Marketing Ain’t Free
If you want to piss off a writer tell them “gee, I wish I could do that, but I have to work.” The same thing applies to your marketing team. Take my advice and don’t piss them off by implying that they don’t work and what they do is just an unnecessary overhead cost. I’m here to tell you that it ain’t all fun and games.
You ever see the term TANSTAAFL? There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. I’m very interested in the concept of free in the digital economy, but free doesn’t mean free of effort. And frankly, it usually isn’t free of cost, either.
You see things like this on the web: Stop paying for marketing! Here is how you can market your company for free. by Neil Patel (I’ve mentioned it before, but it aggravates me, so I’m taking a second at bat). He claims that you can follow his guidelines and market your company for free. But here’s what he doesn’t tell you: it’s a full time job to market a company. And that ain’t free. The owner has to do it, they have to hire someone to do it, or they pay someone outside to get it done. Or more likely, it doesn’t get done and management is left wondering why their sales are drying up.
Let’s take, for example, email marketing, which Patel highlights. Email is an excellent way to market and I’ve found it to be very effective, and Patel correctly stresses that you should only send email to those who opt-in. That means that your customers and prospects give you specific permission to send them emails. What he doesn’t tell you is how to get started from nothing. Let’s say you have zero addresses in your opt-in email list. How are you going to generate those names?
Answer: go ask marketing. They’ll develop a program to attract the right attention and entice qualified prospects and existing customers to give you permission to send them marketing emails. But it won’t happen overnight and it won’t be free. Sorry to burst that bubble.
What about this black magic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? I’ll give you the secret: there is no secret. Other than some very basic structural issues which you can easily pick up and implement on your site, optimizing your placement on Google requires that you have other people talk about your company on their sites AND link to you. There, I just saved you $10,000. How do you get other people to talk and write about your company and put a link on their site?
Answer: go ask marketing. They’ll outline a program of public relations and content development that will, over time, increase your search engine rankings.
It is very difficult to create something from nothing. Even the best products and services often take months and years to develop a substantial online following. It’s hard work. A long process. And it’s anything but free. Even if you’re a sole proprietor, spending only your time, I don’t think you can call that free.
Don’t lose heart – it is possible to successfully market your product or service, even small businesses, without spending astronomical sums. But give up on thinking it will be free or cheap.
