It is rather interesting that most people do not take free online
marketing tools seriously. Never mind that there is plenty
of evidence around and even more examples of websites and online entrepreneurs who have taken off in
a hurry using only free online marketing tools.
In a way this reaction is not surprising because we
have been brought up in a world where we have
been taught to firmly believe in the facts of life.
One of the major facts of life is that there is
no such thing as a free lunch and nothing valuable
costs nothing.
While all this is true, most people have failed to realize that
the World Wide Web has arrived with its' own unique
and rather unorthodox but highly effective set of rules.
Even fewer have taken note of the fact that the most successful
online business model so far has been based on
the heavy use of free marketing tools and heavy spending
in marketing comes later when the website has
already started enjoying some success.
A Famous Example
When Bill Gates
was playing catch up on the internet after an initial
error of judgment over the future importance of
the net, one of the areas where he found himself
way behind was in free email services. The likes of
Yahoo already had millions of users when Hotmail was re-launched.
Did one of the richest men in the world go for prime
time television to advertise his new free email
service? Did he book newspaper spots across the
states? Not really, he used a free online marketing
strategy that worked like a dream. A brief signature
at the end of each email sent out invited the recipient
to open a free Hotmail email account. The rest
is history. This simple referral marketing strategy
that cost nothing took Hotmail from virtually zero users
to millions in a few short months.
There are numerous other examples, but I shoe this one because
it is somebody we all know rather well.
Conventional Advertising Does Not Work Online
There is one other
reason why free online advertising tools are so
effective. And this is based on the fact that conventional
advertising as we have always know it has so far
been a big failure online.
Banner advertisements with all the color and gimmickry was
such a huge failure that it prompted somebody to come
up with what they thought would solve the problem and
become a huge success. I am referring to the much-disliked
and extremely annoying pop-up advertisements. Even
the so-called pop-under ads that are supposedly less
annoying have not been received with much enthusiasm
online.
All these options are not free and people have been paying
good money for them.
The reason why conventional ads do not work is simple and
yet most people still don't get it. Folks do not come online
to be advertised to. They come online, usually with very
little time on their hands and looking for some very specific
information. Is it any wonder that any form of unsolicited
advertising, be it pop-up ads or unsolicited email
(SPAM), is so annoying?
This is why informative well-written articles are such
an effective free online marketing tool. Only those
who are interested in the information you have
to offer will read your article. And they do not
mind whatever advertising you put in the resource
box at the bottom of the article, because it does
not look like advertising to them. Especially when
they are interested in getting more information
on the subject at hand.
Marketing Is No Longer That Simple
What people need
to realize is that marketing online does not fall
into the neat offline categories we have been used
to.
For example the most successful online advertising has been
PPC ads or Pay -Per-Click ads. The main reason is that
these ads have been based on relevance to the information
being looked for right from the beginning. We first
saw them next to search engine results. Those ugly small
text things that looked like they were part of the results
searched. They have worked like magic because advertisers
only pay for actual clicks on their ads, so results
and response to the ads are easily quantifiable.
It should not be lost on anybody that these ads actually do
not look like ads. More so now when the market leader
in PPC ads, Google have their AdSense ads in small
sites and blogs all over the net. There is even more emphasis
on relevance to the information being looked for.
Free Is Actually Not Free
Then the other
extremely important factor to note is that many
of the most effective online marketing tools are really
not free. For instance, even if you write your own informative
articles to use for marketing purposes, this is a
very time-consuming exercise. Time is even more valuable
than money because unlike money, it can never be
recovered when it has been lost. So it is just that people
pay using some other currency.
Conclusion
Anybody planning
an online marketing campaign should look very carefully
at the so-called free marketing tools and options,
the effectiveness of some of the techniques will
surprise them.
Article
by David Callan. David is the leading search engine
consultant with AKA Marketing.com's SEO Ireland team. AKA Marketing.com
provide full SEO services as well as telephone based
consulting for those preferring the DIY approach. |
