Are there ways to market your business that will not cost you a fortune? How can you get the word out without driving your company into a financial black hole?

Truth is most marketing does take money, but there are some low-cost and no-cost options that you can put into action that will help you to get the word out about your products and service. While these ideas will not cost you a lot of money they will cost you time, so prepare for that.

These are fantastic ideas for the company that is just getting started. They also work! Choose two out of the five and move forward on them this week. Once you begin to see that in fact these promotional ideas can bring you business your momentum will build and drive you to pick two more.

1. Network at events. Go to Chamber of Commerce meetings, BNI Group meetings, and other organizational meetings that will be attracting your "ideal" client.Gather business cards. Get as many as you can and then begin to phone and email to follow up. Do this immediately while you are still fresh in their mind. If they cannot use your services, ask them if they know of someone who can and get their contact information.
2. Attend public meetings. At every public meeting, make a commitment to say something that could be useful to those that are attending. This is a great way to not only share you knowledge and help others, but it also puts you in the eye of those who could use your services.
3. Create a "useful" handout. A handout that when given to a recipient they keep because it has value. For example with my business I have one entitled the "Top Ten Marketing Tactics Your Competition Wish They Knew." Make sure that you include your name, phone number, email address, website information and your 30 second commercial that tells the recipient about your business.
4. Create joint-ventures. Find colleagues and business associates whose business compliments yours and do joint promotions. For example I do joint-ventures with a copywriter and graphic designer. Who could you partner with?
5. Write letters to editors of local newspapers and business publications.Make them interesting and newsworthy. You'll be surprised at how often a good letter will get printed. Do not forget to include your contact information and website address.

By committing to one of these items on a weekly basis within one month you will see your business gain recognition and business. You can get the word out there without spending hundreds of dollars.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Most of you know about and/or have used Google's Adwords to drive traffic to our websites. And, some of you have optimized our websites to be indexed for Google's organic searches. And, of course we all have used Google to conduct research on prospects, clients, competitors, and partners.

But Google has a slew of other no-cost sales and marketing tools that can help your sales and marketing efforts.

Here are three favorites we think every company should be leveraging:

• Google Alerts: This tool allows you to be notified by email when something of interest to you is posted online (provided it is indexed by Google). For example, you may want to get alerts every time your company name, URL, or customer/competitor news appears online. Learn more in Using Google Alerts.
• Google Webmaster Tools: Perhaps the most valuable of Google tools is its collection of free webmaster tools. These include:
• Diagnostic tools for managing how Google indexes your site (including sitemap submission, page index status, web crawl errors, etc.)
• Site analytics to analyze your visitor activity
• Code to add search functionality to your site
• Developer tools to add Google Maps to your site
• And more...
• Google Book Search: This tool allows you to promote your book online, while earning ad dollars from Google. Many company's have a spokesperson write a book as a way to become thought leaders in their space. Participating in this no-cost program from Google allows you to get more buzz for your book and even direct searches to your site or a major online bookseller (like Amazon.com) to purchase the book.

There are many more tools Google offers that you can use to boost and measure your sales and marketing efforts, but if you aren't using these three...get started now!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

The savvy sales and marketing professional knows that those who are "in-the-know"...win. Knowledge is power on so many levels. Knowledge about your industry. Knowledge about your customers. Knowledge about your competitors. And, even...Knowledge about your own company's market presence.

Obtaining that knowledge can be daunting. There are trade magazines, trade shows, networking events, and other ways to obtain the information you need. And, then there is the web...the mother of all data stores. Just keeping up with the information posted to the web every day could be a full time job of searching, searching, and searching some more. Who has the time?

Luckily, Google has a free service..GoogleAlert...and if you aren't already, you need to begin using these automatic alerts as a sales and marketing tool, it's time to get started. Here's how:

• DEFINE WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  
  Some examples include:
  
  Link Monitoring: as you know from our Checklist, generating links back to your own site is critical to your search engine results. Set up a google alert for your URL to get reports on when your website is linked to.
  
  Brand Name Monitoring: Whether it be your company brand, product brands, or both...knowing when, where, and how you're being talked about in forums, blogs, or other online sources is of paramount importance to your brand image maintenance.
  
  Industry, Competitor, and Customer News: Keeping on top of the leading news happening in your industry or with your competitors and customers will give you the edge you need to respond quickly.
  
  
• SET UP YOUR GOOGLE ALERTS
  
  First, sign up for your Google account. Then set up an alert for each topic you wish to track and determine your report frequency for each (i.e. whether you want information from each to be sent to you in real-time, daily, etc.).
  
  
• MONITOR REPORTS AS YOU GET THEM
  
  Signing up for the alerts is one thing. To be useful, you have to USE the information. So, make sure you set aside time each week or month (depending on your report frequency), to read through your alerts, visit the online links, and absorb the information. Make a determination if the information you receive needs immediate action or long-term monitoring.

Using this tool from Google, will help you have the information you need "pushed-to-you", rather than you having to hunt for it...A HUGE time saver. And, it will not only save you time, it will gain you sales and marketing efforts just the edge they need. Remember, knowledge truly is power!

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•