What marketing initiative has REALLY worked for you?

[Tim Reid]

Part of being a soloist is having a modest marketing budget...and ensuring that every dollar and minute spent on your marketing produces multiples. So...what marketing initiative produces the most inquiry to your business? (Please include in your answer the industry you operate in).

[Tim Reid]

Given I asked the question, I also better give my own answer. By far and away the most effective marketing that I'm undertaking has been to produce a podcast. It's built a global audience in the 1000s, has turbo-charged my list building, helped sell many copies of my book and put bums on seats at my workshops. I'm in the Marketing industry.

[johnpaulgrant]

I thought your name was familiar! I am sure I listen to your podcast just can't put your name to the right one (i listen to a lot) ... is it Small Business Big Marketing?

So my top marketing initiative is simply creating content on a consistent basis. This allows me to get decent search engine rankings (could always be better) ... my background is in SEO and PPC so naturally these two channels are where I gain the most business.

I am in the virtual assistant / outsourcing industry.

Good job on the podcast timbo! Love it!

[mike@engagemarketing]

I can see how your podcast has done wonders for you Timbo. For anyone else our there, I definitely recommend listening to the 'Small Business Big Marketing' podcast at http://smallbusinessbigmarketing.com/. We've got quite a few of our clients listening to it now after recommending it.

For Engage Marketing, i'd say that Word of Mouth provides most of our work, with search engine leads coming in at a close second.

For The Blog Designer, most of our sales come through a pretty casual affiliates set up. We look after our affiliates and they like us, so we both end up happy. We're just about to launch a few out of the box marketing promotions which I think will end up providing the majority of our business. Stay tuned!

[mattybee]

Originally Posted by johnpaulgrant

I thought your name was familiar! I am sure I listen to your podcast just can't put your name to the right one (i listen to a lot) ... is it Small Business Big Marketing?

So my top marketing initiative is simply creating content on a consistent basis. This allows me to get decent search engine rankings (could always be better) ... my background is in SEO and PPC so naturally these two channels are where I gain the most business.

I am in the virtual assistant / outsourcing industry.

Good job on the podcast timbo! Love it!

Hey John Paul Grant,

Great to see you in the outsourcing field, it really does save businesses a lot of time and make them much more productive.

As far as best marketing goes, google maps hands down for me! I have based my whole business around it! See my post here: Yellow Pages & Sensis Online - my take!

My uncle was spening 60K yes 60K for a yellow pages advert that he could not even track his leads from.

I made him a highly optimised google places listing and he has picked up over 12K of excavation work withing four days of posting it.

[leisadent]

By far the most effective marketing method I've used was really an accident - I get most of my new work from referrals. I take care of clients and tell their friends about me. Far more rewarding than getting a response from an ad.

[Steve_Minshall]

Now should I pay $5K on a tiny Yellow Pages ad or getting noticed on one of Sydney's main roads into the CBD?

[sixx]

Originally Posted by Steve_Minshall

Now should I pay $5K on a tiny Yellow Pages ad or getting noticed on one of Sydney's main roads into the CBD?

Wow! You win. )

[FS Concierge]

Steve, that's fantastic =)

Thanks for sharing!

Jayne

[Steve_Minshall]

Originally Posted by FS Concierge

Steve, that's fantastic =)

Thanks for sharing!

Jayne

Thanks, and you're welcome.

The following is one of the most important marketing ideas I heard and unfortunately I do not know who to credit with it but I will pass it on.

Image a scene in Antarctica where you have thousands of penguins as far as the eye can see. They all look identical and it would be impossible to single out an individual. But what if you put a pointy pink hat on one of them? A couple of dollars for a pink hat and everyone can see the individual penguin. The moral of this tale is always to be looking for your own pink hat. It shows standing out does not have to be expensive it just needs to be different. And when all the other penguins get pink hats be ready with your step ladder, or flag, or helium balloon. Don't look at what all the other penguins are doing work out what they are not doing.

So what is your pink hat?

(This is different to having a USP which is about the uniqueness of your product, this is about what you do to get noticed)