Marketing Secrets: 5 FREE Ways To Grow Your Online Brand
Learn how to grow a brand without spending a dime using these free growth marketing techniques.
If you're reading this sentence there's a good chance that you're interested in what it takes to grow a brand. That's awesome!
Growing a brand, company, or audience is a super fun and rewarding experience. It takes passion, hard work, and the flexibility to deal with whatever challenges may come your way, but it’s totally worth it.
However, I think a lot of folks tend to overestimate what it takes to successfully market and grow a brand and underestimate the power of just showing up.
Over the years I've found a few free strategies for growing a brand online and they are so easy, anybody can do them. So if you’re ready to grow your audience, let’s get to it!
Do Not Use Sleazy Marketing Strategies
Most growth hacking strategies are not only ineffective for actually growing a company, but they often end up hurting your company more in the long-run.
This Includes:
Follow/Unfollow Strategies
Mindless Commenting
Buying Backlinks
Buying Followers
Keyword Stuffing
I've had friends get their social accounts suspended because they bought into the lie of quick likes and vanity metrics. Don't fall victim to this trap.
If someone is offering quick growth and it’s not through content creation, adding value, or paid advertising campaigns, they are full of it. Avoid them.
Focus on creating value, not growth hacks.
The Social Dilemma
It can be easy to look at your favorite celebrities or influencers and think that social media is going to be the secret to success, but I'd like to share a little secret that Mr. Zuckerberg doesn't want you to know...
No influencer or company has ever made money from Facebook or Instagram.
That's a controversial statement, but it's true. Let me explain:
Let's think of a beauty influencer with a make-up line. The influencer has spent years creating a following through daily content, social posts, and live videos. She has a rabid fan-base and frequently appears on industry websites and magazines.
But how does that influencer make money? Does Instagram write her a check? Does Facebook direct deposit into her account? Of course not.
The influencer makes money by sending her target audience to her website and coordinating paid sponsorships with companies. These transactions and inquiries happen on a different platform entirely, her website and private communications.
Sure, social media was the tool that got the audience and sponsors to her website, but it was just that, a tool to build trust and ultimately get people to the website.
The same is true for your business. Social media is like a road that leads to your website or store.
The Goal is to Own the Castle
The primary goal of an empathy-driven company, blog, or brand is to create the ecosystem in which your audience lives.
In some part, this can be having followings on various social channels that people check daily, but in reality, this looks more like building email lists, getting folks to your website, and creating great content.
To have an engaged and valuable community that will stand the test of time, you must prioritize things you can actually own and control. This includes:
Your Website
Email Lists
Blog Articles
Videos
Podcast Episodes
Tools & Freebies
In-Person Events and Meet-Ups
Private Online Groups and Forums
Private Chat Channels
What are you passionate about? Fitness? Model Trains? French Wines?
Your passion for those communities will ultimately create an incredible one of a kind ecosystem that is perfectly tailored for fellow hobbyists. Some communities will value and prioritize things like podcasts and chat groups, while others may value live video and free tools. It just depends on your target audience.
Prioritize the things you can control and use social media to send people to them, not the other way around.
Time = Trust
Trust is the #1 way to build an engaged online community. However, it takes time to build trust and I'm not talking about days on a calendar.
I'm talking about the total number of minutes that people spend consuming your content.
The more cumulative minutes your audience spends consuming your content, the more trust will be generated.
I hate cliche but from a marketing standpoint, time literally is money.
This truth can be seen in binge-watching. You can start a show that you've never heard of, and develop a love for the characters, story, and production company in less than a week through the sheer number of minutes you spend watching it. You can go from newbie to mega-fan in only a couple of weeks.
The same is true online.
Your goal is to increase the amount of time that people spend consuming your content, especially in the beginning. This is why live-streaming and podcasts are so popular right now; they are easy to create and they take up a lot of time.
Now the goal is not to waste the time of your reader, the goal is to give them value. As soon as you stop giving value, your audience will go somewhere else.
Again, think about a show you loved that slowly got worse over time. While you may have stuck around for a few bad seasons, after a while you probably decided to cut your losses and go somewhere else.
Your audience will do the same.
You can let off the content throttle from time to time, but as soon as you stop delivering the goods, people will move on to the next distraction like TikTok dances.
The Marketing Habit
Marketing is not convincing folks to buy a product, it's about developing an ecosystem for your audience to get passionate about your topic or focus.
To create such ecosystem, content creation must become a habit, not just a string of one time events or campaigns. You must become excited about the idea of creating content in your niche.
This means that if you are easily distracted or unmotivated to create, you need to find a way to get motivated right now.
Tips for Staying Motivated:
Hire a Coach
Go to an Industry Meet-Up
Isolate Yourself While Working
Get Noise Canceling Headphones
Make Faces in the Mirror
Play Motivational Music
Do whatever it takes to get into the zone and stay excited for your community.
If you don't have that excitement, your audience will not be excited either. Now on to the reason why you came here.
5 Effective Marketing Techniques that Cost $0
Here are a few ways to grow a following for your company, brand, or website. None of these techniques cost a dime, and the results can be incredible.
1. Contests
The fastest way to grow a following in your niche is to simply host a giveaway for your specific industry or audience. For example, if you have an online travel blog, try to team up with a fancy hotel to give away a few nights for free.
You'd be surprised at the number of companies who are willing to sponsor contests and giveaways.
Most companies are far too busy and understaffed to focus on giveaways and they will likely jump with joy once you mention your intentions.
My biggest recommendation is to stick to a single, large prize that would only be valuable to people in your audience. No Amazon gift cards or cash prizes.
Make it to where the prize would be of virtually no value to someone outside of your target demographic. Like a Free Meditation Seminar Ticket in Monterey, California.
Note: Just because the prize is specific, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t also be fun or interesting. It should make you excited.
Here are the steps for hosting a giveaway.
Step 1: Reach Out to Potential Sponsors
Reach out to 5-10 sponsors to see if they will be interested in hosting a giveaway with you. Be very nice and complement their brand.
Here's an easy template:
Subject: Giveaway Question
Hey Karen,
First off, I'd like to say thank you for all of the work the team at Melrose Fitness has been doing for the LA fitness community. Your social media posts are always inspiring and I really appreciated your recent video on developing your core.
I'm Joe with GreenPalm Wellness, a holistic wellness retreat north of Los Angeles. I'm trying to do something special for the fitness community and was curious if the Melrose Fitness team would be interested in partnering up to host an online giveaway for the LA community.
Would your team be interested in donating a prize for the giveaway?
I'll take care of the logistics and sign up page, and in return your company will receive logos and mentions on all social posts and web pages.
Let me know what you think, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Have a Great Week,
Joe
The response back will likely be one of two responses.
Nothing, or…
Sure, that sounds interesting. What kind of prize did you have in mind?
This strategy will result in an immediate 'Yes' about 25% of the time.
Step 2: Coordinate the Giveaway Details and Dates
Now it's time to coordinate the details with the sponsoring company. I recommend keeping the contest open for at least 10 days. The more time the contest is live, the more opportunities you will have to capture emails (more on this in a second).
Coordinate the details and dates with the company you are partnering with. Try to get physical products instead of digital. People like physical products better.
When I worked for a filmmaking blog we saw 5x the signups for a camera giveaway compared to software giveaways, even if the value was the same.
Step 3: Create a Contest Page on Your Site
Now it's time to coordinate the details. There's no need to over complicate it. Simply have a form on your website that people can fill out to enter.
They must input their email to enter the contest and agree to receive marketing communications.
You'll also need to put some rules on the page. They don't have to be super complicated.
For example:
How to Enter the Meditation Retreat Giveaway
To enter you must subscribe via email to GreenPalm Meditation, follow us on a single social media channel, and you must follow Melrose Fitness (The Sponsor) on a social media platform of your choice.
Step 1: Type Your Email
Step 2: Follow (Your Company) on One of the Following:
Instagram Link
Facebook Link
Twitter Link
YouTube Link
Step 3: Follow (Company 2) on One of the Following:
Instagram Link
Facebook Link
Twitter Link
YouTube Link
The Fine Print:
The contest will last from June 8th to June 22nd.
You can only enter the contest once.
Duplicate entries will be deleted.
We reserve the right to change, modify, or cancel the prize at any time and for any reason.
Once contacted, the winner will have 48 hours to confirm their prize via email. If unconfirmed in the 48 hour window, a new winner will be selected.
You could even take it one step further by sending a contest confirmation email to your new subscribers that includes the rules.
Step 4: Connect the Email Signup Box
You should always require an email to enter a giveaway. Some email providers like Mailchimp and Hubspot have forms that can be automatically connected to your email list.
Be sure to keep track of the giveaway and email signups. You can usually use a Google Sheets to do this task.
Step 5: Promote the Giveaway Like Crazy
Once your giveaway is live, it is time to promote it like crazy. Tag the sponsoring company and send it around the web. Here's a quick checklist:
Email Your Subscribers
Share on Industry Websites
Send to PR Contacts
Share on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Any Other Social Channels.
Share on a Reddit Subpage
Share in Private Groups on Facebook
Share in Your Stories
DM Influencers About the Giveaway
Giveaways have a way of making people very excited. So just be warned that you will likely get a lot of shares and a lot of folks begging you to pick them. This is completely normal.
Continually share the giveaway out for the duration of your contest.
Bonus Tip: You can also put some paid advertising dollars behind your posts to get them seen by more people. This works like rocketfuel on a fire.
Step 6: Draw A Winner
Once the giveaway is complete, it's time to draw a winner. No need to get fancy with it, just remove any duplicate entries from your spreadsheet. After that, count the number of folks who entered the contest and use the random number generator in Google to randomly pick a winner.
Send an email to the winner and announce them on social media after they have claimed their prize. You should also update the giveaway page to let folks know that the contest has ended.
Step 7: Send a Consolation Prize
Sure, you now have one excited winner (and mega fan for life), but you also have hundreds if not thousands of folks who didn't win. Instead of leaving them out to dry offer them a consolation prize. Coordinate a discount code with the sponsors or give them a discount on your product. This will make everyone feel like a winner and generate trust with your brand.
Weird Side Story: Early in my career I hosted a camera giveaway the received about 11,000 entries. The winner claimed his prize and we connected on social media. Fast-forward about 5 years later and I meet a stranger at church in Los Angeles.
“Hi!” I say, “I’m…”
“Are you Caleb Ward?” he says.
He was the winner from years before… It’s a small dang world.
2. Guest Posts
Guest posts are a fantastic way to market your company in the early and intermediate stages of a business.
A guest post is simply an article that you write that is hosted on someone else's website or platform.
Guest posts allow you to introduce yourself to a larger audience while giving value to their website. It's a win-win for everybody.
Guest posts come in two flavors:
Guest Post Flavor 1: Guest Post on Industry Sites
The best type of guest post is the one hosted on a respected industry website. Try to find a company that has a very devoted fan-base. These are the types of folks you want on your site.
Guest Post Tips:
Take Risks
Be Shocking
Be Controversial
Be Sensational
In house content teams are often weary of taking big risks. It can be hard for publications to take big risks out of fear of making their boss mad or deviating from their content formula. This is your opportunity to strike.
Because you are an outside contributor, media outlets are more likely to publish a post that might have normally be too shocking or risky for their in-house team to create.
The more outlandish the article, the more traction the guest post will get for the website. I use guest posts to try out content that I probably wouldn't host on my site.
For example, if you had a fitness website you might try to pitch one of the following article ideas as a guest post.
Example Fitness Guest Post Ideas:
Why I Think Gyms are Overrated
I'm Tired of the Keto Diet: Here's Why.
Protein Poisoning: Is There Such Thing as Too Many Supplements?
In the article, include some links back to your website and ask the company to tag you when they share out the post on social media.
Guest Post Flavor 2: Medium
Medium is an interesting service that essentially acts as a digital newspaper that anyone can collaborate on. While I don't recommend focusing a lot of time on developing a Medium presence, it can be a useful tool if you are unable to get a guest post on an industry site.
The same rules of controversy apply on Medium. Try to ruffle some feathers and publish sensational content that you wouldn't normally publish on your site. Controversy = Gold.
3. Create a Freebie
Freebies are my favorite marketing tactic. They work in countless industries and they will always work in the future.
If you have a business or site you should 1) give something away for free to attract people to your website and 2) give away a freebie to attract people to your product. It's as simple as that.
For this article I will call them Welcome Freebies and Product Freebies. People must typically experience the Welcome Freebie before they can experience the product freebie.
Welcome Freebies
Welcome Freebies are the free things that attract people to your website or email list for the first time.
My favorite example is Panda Express. When you go to the mall Panda Express often has employees stand around, giving out small samples of orange chicken to those who pass by. They know that the combination of sugar, fat, and carbs is enough to convince a percentage of people to buy a meal.
They are not concerned with losing money on free chicken giveaways. Any money lost in chicken samples will be recuperated many times over by immediate and future sales. Even though you may not buy a Panda Express meal immediately after sampling the chicken, there's a good chance that you will in the future.
The same is true for you. How can you give away a free digital snack to attract potential customers?
The easiest Welcome Freebie to give away is a checklist because it is easy for audiences to understand and quick to create. This is why we give away a free 'Blog Launch' checklist here at Curious Refuge.
However, there are a few other Welcome Freebies that you could potentially create.
Quick List of Welcome Freebies:
Checklists
Resource Guides
Quote Books
Project Files
Free Tools
Q&A Answer Book
Buying Guides
Inspiration Roundups
Free Courses
Podcast Series
Depending on your product it may take quite a few freebie downloads before they are ready to commit to purchasing your product, but give it some time, the transactions will happen.
Product Freebies
In addition to a Welcome Freebie, your company should also have a product freebie to encourage people to purchase the product.
Let's go back to the Panda Express example.
After you sample a free bite of orange chicken you decided you may be interested in buying a meal.
You walk over to the counter and see a display of entrées. But the employees don't ask what rice you want, they ask you, 'Would you like to sample anything?'
It's brilliant. Who would say no?
The goal of a product freebie is to psychologically do the same thing. What is a free version of your product that will help encourage folks to buy the full version of your product?
Here are a few examples of Product Freebies:
Discounts for First-Time Purchases
Sales
30-Day Trials
Lite Versions of Your Product
Coupons
Free Tours
Rebates
Free Returns
Money-Back Guarantees
Webinars
This is why most clothing companies offer 10% off online purchases. They know that a slight discount is usually the thing that will convince you to make the purchase.
4. Expert-Driven Compilation Guides
Another free way to generate a quick audience is to reach out to experts in your niche and ask them a few easy-to-answer questions. You can take their responses and make a short PDF ebook with their answers.
For example, if you had a food blog you could ask a series of celebrity chefs the following questions:
What is the best advice you have for aspiring chefs?
What is your favorite kitchen tool?
What is the biggest mistake that most home-chefs make?
Reach out to dozens of industry experts and ask them to fill out a simple form via Google Forms (It's Free). Have them include the following:
Their Name
Their Email
A Checkbox with Permission to Publish Their Answers
The Questions
You can also have them respond back directly to the email, but that will require slightly more work.
Once you receive all of the answers, compile them into a short PDF ebook. I like to use iBook author.
Here's the beautiful part, with the ebook in-hand, you now have a Welcome Freebie to give away to new visitors and the book that will likely be shared out on the social media channels of the guests included in the book.
It gets even better…
Over time you can share each person's individual answers out on social media and tag them in the post.
You will leverage their celebrity status to drive traffic to your channel and site. In return, the celebrity or influencer will be excited to be included on a list of such prestigious names.
This tactic of taking one piece of content, and converting it for use on other channels is called ‘Content Stretching’ and it is one of the most underutilized tools available to you as a creator.
This image outlines how you can stretch article content to be utilized across your channels.
5. Daily Micro-Blogs
Often when we think about blogging, we might think of a super in-depth article, like the one you are reading now. However, blogging doesn't have to take a lot of time. I personally love microblogging.
Here's how it's done.
Think of a VERY specific problem that you've had in your niche.
For example, if I ran a video production blog it might be, 'How to Connect a Rode Video Mic to a Canon 5D Mark IV'.
That is a very specific topic with an audience that would likely be too small for the average media publication to write.
Start specific and become broader in focus over time.
Try to think of something so specific that it wouldn't be found on another blog or industry publication. Shoot for topics that are large enough to be answered by Quora pages, but small enough in scope to discourage other publications from writing about them.
This is the new blog goldilocks zone
Go ahead and write a very short 300-500 word article on the subject. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes if you know the steps in your head. Add in tons of excitement. Make this post feel super fun.
Now publish it and share it out.
Repeat this process daily. Over time you will begin to see traffic to your site.
In time, this strategy will empower you to go after broader topics with more search volume. But you need to start specific.
Bonus: Weekly Newsletters
Weekly newsletters are a must. Pick a day and stick with it.
Newsletters are actually a lot easier than you think. You don't need the best email design template and you don't have to be an expert writer.
You just need to be passionate about your industry and be willing to show up every week.
I recommend sharing out about 5 links each week related to your industry. Include things from around the web and include anything that you've created in the email as well.
In fact, we've created a tutorial on how to quickly write newsletters which can be found here.
Newsletters are the most important marketing task you will do each week. Never skip it.
More Growth Marketing Resources
Ready for more marketing tips on quickly growing your brand? Here are a few of our favorite resources:
Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk - This book is full of practical advice on how to grow a brand early on. You may want to buy an extra set of highlighters if you decide to read this book.
iBooks Author - This may seem like a strange tool, but iBooks Author is 100% free and a great resource for crafting ebooks. I usually just export the book as a PDF instead of sending it to the iBooks store.
We also frequently talk about marketing here on the Curious Refuge blog.
Want to Turn Your Passion Into a Business?
I have spent a lot of time growing brands and creating content. However, I quickly found that most business courses are super boring. So I decided to take my love of adventure and growing brands and fuse them together in an online adventure program that I like to call 'The Curious Millionaire'.
This online program includes:
On-Demand Videos
Interactive Stories
10 Custom Developed Tools
32 Unlockable Treasures
Private Q&A Sessions
Get After It!
Don't just read about the techniques outlined in this article, start using them! Most of these tips can created, compiled, and coordinated in only a few days.
Best of luck!
