If you’ve tried advertising on sites like Google, you’ve probably seen how fast you can spend a ton of cash. That’s why these traditional online ad sites aren’t for me.
My favorite marketing term is the word “free” and I’ll share how to get free, or nearly free, advertising and branding on social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.
Like Google Adwords, these sites offer a pay-per-click option, which means you only pay them when someone clicks on your ad. However, they’re a lot different from Google in one way: hardly anyone ever clicks on their ads. When was the last time you went on Facebook to look for a product? This happens with a Google search but not with most other social media sites.
You can leverage this low, low click-through in your marketing efforts and it’s a simple process. Here’s how:
Create an ad that has nothing more than your logo, company name, and a 4-5 word description of your services. This is great for branding. Using this method, I placed an ad for BuzzBuilder and it got over 65,000 impressions, which means more than 65,000 people took a mental picture of my logo and company name. Only 2 people clicked on my ad and it cost me a whopping $1.30. So it wasn’t completely free but I’m not complaining.
A side note: Yeah, I know that branding doesn’t generate immediate leads, but we all know that it takes multiple “touches” and impressions with prospects before we finally get their attention. This is one more impression and it gets me one step closer to a new customer.