Maximize Your Marketing in a Bad Economy

For the rest of this week I am going to be focusing on the many free and low-cost services available- including many not widely-known. I will also be sprinkling in some advice from free publicity guru- Bill Stoller about how to get attention without spending much, if any, money.

Money Saver #1: Free Video Distribution Sites
Creating your own videos and having them embedded and viewed around the web is a terrific attention-getter.

Here’s a list of 29 sites that will host your video free of
charge:
http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/
list-of-29-free-video-sharing-sites/

Money Saver #2: Free Instant Videos
If you have a webcam attached to your computer, you can create your own videos instantly and free at Viddler.com. No need to shoot a video and upload it --
Viddler captures the live stream from your webcam and microphone directly and in real time. You can then save the video and distribute it everywhere. Cool!

You’ve got to check this nifty online tool out- I tried it last night and it works great- simple interface and my mother even figured out how to open my video email
www.TokBox.com.

You can create videos that are embedded directly into your email. Simply record your video message, type in the email address of the recipient, and out it goes. The possibilites are endless: you can demonstrate a product, record a personalized holiday greeting, and show a longtime media contact what the person behind the emails and phone calls really looks like!

Money Saver #3: Create Interview Podcasts For Pennies
Want some attention? Find the biggest name in your marketing targets' field that you can and ask them to a do a brief telephone interview with you. Then, post the interview online (or, package it with other interviews and sell it as a product). Here's where your marketing cap must go on- understanding your audience and what they care about- do a weekly interview (or monthly) with an industry expert that can help solve your audience's chief concerns. What are those concerns? Call a few of your favorite clients and ask!

It’s very easy -- and cheap -- to do.

Step One: Sign up with Skype, the Internet telephone service that allows you to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free using your computer. If
the person you’d like to interview isn’t a Skype user, no problem. SkypeOut is a cheap service ($2.95/month for unlimited calls within the US, slightly more for
overseas calls) that gives you the ability to call anyone using your Skype account.

Step Two: Record the interview using Call Graph, a nifty piece of freeware that starts automatically when you make a Skype call. When the interview is over,
Call Graph saves the file as an mp3. http://www.callgraph.in

Step Three: Upload your interview to your site, your blog, iTunes and other audio sharing services.

Step Four: Send out a press release and announce your interview in your ezine, on message boards, groups and in comments on other blogs.

Tomorrow more penny-pinching marketing ideas that pay off big time!