Whether you’re just starting out in business or have been in business for years, using free marketing to increase brand awareness and sales should be an essential part of your marketing mix. Here’s 10 free marketing ideas to help you…

lightbulb1. Get some free business cards

If you don’t mind a subtle logo on the back of your business cards, Vista Print offer them free with a range of basic designs or you can get them without their logo for under a tenner.

2. Get yourself a free website

Use a fantastic free tool such as http://www.wordpress.com to create a free web presence. Commonly referred to as blogging software, WordPress can help you set up pages, add custom header graphics and set up automated RSS feeds and Twitter feeds in just a few clicks. I’ve set up brand new websites in under a couple of hours. If you do want to use a specific domain name, you can use their simple upgrade tool to link any domain you control for about a fiver per year. In fact, this isn’t even as essential as it was a few years ago as you can provide your Twitter address instead and link through to your website for free from there.

3. Get socialising

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Flickr, there’s a social networking site for you. Get your accounts now, listen to topics of interest first before diving in and whatever you do don’t try and sell anything straight off the bat. Social networking is all about helping people out and sharing knowledge, when you’ve built up a relationship, then they’ll be more open to buy from you.

4. Blog about it

Being an expert in your given field, really gives you an advantage. If you’ve got thoughts and stories that people will want to hear then get writing.

5. Enhance your life with Google analytics

Your website holds the key to what’s working and what’s not. Find out where your traffic is coming from at the moment and see how you can get more of the same. Then hunt out the pages have the highest bounce rate (the percentage of people that visit a page and instantly leave should be no higher than 30%), then figure out why before trying different layouts and copy.

6. Send out press releases

PR is one of the best free marketing methods and it can potentially get you national press coverage for free. A press release must contain a good enough story for a journalist or editor to think it would be useful, relevant, new or funny for their readers. Once you’ve identified what your story is, offer your ideal publication an exclusive as an incentive to publish it.

7. Become an affiliate marketing expert

If you’ve already got a product, there is literally an army of affiliates out there waiting to sell your product for you in return for a commission. All you need to do is advertise your affiliate offering on your website. To go to them rather than waiting for them to come to you it’s best to join an affiliate network such as Affiliate Window where your product will rub shoulders with the likes of B&Q, M&S and Yell.

8. Build a long term realtionship with email marketing

Add an email sign-up form to your website for zero cost by using a tool like http://www.sign-up.to where it’s free for the first 50 contacts. Then start sending them news or special offers on a regular basis. You could also use email to keep your existing customers up-to-date with a view helping them be the first to know about new products and services.

9. Use Yahoo Answers to be in the right place at the right time

Log on to Yahoo Answers and see if there any questions that you could answer, together with providing a link to further information on your website. Use Yahoo Pipes to set up automated alerts like Google Alerts so you get emailed every time a new question that matches your search criteria appears.

10. Learn how to be an SEO pro

Search engine optimisation is a free marketing skill that every business owner needs to master. With Google alone handling over 250 million searches every day, it pays to know how to improve your website’s ranking in the major search engines. A no. 1 ranking in Google will receive around half of the overall searches for that keyword and picking the keywords you want to compete on is just as essential as choosing which market you’re in. But note that the fewer words, the more fierce the competition (“dog charity sussex” is going to be easier to go after than dog charity) . There’s a lot of  conflicting information on SEO, so be aware that there are only a few SEO experts that work on a large variety of different websites on a daily basis and have the most up-to-date knowledge.

Free Marketing Experts offers courses, training and advice for free marketing disciplines including internet marketing, SEO, PR, social media, affiliate marketing, email marketing and copywriting. For more free marketing  tips and offers register now (it’s free!)