When you're building a business, you're often on a budget, and you're looking for ways to market that don't cost a lot of money. While there are definitely situations where you are going to want to invest to grow, there are also opportunities to market and grow your business that cost little or no money.
Here are 3 of my favorite ways to get clients while letting someone else handle the promotion. I tried to include strategies that can really get you a significant return on investment, and so I avoided writing about things like "make a post on Facebook or "list yourself in free directories."
Attending Other People's Live Events. Live events are hot right now. Counter-intuitively, they are even more important with the expansion of technology because more than ever clients are craving a genuine and authentic connection with thought leaders, and other like-minded people.
Consider attending other people's events, where your ideal clients are already getting together. The event organizer will handle the marketing. You just show-up, network, and follow-up with the people from the event. You can also set meetings before or after the event to maximize your networking time while you're at the event.
It's not uncommon for me to do tens of thousands of dollars of sales from attending a single event.
You can save money by bringing a friend, or often bigger events have Facebook groups where you can find a roommate. If there are events in your area, you can save the travel costs.
Tip to attend events for free: most events have sponsors, and as a way of filling seats they give these sponsors free tickets. Identify who the sponsors of an event are, and you can often get a free ticket to attend.
"Mission-Based Affiliates." When I was promoting a program about a year ago, things were not going as expected. The strategies I normally used weren't working.
My solution: I started reaching out and forging relationships. I connected with people that I knew had lists of my ideal clients, and I explained my mission to them, as well as how my program would compliment their work and provide a HUGE value-add to their clients and customers. I then offered an incredibly generous affiliate commission.
In my view, it was better to have these new clients in my world, because I know that many people after working with me for just a few weeks or months choose to sign-up to work with me for an entire year.
I looked at this a smart investment because I was educated about the behavior of my clients. Also, I didn't have to pay anything up front.
People were happy to jump on the phone with me and hear more, and they were happy to email their lists and share my program. They were also happy to share it on their social networks.
This strategy allowed me to connect with amazing strategic partners, and it exposed me to thousands of new prospects, simply because I was willing to share my mission, and work hard to create a true win-win for these partners.
Strategic Partnerships. Create a list of leaders or experts you would love to connect with. People you look up to, admire, and bring value to their community. Come up with interesting ways you might partner or promote one another.
My favorite way to do this is by using what I call "strategic interview partnerships."
There are two forms this can take.
Option A: Get Yourself Interviewed: Someone else will allow you to give your signature talk, or interview you, for their list. They will promote the interview to their list, and you will promote the interview to your list. The benefits to them are they get to bring complimentary and interesting content to their list, and add new people to their list because of your promotion. I offer anaffiliate commission as well so it really feels like a win-win.
Option B: Interview Others: If you love learning from lots of types of people this is a great strategy. Instead of showing-up and doing a training for their list, they show-up and do a training or an interview for your list. In exchange for you giving them a platform, they are required to email their list one or two times to promote the webinar or interview.
This can expose you to completely new client bases, and help you rapidly build your email list. People are always looking for virtual speaking opportunities, and so this strategy is very easy to get people to agree to.
Here's my secret about partnerships that isn't really a secret: you can get a lot of people to partner with you simply by asking!
Get a free chapter of my Amazon best selling book, The Conscious Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating Wealth at http://www.michaelmapes.org and learn how you can create more money, more wealth, and more clients in your business today.
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