Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Three Low Cost Marketing Ideas
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 by Michael Lewis
The budget for a digital marketing campaign is often tight. Some
managers and directors do not fully understand how effective
digital channels can be at driving sales or generating leads. There
are tools and free channels available for building online
reputation, optimizing a website or streamlining social media
channels. But these free services are only part of the solution.
There are inexpensive paid channels that can assist a marketing
campaign.
The following tools and services have a low cost, but can
generate a great ROI.
Facebook Advertising:
Facebook has offered Pay-Per-Click and Pay-Per-Impression
advertising since 2006 when they launched the News Feed. When
creating an ad campaign on Facebook, you select a range of
demographic information (location, gender, age, education) and
personal information (likes, interests, common phrases of shared
links and status updates). Facebook calculates a cost range for
running ads for people that match those demographics. You can
promote an external website, a Fan Page or a specific news story.
These clicks can come very cheap compared to AdWords.
Set a lifetime budget for your campaign ($25-$50), create two
ads targeting two different demographic groups and see what you
get.
Yelp Ads:
For better or worse, there are some industries that live and die
by yelp ads. Yelp has a dead simple ad sales system. All clicks are
$3.50. Your ad is placed at the top of relevant searches or within
an ad-box on your competitors' pages. Your ads, along with contact
information will appear on relevant pages throughout Yelp. There is
no need to set bids or worry about placement. Yelp uses your own
pages categories and keywords to figure out where your ads will be
placed.
Since you are paying per click, your ads will keep showing up as
long as you have money in your budget. For an investment of $70,
you are going to get 20 clicks. The upside is that your ad will run
next to all relevant searches as well as above your
competitors' reviews.
PRWeb Press Release:
This option is a little more expensive than Yelp or Facebook
ads. The "advanced" option is $200 and gives you the most
bang for your buck. When you submit a press release with PRWeb, the
release will be indexed by Google and will often get picked up by
several other websites. From an SEO standpoint, there are few other
links that are as good as links generated by PRWeb. Beyond that,
the press releases get sent to journalists and writers.
Two or three written and optimized releases help push your
website up in search results as well as generate publicity for your
company. The reason PRWeb remains such a valuable tool for digital
marketing is because the employees at PRWeb check to make sure each
release meets their strict standards. This ensures that the service
does not become the target of spammers.
To learn how to get the most out of digital marketing, contact
us today at 773.241.3007.
Until next time -
Mike Lewis
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support &
Consulting
DC IT Support &
Consulting
Outsourced Marketing Services
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