Home Office Organization–21st Century Style

10 Free or Cheap Things You Can Do To Market Locally

What your local small business needs, free or cheap, to improve your marketing and sales considerably (20 min. video):

Ed Dale’s program is now The Challenge.

This video is about 2 years old, so a few things have changed. I’ve mentioned the changes below as I listed the resources.

Help

• A surly web-savvy teenager
• Lots of soft drinks teenager likes
• Lots of snacks teenager likes
• Some money ($20 or so) to flip teenager at the end of his/her work for you

Free Resources

• Google Local
• Facebook Pages — can be used as your blog or website
• A Blog — free on Blogger.com or WordPress.com
• Twitter
• YouTube — second largest search engine on Earth
• Google Reader
• Google Alerts

Cheap Resources

• Google PPC (pay per click) also known as AdWords
• Facebook PPC — also known as Facebook Ads; demographic, highly targeted pay-per-click advertising
• Mail list(s) — Email lists with AWeber. Click on the “Order” tab to get started

Here are some extra things I find very useful:

• HostGator private website hosting — private blog/website hosting
• Google News
• Google Blog Search
• The Challenge, free training
• Blog Profits Blueprint (Free Report)
• Blog Mastermind Coaching Program

A really good reason to use AWeber is it is easily integrated with Facebook pages. If you just want your web presence to be on Facebook, you’ll need an email service that works with it.

A blog or website has become optional because of Facebook pages. You can connect with your market using your Facebook page as your website on Google Local, and a Facebook page is very easy to update.

Six of these services require a Google account. If you have a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account, etc., you have a Google account, and you can use it on all Google’s services. You can create separate accounts if you want to, but you don’t have to.

Fixed costs in this list AWeber and HostGator. AWeber costs $19.95 per month, and the first month is typically deeply discounted. HostGator costs $9.95/month.

If you choose private web hosting for you website or blog, it shouldn’t cost more than about $10/month, and it costs about $10/year to own your web address (URL). But paying for your blog is optional.

The variable costs on this list are the pay-per-click advertising you may choose to do. Remember, you can do intermittent advertising, weekend-only advertising, or a few days a month. You are not stuck with a long-term advertising contract and bill.

Again, why do you need these tools?

• iPhone
• Blackberry
• iPad
• Android
• Tablet PC
• Smartphone

If you find you need help with setting these services up, seriously, find a web-savvy teenager.

Don’t want to do it yourself? I’ll do it for you for $40 (if you don’t have a surly teenager available:).

A lot of these techniques can be implemented even if your business does not have a website.

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