When we talk or even think about “Marketing”, it seems fancy and luxury, because first come to our minds are the expensive commercials on TV/ YouTube, or the billboard on the busy freeway exit, or a full page on a flashy magazine. To me, “marketing” just means have people know about your service, product and brand. Talking to your neighbors and friends about your product and service is marketing; wearing the T-shirt with your company logo is marketing; even holding your own written book on the bus and pretending you are reading is marketing too! So it could be inexpensive, and as easy as a routine you do every day.

I come up a few inexpensive and relatively easy marketing ideas that everyone can do – especially for those one-man show business owners out there (I truly understand the pain):

• Ask your friends and family to help. Spread your service/product information on all over your social channels, ask you friends and families to spread them out too.

• Be your own brand. Wear the clothes you are selling, use the makeup products you are selling when you go out. If it is a service that can’t really show, be the service speaker, talk about that all the time, not in the hard-sell way (you will lose all your friends very soon…), but the knowledgeable and professional way. For example, if you operate a house cleaning service, talk about how to clean up the stains in the oven, the grease in the microwave, how to polish the hard wood floor on your website, on your social channels, ect. Share your knowledge in your friends and family circle. When people look for house cleaning service, you are the first one comes to mind, because you share a lot and they know you know a lot!

• Enrich the content on your website. Everyone should have a website if they sell something. Make the website look fresh and updated. Add MORE details about your products and services. Talk about what makes your product exceptional and how it impacts/makes your customers’ life easier. Add quality photos/ videos to demonstrate and show details. Video takes longer time to do. If you are new to video, and don’t have money to hire the profession or no friend to borrow, try to focus on the text and photos. Providing quality and useful content is always the king.

• Invest in SEO. SEO is not marketing, some SEOers might argue. In my theory, it is, because marketing is to let people know you and find you. SEO is the tool to achieve this goal. Spend some time to learn some basics of Google trends and Google analytics. Figure out the keywords people use to search the product/service you are selling in search engine. Include those keywords on your website in a sensible way.

• Use social media. I put it last, because it is getting harder and harder to reach out your targeted audience if you don’t pay the channel. And it definitely takes time and energy to build up the page. But if you are a fan of social media, go for it. It could bring back surprising results.

Those are the low-hanging fruits in my mind for marketing. Do you have any other ideas? I love to know, share with me!