So you have your own business and what you are providing is fantastic. People need to know about you, but you don’t have a lot of money available for marketing your brand. What do you do? One great way to get some promotion without draining your budget is through word of mouth advertising.
Search out a few people you can provide your service or product to for no charge, with the stipulation they provide you with some references in the form of testimonials or reviews to other potential clients. The great thing about this is it really costs nothing upfront from you – aside from providing your service or product for free one time.
While you do lose a small amount of money doing this, the purpose is two-fold. It gets your name out there doing what you love to do and when you finish the freebie project, you wind up with new clients via the referrals. You are building your client list at turbo speed! You now have both the client you provided the gratis work to and their friends and colleagues they refer back to you.
This is a great way to get some long term marketing for a little investment. Unlike traditional styles of marketing, this allows potential clients to speak with current clients and learn about you from the people you are already impressing with your service or product.
This works just as well via the Internet with social networking sites. If you offer your service on a social networking site, it will basically take off just like the word of mouth strategy. Once one person knows about your services, they will in turn pass the information onto others and social networking sites are the perfect place to build this type of clientele at little cost to you. You can leverage social networking sites into creating a viral campaign that basically sells itself as it spreads from one person to the next.