There are a million ways to market your business thanks to the internet and it's pretty hard to sort through all of the advertising messages and find the right medium for your business.

Often times, we use the 'trial and error' method to figure out what type of advertising is really going to be beneficial but let's face it, years of trial and error means a ton of money being spent on things that don't work and it begins to feel like just when we find our perfect mix....something new comes along to muck it all up.

So how do you grow your brand, and get results without spending a ton of money? As the owner and creator of multiple start up companies and creator of a large, very profitable, annual country music event, I have spent quite a bit of time trying to market on the 'cheap' and I call it 'Smarketing'.

I know, stupid name but it helps me remember to be smart with my marketing dollars so that I can invest more into making a better quality experience for my clients.

Here's a simple breakdown of some effective strategies that have worked well for me in my endeavors, and have worked well for my clients. While not everything will work for everyone - most of these ideas won't cost you one penny!

SOCIAL SYNDICATION 

When it comes to reaching multiple consumers, it's important to connect with them through the medium that they prefer to use. Heck, you may hate facebook (I don't personally use it for anyting other than content syndication) but if your customers like to talk to you through facebook, somebody better monitor it and have it on their phone to answer the consumer's questions quickly right?

When I say social syndication though, I have two specific tools in mind:

1. Posterous

2. Hootsuite

Posterous - (www.posterous.com) Posterous is a 100% free blogging site that gives you the ability to syndicate your post to just about every major social site PLUS...I love posterous because it will also syndicate my posts, like this one, to my other blog sites like (http://konigcollc.blogspot.com) and (http://konigco.wordpress.com). 

Why this is a big deal: Social syndication not only allows you to reach more consumers through the sites they use most, it also allows you to have a presence on many sites which leads to Google Dominance when someone is searching for your business. In my book 'Dominate Google in 90 Days' (See booklist here http://books.konig.co I break down the importance of this.

With Posterous, you only have to post your information once and you can include photos, videos, etc. PLUS you can schedule the posts for a future date.

My favorite thing about Posterous is that they have an awesome mobile client for Android and iOS that will still share your content to all the networks that you have set up for sharing whereas Hootsuite, see below, will only share with twitter and facebook from their mobile app.

Hootsuite - Hootsuite is the mack-daddy of scheduled content sharing. You can set up a FREE Hootsuite account and add up to 5 networks to post your content to. If you're posting from your mac or pc, it will hit all the networks but from your phone, you'll only hit facebook and twitter. 

There are two things that I enjoy with Hootsuite that you don't get from Posterous. 

1. Google+ Integration - I am a lover of Google+ for many reasons but my main reason is that I know Google LOVES Google. This means that Google Plus has more relevance to Google than other sites and Google is always going to look for more ways to utilize Google+ integration with search.

2. AUTO-SCHEDULER - Hootsuite has an awesome feature that will allow you to auto-schedule the delivery of your posts. This way, it will hit networks at different times making for less of a bomb-drop and more of an even spread across the social scene.

More free marketing ideas

I own a camping event that lasts one weekend just down the road from a Country Music Festival in Western Michigan. This festival brings in approximately 60,000 people each year and big named artists. I decided to lease land from a Farmer and from Friday to Sunday we offer camping with some other fun like music, mechanical bull riding and food. The first year it brought in just under $46,000 with an advertising investment of $128.

How did I pull that off in less than 4 months?

1. Social Syndication

2. FREE ADVERTISING - If you google your city for 'free advertising' you will find numerous sites that you're allowed to post events and information on for absolutely ZERO dollars. To give you an example of the effects this had: March 1st I began daily posts via social syndication and posted to every free site for marketing in my area (about 20 in total) and on each free site post I linked to my website www.beecamp.info and all of the social sites. By the time June 1st came (Even was 6/22/2011) I was sold out and I owned the first page of Google, including the #1 spot, when anyone typed 'birthday bash camping' which was great since Clear Channel Radio that hosts the Music Event was the #2 spot. Every other spot on page 1 belonged to me.

3. Email Marketing Campaign - My favorite email folks in the world are at Mailchimp.com because their tools are easy to use and thei are absolutely free for up to 10,000 emails per month! If you've received email from me, you received it from Mailchimp. Sure there are other companies that you can pay to do it for you but let's face it, once your people are on the list, it's just a matter of sending an email and anyone can handle doing one or two of these per month right? Mail chimp offers a lot of great integration features and they even have templates to link to your other accounts (For example if you have a book on Amazon or if you're selling an item on Ebay). Mailchimp also makes sure you're protected in the area of SPAM by including opt-out info for customers in every email. 

You can visit them today, create a free account, and create an awesome little opt-in form for your website at www.mailchimp.com

Cheap but VERY effective marketing ideas

1. Facebook campaign done the right way: The $128 I spent was on a facebook campaign with my event image that was targetted to 18-40 year olds in Michigan who had liked the artists coming to the event.

2. Text Updates - I own a company that works with SMS Marketing for Automotive Dealers but bfore we began working with dealers to capture leads, we started with opt-in marketing. When someone wants to be part of your event, or they like doing business with you, they want to see your specials because they don't want to miss out. I syndicated daily on my social sites "Stay up to date with BeeCamp and get special deals before everyone else - Text BEECAMP to 59769 right now!" 

The list grew quickly EVERY DAY! Then, each week I would send a message to the campers with a link to an artist page or link to my reservations page with a special code for people reserving via their mobile phones so I could track conversion. I had less than 2% opt-out on this promotion andjust over 22% of my ticket sales were from the mobile marketing that I did.

One of my clients is a small tanning salon & spa in Kalamazoo, MI. Each month, their marketing list grows by about 70 people. That means within 12 months, Sunshine, the owner (great name for owning a tanner right?) will have her weekly specials hit the cell phone of over 800 people every week! Best of all 90% of those messages are read within 3 minutes!!!!

NOTE: I am biased toward Text marketing (SMS) because I do own a company that does it.However, the reason I began this company was because of how cost effective it is for me, and my clients and more important, I know that over 90% of the population have their cell phone within 3ft of them 24 hours a day. Talk about an awesome way to get a message in front of someone?!?

You can really beef up your marketing and conversion rates without investing a fortune using the free and very low cost methods above if you're willing to invest just a little bit of time each week (less than 30 minutes).

Obviously I, like many others, would love the opportunity to help out with the marketing efforts at your business so if you'd like to chat about ideas, feel free to email me your contact information atmat@konig.co and I'll be sure to touch base right away. 

Thanks for reading, now go out there an make today amazing!

Helping the best get better,

Mat Koenig

CEO & Founder
KonigCo
www.konig.co
www.ammp.me

P 615-392-0289
E mat@konig.co 

KonigCo offers mobile solutions focused on mobile number lead capture and SMS Marketing. You can learn more about our company at www.konig.co Would you like to learn how to AMMP up your online & offline mobile marketing? Find out about our Automotive Mobile Marketing Platform at www.ammp.me