Frugally Marketing Your Info Product

You’ve created and informational product, now what do you do with it? Whether you’ve created it to give away or for profit, you must market it otherwise you’ve just wasted a lot of your time. What good is your information if no one knows that it’s there?
There are several ways that you can market your product inexpensively. These are tried and true methods to get the word our there on what you have to offer.
1. Put up a website.
The best way to advertise your product online is to have it’s own website. I’m not saying don’t promote it on your main page, but give it a home of it’s own so that there’s more room for search engine optimization.
When deciding on a domain name, chose keywords that depict what your product is about and not necessarily what the name of the product is. For example, the name of my recent book is Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer however you’ll find the site at www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com.
Taking that one step further, the actual site is hosted at www.inexpensive-marketing-ideas.com however I promote www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com. The reason I host the site with the hyphenated domain is because the spiders crawl the domain name first and then the content on your site. It could take months for the spiders to crawl your web site, but it doesn’t take that long for them to crawl the domain.
2. Announce your product to all of your networking groups
If you belong to a list serv that allows you to post advertisements, go ahead and send an announcement. (Check the guidelines as not all list servs will allow ads or self promotion.) Then take it to any forums you belong to. If it’s a business related forum, most all have an “advertise your business” section. The key is telling them that it’s done and ready for their viewing or purchase.
3. Add the link to your signature line
One of the best places to advertise what you’ve done is in your signature line. Don’t just put the link and expect people to go there. Put something catchy. In my signature line it simple says 101 Free and Inexpensive Marketing Tips and it’s hyperlinked. That catches their attention much quicker than “Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer.”
Make sure you include this in your email signature line as well as the signature lines of any forums that you belong to. Just because the forum isn’t your target market doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put it there. It’s a free way to advertise and you don’t know if someone in your stay at home mom group couldn’t use what ever it is that you’re offering.
4. Send out a press release
Sending out a press release is another way to gain exposure for your product as well as help with indexing in the search engines. Don’t go into this blindly. If you don’t know how to write a press release, either learn or hire someone to do it for you. Once it’s completed submit it to PRWeb.com. I suggest giving a minimum $30 donation instead of the free submission because you will be able to see the statistics as well as have more exposure with the search engines.
In addition to PRWeb.com, find the local media outlets and submit it to them as well. When I sent out a press release for the book, I contacted every business journal in the six states closest to me. It didn’t cost me any more money since I already had it created and to email it and fax it didn’t take long at all.
5. If you are selling your product consider having an affiliate program
Why should you have an affiliate program? The answer is simple. You’re basically paying someone else to market your product and the commission can be anything that you chose. For example, with my book, I pay affiliates a 25% commission. No, it’s not much, but it’s something and all they have to do is stick it on their website.
There are several affiliate programs out there. I personally use ClickBank because they have over 100,000 affiliates selling products in their market place. My book is also listed in the market place and ClickBank handles the majority of my customer service issues as well as the credit card processing. The fees they charge are nothing in comparison to the time they save me.
6. Send out an email to your subscriber list
If you have a subscriber list, use it. Send out an email that the product is now ready. You can even chose to offer them as discount because they are a valued member of your list. Typically, you can expect a sale from 25% of your list. If you have a list of 100 people, you’re more likely than not going to get 25 orders.
These six tips offer a great start to inexpensively marketing your product. If you’re holding back on creating an informational product because you think the marketing of it will cost you an arm and a leg, think again. You can find 95 additional free and inexpensive tips at www.inexpensivemarketingideas.com.
Happy Marketing!