The Best Marketing Strategy Is Free

We are in a period of time where people are making a very lavish living by merely posting photos on Instagram, creating videos for Youtube, and even lip-syncing on Musical.ly. Now while I am aware all these social media streams are completely different from each other there is one thing that they all do and is the core reason why it has become a business for people, these platforms create brand recognition and trust. By no means do I want you to go off creating an account to all of these platforms and spam your typical sales headlines with your product all over it. So with that said here is the best marketing strategy that has been proven successful, first, create your brand and not a product, next you get a social following, and lastly, you present a product people will want to buy because of the brand. It's not the end of the world if you already have a product, but rather than telling people to buy your product, where you say nothing but good things about, you share the story about your brand. Every business has a story to tell and it's just a matter of documenting what your brand is all about. I also wouldn't worry about signing up for every social media out there, just choose two and go all in with them to start with. Which two to choose really depends on what your business is and how your potential customer is most likely to consume the content. If you think that's too much just remember every business has the same 24 hours in a day and they are most likely doing this already.

I'm Using It Now

You may not notice it, but I am actually doing it now and so are a lot of people on this platform of LinkedIn. Let me break down the strategy with my scenario, I am writing about 4 blogs a week where I talk about anything digital marketing and specific PPC experiences. In this case, I am my brand where the product I "sell" are my skills in marketing. My primary reason for writing these blogs now is as simple as to give information directly to business owners who don't directly know what to ask. While the majority of marketers are submitting resumes to clients they want to work with I am building trust with those businesses to show that I know what I am talking about and not just bullets on a resume. I am providing informational value and giving away everything some people decide to charge for. If I wanted a quick sale I can do the same and sell some course, ebook, or coaching service, but I don't believe that's a sustainable business and it's just not what I want to be known for. Business is a marathon and it takes time to get to the top. I get recruiters mail me here to offer me jobs I haven't applied for, which is amazing to me because there are people out there submitting 10 applications a day without being able to even get a call back much less a job offer. This strategy is about knowing whom you want to sell to and where they are.

Why It Works

So how does this really work and why? The answer to this is so simple and is the reason I think it's so effective in a day where we have become numb to numerous traditional advertising. Social media takes up so much of our free time and creating content where you aren't directly selling becomes native to consume for a vast majority of people. The second your tv show goes on break you are aware everything after that is nothing but ads who want to sell you some sort of message and from personal experience, I've noticed at this exact second is when everyone picks up their phone and ends up on social media. I personally spend much more time on my phone and laptop in a day than I do watching tv through an entire month so tv ads will never even reach me. For all I know there is a product out there that I would buy and may even really need, but because a lot of companies like to stick to traditional marketing on tv or billboards I will never see them. It's clear, social media is where the attention of your customers is and the key here is to appear native to their attention and not as an ad.

How To Make It Work

Here is the most important ingredient of it all, provide more value to people than you receive in return. Give people a reason to want to go back every day to see what new content you've shared. The engagement needs to be there because you can have 200K followers who decided to follow for one minor reason or another, but if only a small portion of those people genuinely consume your content they will be of no value. People will return to you for a number of things so you can choose whether you provide information, entertainment, or even motivation. Be sure that a majority of people who decide to follow you have a reason to come back the next day and want to engage with you. Once you build that connection there is some level of trust that a user has when you offer a product. If they ever thought about buying some product that is in your niche and down the road you offer that product they are much more likely to buy from you. These bridges of trust will quickly burn at the sight of any false promises so don't do or say anything without the complete confidence of delivering what they expect.

The best part of this entire thing is that it's free and literally, anyone can do it. Social media is not a millennial thing, it's something that absolutely anyone who has a phone can do. Consistency and patience are what will differentiate you the most from all the other noise in your space. I would hold off on paying for advertising on social media because your effort is better off spent in creating quality content that will be of value to people. Developing social proof to people is much different than PPC so don't mix the two strategies together.