Next in our series on Jay Levinson’s Sixteen Monumental Secrets of Guerilla Marketing: Secret #6 comes as a surprise to many people: Your finances: some wise investment in marketing You’ve seen ads and received emails that promise “free publicity” and “free marketing.” Social media consultants will tell you you can promote your products and services through social media for free. Is there anything to this? Actually, yes there is.

There is more free information on the Internet than ever before in history. Some of it is excellent.
It is possible to set up profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites for free.
It is possible to set up a blog on a free site like Blogger, and to publish a blog for free.
You can write compelling content and articles that share your knowledge and position you as an expert in your field.
Many tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact offer very small companies the ability to start email marketing for free.
Some printers, such as VistaPrint, will provide you with a small number of free printed materials. They often include a small ad for VistaPrint.

It is entirely possible to engage in some very effective marketing practices without spending any money. That includes designing a product for which there is a need, targeting ideal customers effectively, crafting powerful and effective marketing messages, and getting the attention of those potential customers with those effective messages. If you can do that without spending money, by all means, do it! To do that, you will need to invest a lot more time than your competitors do. Most companies underestimate the difficulty of selling a product in today’s market, and many can’t afford to spend hours a week for months at a time sorting through huge volume of information on the web and struggling to work around the limitations of free software. But if you have that luxury, it can certainly be done. And then you always can write a book about it after you succeed, because you will have become an expert in something besides your chosen profession. 🙂 If you have more time than money, then at least invest the time. I have an ulterior motive for telling you this. If you market your product or service well enough, you will become successful enough to afford our marketing services. And you will understand their value. Of course investing money gives you more options.

You can hire an experienced consultant to guide your decisions and investments, avoid mistakes and save time.
You can pay for research and lists that will help you more effectively target your ideal customers, and target more of them at a time.
You can pay writers, designers, or other professionals to make your messaging have more impact.
You can pay a social media manager to craft and manage your social media presence and profiles.
You can buy space in magazines that your ideal customers are already reading and put your messages where they will see them.
Your marketing materials are more credible if they don’t include an ad for your printer and your website doesn’t include “blogspot” in the website address.
Your consultant can examine your results and guide your future investments of time and money in an improving cycle.