at the age of 43. Ermey was originally supposed to be an advisor, but was cast as Hartman by impressing Stanley Kubrick with his knowledge of life as a Marine.

8. Ray Kroc

Kroc worked various jobs including a pianist and a traveling salesman for a milkshake maker. Then at the age of 52, he met the McDonalds brothers and proposed that their restaurant could expand across the United States. By the time he died in 1984, McDonald’s had become well, McDonald’s.

9. Richard Adams

While he worked as a British civil servant, Adams told his two daughters a story about a rabbit, who insisted that he write it down. After writing it down two years later, he published Watership Down, which instantly became a children’s literary classic.

10. Jack Cover

Cover worked for NASA and IBM, and eventually used his scientific knowledge to create a weapon which could stop individuals without killing them. Today, police agencies across the world use his Taser to subdue criminals nonviolently.

11. Momofuku Ando

As Japan recovered from the end of World War II, Ando sought a way to provide quick and cheap noodles to his impoverished countrymen. At the age of 48, Ando developed the instant ramen which sustains college students everywhere.

12. Alan Rickman

Rickman quit a successful graphic design business in his mid-20s to go into acting, but spent years working in theater until he was asked to play the role of Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

13. Sam Walton

Walton ran several stores, and failed many times in the process. But he learned from those failures and used the lessons to open the first Wal-Mart at 44 and become one of the richest men in the world. The store’s philosophy was simple, buy in bulk and sell them cheap. Today his stores sell everything from groceries to electric skateboards, and everything in between.

14. Miguel de Cervantes

Widely credited as the first Western novelist for his work Don Quioxte,Cervantes did not publish his first book until 38 and his most famous work at 58. Before then, he served in the Spanish Navy and struggled for years to find work which could support him as he wrote.

15. Julia Child

The woman who brought French cuisine to American televisions did not eat French food until she was 36, working for the OSS in post-war France. But after being absolutely stunned by French food, she studied the cuisine fanatically until she had enough knowledge to host The French Chef at 51.

16. “Colonel” Harland Sanders

Sanders worked a variety of odd jobs throughout his life, and watched his first attempt at a fried chicken restaurant fail at the ripe old age of 65. But Sanders used his Social Security checks to begin franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken, which became the success it is today.

17. Tim and Nina Zagat

These two certainly enjoyed success throughout their life as a pair of corporate lawyers. But after making a list of local restaurants they liked or did not like, they expanded the list into a full-time business. Today, the Zagat list covers over 70 cities.

18. Charles Darwin

Darwin went on his famous voyage on the HMS Beagle at just 21, but his work as a naturalist was held back by health issues. It was not until he was 50 that he finally published On the Origin of Species.

19. Peter Mark Roget

Peter Mark Roget had an interest in lists and orderly language throughout his life. When he retired from his scientific and mechanical work in 1840 at the age of 61, he began preparing to work on a book which would organize words by their definitions. The first thesaurus was published in 1852.

20. “Grandma” Moses

Anna Moses loved to embroider, but when her fingers started to fail at the age of 78, she took up painting. Today, she is remembered as one of America’s great folk artists, who painted scene after scene of American rural life.

  Source : http://bit.ly/1RsdFYf

5 Online Marketing Strategies That Work on Any Budget

The following marketing strategies can theoretically work on any budget--as long as you're willing to put in the time.

When you're trying to get a startup off the ground or keep your small business running, every dollar counts. You're working with a limited pool of revenue, a restricted number of resources, and pressing expenses that demand your immediate attention--so it's no wonder why marketing often gets neglected.

Unfortunately, marketing is a necessary expenditure if you want your business to grow. Otherwise, you might remain strapped with those limited revenue streams indefinitely, and all your scrimping and saving will turn into a self-perpetuating cycle. Is it impossible to break out without spending an exorbitant amount of money?

Of course not. This is the digital age. The following marketing strategies can theoretically work on any budget--as long as you're willing to put in the time:

1. Content Marketing. Content marketing can refer to a number of different interrelated tactics, but they all boil down to one idea: earning more traffic for your site by producing high-profile, valuable pieces of content. For example, you might publish a whitepaper or eBook that attracts people to learn more about your brand, or distribute an infographic that leads users back to your site. If you have a computer, a website, and an Internet connection, you have practically everything you need to get started with the basics of content marketing. Write about what you know--write something original, with specific and detailed information, that's valuable for your target audience. Do this regularly, at least a few times per week, and syndicate your material to increase the visibility of your work. In time, you'll build an audience and you'll be able to invest in better content (posting more frequently, posting new mediums, etc.). Content marketing offers a ridiculously high ROI over the long term, but you can get started for almost nothing.

2. Social Media Marketing. Don't be fooled into thinking that social media marketing is quick or easy. It's not a get rich quick scheme, nor does anything on it happen automatically. There are several fundamentals you have to pay attention to, and even maintaining best practices, it's easy to lose traction or visibility. Still, it costs nothing to establish your brand on most major social media platforms, and you can distribute all your content for free. If you engage with individuals, spark conversations, and syndicate truly valuable content, you'll naturally attract more followers, who can spread the word about your brand and convert to paying customers given the right opportunity. In combination with a solid content marketing campaign, this is even more effective.

3. SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) has developed an almost mystical reputation; professional SEO experts are seen as practitioners of magic, who can make a site rise to the top of Google search results by executing their secret tactics. The reality is much less fanciful. SEO is actually pretty simple if you break it down to its bare components. You'll have to dig into code for onsite optimization, but it's nothing a few online tutorials can't walk you through. Beyond that, content marketing and social media marketing can help you build your domain authority (in coordination with a link building campaign), and they're both nearly free as well. Granted, you won't be able to compete on a national level without the help of an agency or an in-house expert, but you can get started with the basics after a few hours of independent research.

4. Email Marketing. It's free to create a basic MailChimp account, and not very expensive if you want to buy some extra credits. You can also start building a list based on your current or prospective customer base (and I don't recommend buying one). From there, one email a week, backed with good content and special deals, can help you earn more traffic and conversions, and not just a few--email marketing can net you an ROI of 4,300 percent or more. It takes time and effort--but not much money upfront.

5. Influencer Marketing. What if you could get someone else to market your company for you, for free? Sounds sweet, right? The truth is, you can accomplish this with a little bit of research and a decent value proposition. Influencer marketing is the process of identifying high-authority individuals in a given industry (for example, a thought leader in your industry with a massive social following), and getting them to meaningfully engage with your brand. That could mean sharing your content, hosting guest posts, or even engaging in an interview with you. How can you accomplish this without bribery? Simple: you ask. Make it worth their while, stay respectful of their time, and be genuine--eventually, you'll have no problem recruiting influencers to your cause.

These aren't the only marketing strategies that can be executed for next to nothing, so don't limit yourself. Do your research, diversify your strategies, and keep progressing toward your ultimate goals. The beauty of these strategies is that they can work on a passable level with a minimum investment, but if you invest more money, the payoffs start increasing proportionally. You can start off with almost no investment, and by the time you start earning enough revenue to double down on these strategies, you'll be experienced enough to know how to maximize your ROI.

But in order to get to this point, you have to get started--and the sooner the better. Stop using a limited budget as an excuse not to market your business, and start building the momentum you need to succeed.

 Source : http://bit.ly/1KZ8Ok8