Your most effective marketing

Hi everyone!
I was just wondeing if everyone could post there most effective way of marketing and what you are marketing. And maybe even your buget that you complete this on!
Thanks alot and I hope this will help alot of people out!
Thanks
Mike

 

I personally use:

Traffic Exchanges- I have set a budget of $50 dollars a month, but I could get slightly less results for free.

Forums- Free, simply post in several high traffic and targeted forums.

Articles- Free, Write 1 or 2 articles a day.

Total monthly cost= $50 dollars, only because I choose to.
Results= 100's of uniques each day 1,000's weekly.

I owe most of my results from traffic exchanges, others will explain that traffic exchanges didn't work for them. That simply is a lack of knowledge on their part on how to use them effectively.

 

I use

-Forums
-Articles (2-5 a day) for high autority sites

 

I use article marketing almost exclusively, I find that its certainly the most effective form of marketing for myself.

Of course, forum marketing is great as well.

The key to both of these is that they are free, and are long-term. Using a traffic exchange or purchasing traffic in any other way only gives you short term exposure, whereas articles and forum marketing last as long as the articles / posts exist.

Sean

 

Sounds great. Does anyone use any form of "paid" advertsing. Such as buying banner space or anything like that?
Thanks
Mike

 

Sure. PPC, SEO, banner advertisements, stumbleupon advertising, etc are all essential to advertising.

 

Articles, Forums mostley works for me.

 

Choose the one you prefer, and master them. This is the secret.

I like article marketing, SEO, blogging and forum marketing.

 

I'm marketing PR and writing services mostly, and my most effective tactic doesn't really "cost" me anything. My most effective form of marketing is offering something that's high quality with good customer service (such as the added consulting I give to my clients with an order, like the time I spend with them if they need to talk, ask more general questions, etc). I've had other things do a good job, from sales to simply adding links to forum sigs. But nothing's been more effective at bringing in business than giving them a reason to come back, and giving them a reason to spread the word. Now, I have several long-term repeat clients and regular clients, and every new client in the last few months has come to me on their own (from seeing quality advice in a forum post to being reffered by another client).

 

Hello,

At one point in my career I managed both online and offline marketing efforts for a super-regional bank's online products (i.e. online banking, online bill pay, online trading, etc.).

One of my most successful marketing campaigns was an Online Bill Payment enrollment and usage campaign. It was multi-faceted and pretty easy to pull together.

* Customer facing aspect - Any customer who enrolled in online bill payment earned an entry for a $5,000 cash prize. Any customer who activated and actually used online bill payment earned an additional entry for each bill they paid online. At the end of the promotion (two months long), a winner was drawn from the available entries.

* Employee facing aspect - Any teller or call center employee who enrolled a customer for online bill payment during the promotion earned an "incentive" (cash). However, the customer HAD to pay at least one bill or the incentive would not be paid.

* Employee facing aspect - A special promotion ran within our call center and the employee who enrolled the most customers in online bill payment won a big-screen HDTV. Again, the customer HAD to pay at least one bill or this wouldn't count towards winning the big-screen TV.

This promotion was supported by online (banners) and offline (statement stuffers, teller hand-outs, branch merchandizing, etc.) efforts.

I don't want to divulge budget or specifics to the success, but needless to say I ran the promotion an additional three times before losing my job during a merger.

Anyway, this is a unique "banking" related campaign and probably doesn't relate to anything anyone on the forum does on a day-to-day basis, but I thought I would pass it along as a successful and effective marketing campaign.

-PRADCO

 

Mine has been marketing on niche related forums.

 

Mainly forums, and a few articles. But mostly forums.

 

myspace and digg. but i am tired of myspace...

just write unique articles and submitt them to digg and then add your site to a bunch of directories. you'll see results.

 

True, myspace for marketing is declining....

DIGG is a good way to go (for blogs and article heavy sites). I too use DIGG for marketing my blogs. For my photoshop tutorial site, I use photoshop directories to gain PR and traffic.

 

I like the 2nd one. I think posting on related forum can work well.

 

SEO for me. Use forums and directories to build up your links.

Could you give us an example of a traffic exchange you've done (that worked well)?