Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. The following are some great low or no cost marketing tools and tips to get you on your way.

#1 Find out who clicks on a link you shared.

My favorite tool is rebrandly.com.

Rebrandly.com allows you to take a link you would normally share in an email, blog post or over social and add tracking details for it.

Think of it this way. You found this great product that you want to share with a friend. You don’t know if they actually clicked on it without tracking that link.

So, you can take that link, use rebrandly to create a new link and see how many times it was clicked on, where it was clicked, etc.

The second thing I love about it is that I can edit that link. For example, I use safelink.adamwayne.com/schedule-call as my rebrandly link. The original link was https://www.adamwayne.com/schedule/call.html . If that landing page changes, I just go back into rebrandly and tell it to change to it https://www.adamwayne.com/schedule/new-page (as an example).

#2 Take better notes

Many people know the value of a sticky note.

Some people have embrased the digital version and have used an app on their phone to remind them of randon details.

I use Evernote.com and have used it for years.

The twist I want to share is that a note is powerless until you add a “context” to it. Another way of seeing a notes context is to “tag” it.

When I write a note, I will tag it with a persons name, project I am working on, maybe “markeing,” or “ideas.”

When I need to reference my “ideas,” I can click on that tag and see all the notes in Evernote with that as a tag. Since I have over 10,000 notes, just think if one of those becomes a million dollar idea?

#3 How do I easily follow-up and follow-through?

Do you talk to many people in your week? I know most people do and there are details about those conversations that can get overwhelming!

Where did we leave off? What do I need to provide for them to move forward? What opportunities can we work together in the future?

Again, all context.

Half of the battle is just keeping yourself on task.

That is why I use Hubspot.com as a Customer Relationship Management tool (or CRM). Completely free as well.

That sounds stuffy, but think about it. If you know people and their needs you can find ways of serving them. You can’t do that if you can’t remember those details.

At the free level Hubspot also lets you add custom fields. A field can be something like “name,” or “address.” So, I add ones like “how do I know them” or “what projects can we work on together.”

This allows me to quickly filter through data so I know how to pull together people to make things happen.

#4 Grow subscribers to your list with a contest

Contests are very interesting to people and also inexpensive.

Do you love a specific author? Buy a collection of there books and offer them in the form of a contest on social media or your email list.

Companies like woobox.com have also specialized in creating Facebook apps that allow you special features such as “you have to share this or like a post” to enter the contest. At the end of a week, look at the people that opted-in and award a winner.

Some contests will draw hundreds or thousands of people. Since every person on your email list can equal about $5.00 in value for you or your business, the costs of those books (or whatever you gave away) could be quite minor in comparison.

#5 Advertise of Google for FREE

Most of Google’s revenue comes from their advertising platform called Adwords.

Think about those listings that have the letters “AD” after them. Those are the ones that people have decided to purposefully show up when you searched for that term.

So how do you get free credit?

Great question!

First, sign up for Google Analytics. Within a few weeks you will most likely get an invite code for free credit of anywhere between $100 to $200 in free ad spend.

Secondly, consultants will post codes publicly for you to use. Just google “free google adwords credit” and you will find page after page of codes that you can use no differently that when you shop for that favorite t-shirt. Just add the code on the billing page and you are good to go.

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Recap

  1. Use Rebrandly.com to see who clicked on a link you have shared.
  2. Evernote.com can be a great way to organize your notes.
  3. To better organize your contacts, use a CRM such as Hubspot.com
  4. Collect some of your favorite books, etc, and give them away as a contest to grow your subscribers.
  5. Advertise on Google for free by using a discount code.