I recently had a conversation with a client who said that they paid more than R 60 000 over a period of six months for paid advertisements on a well known search platform and did not receive 1 (yes one) lead. So zero return on investment. Sure it depends on what you sell, but to me as an entrepreneur it is always a huge waste of a very scarce commodity – cash. Imagine they used that R 60 000 and employed someone for 4 or 6 months whose job was to attend network meetings, search for and contact new clients and focus on free marketing?

Best things in life are free, as many would say. This especially holds true with efforts in advertising one’s products or services. With free Internet marketing services, one can save a lot. Instead of shelling out for the marketing aspect of your product or services, that chunk of money could be put to other important elements of your business since many information websites now offer knowledge regarding Internet marketing services that comes with no price tag at all. Many of the paid sites also have a free although limited, section where you can advertise for free.

This is not to tell you that better focus on plain Internet marketing. It still will do your business a lot good if you mix traditional advertisement efforts such as network marketing and knocking on doors with free internet marketing.

Here are but few of the free methods that you could employ to make your products and services be in their most visible, thus saleable, form.

1. Promote your business through free search engine submission and optimization.

Submit your website to various search engines monthly. This will make many more people know that your website actually exists. Aiming for the top search engines will help a lot in this endeavor.

2. Improve your articles.

Remember that information on articles with good content as traffic-bringer of websites? This time it’s about making these articles serve your website better by using keyword suggestion tools that are offered for free. Update your web site’s content by regularly checking the standing of your keywords with the current market.

3. Acquire free content.

If you have no time to increase the SEO or search engine optimization-friendliness of your articles, you can look for free content from article directories. All you need to do is retain the resource box of those write-ups.

4. Use free comprehensive web traffic analyzers.
These are tools that you can make use of without costing you a cent. Your website’s hits statistics will be produced by this kind of Internet marketing tool for your own analysis.

5. Learn to manipulate web design templates.
You don’t have to be too techie-geeky to be able to design your web site. Oftentimes, web design templates or custom-made layouts are available for the Internet marketer to use.

6. Monitor your website’s visibility.
Tools such as search engine position trackers may be used to see your website’s standing.

7. Join LinkedIN
Invite at least 3 new connections to your LinkedIN profile on a daily basis. Create LinkedIN and Facebook Pages  and weekly add posts to your pages.

8. Social Media
Monitor and search Facebook Groups where people ask for help in your field. Someone might ask for a quotation for paving and you are a Paving Company. Contact that person directly.

These processes are very convenient to use as long as you keep in mind that you use and try to master their use for your own benefit.