Guerrilla Marketing (Part 3)

There are some basic principles of life that apply directly to marketing. If you are religious you probably know the concept of "cast your bread upon the waters". If you follow Eastern philosophy you know about "ying-yang". If, like me, you believe the Universe is unfolding pretty much as it should then you know about the universal bank. These are really all pretty much the same thing and, whatever you believe or whatever religion or philosophy you follow, these undeniable rules of life apply to you and your business.

Whatever it is you attribute such things to there are, none-the-less, things that just "are" whether you believe in them or not. It matters little, for example, if you don't believe in gravity. Just try jumping off a ten storey building. The realization that gravity actually applies to YOU, whether you believe in it or not, will come quite suddenly I suspect.

In marketing there are also several principles that are simply true whether you believe in them or not. This thread isn't going to try to prove them to you except, perhaps, by a working example or two, nor is it going to try to convince you about their truth or validity. I am just going to share a few things I know to work and it will be up to you whether to try them or not.

The first principle is "Give Something Of Value". Although quite simple in concept it is often difficult for people who are making a living providing things to others for a price to actually step up and give something away. But it works! Go back to that Google search for "wiz eBay template" and see what the first item out of 800,000+ is. A free template creation form. FREE! Something of real value actually offered without a price tag.

No matter what business you are in you can give something of value away for free. It doesn't have to be something that cost you a lot of money, just something that will be of sincere value to the person who receives it. If you sell vintage patterns you can create an extensive pattern research guide. If you sell vintage clothing, what about a label identification guide? If you make lamp-work beads how about a detailed tutorial with pictures on how to make your own? Oh, wait! Won't that mean you will lose all your customers as they just have to get some cheap glass somewhere and make their own beads?

Hardly. If you trust in your own artistic ability you have nothing to lose. I also expect the whole lamp-work process is far beyond what most any of us could do, even with detailed instruction. But knowing how it is done adds to the fascination when we actually own the beads ourselves.

Look back at my free template creation form. Not only is it ABOUT what I do -- the templates that I sell -- it actually DOES the work. It creates the template code for the seller. Even the newest beginner can do it. There is no HTML needed. They don't need to come to me for a thing! But they still do. I had this free site posted for most of the time I made the bulk of my living selling eBay listing templates. Why was it that I continued to sell templates when anyone could get one for free? Because they wanted something different, something unique, something special, that the free site couldn't do for them. That only a custom designer, me, could.

I regularly up-sell custom listing templates and websites to sellers who started out with a template they created using my free form. And it provides me with great exposure too. I don't have a single eBay listing running but I just checked and today there are nearly 400 listings on eBay using a template created with my free template creation formm, each one displaying my contact information link at the bottom. You can't pay for that kind of exposure, folks!

Notice in that first page of Google returns for that "wiz eBay template" search that the next four items are also to pages that don't sell anything. Google (and other search engines) really seem to like pages that are content rich but don't have buy now or add to cart buttons. This isn't an SEO truth. It's just something I have noticed in my own research. Content rich information pages seem to get better placement than content rich selling pages. Every one of my free pages has either paid advertising or links back to my various selling/business venues so the idea that outbound links to commercial sites may be bad for your chances in the SERPs doesn't seem to hold much water here either.

And besides, the outbound link from your related information page is a RELEVANT inbound link to your selling site. That's a plus for SEO while, at the same time, satifying the "give something of value" rule for people. Remember, it's all about people. Google bots and spiders have never spent very much money at any of my selling sites. Have you ever sold anything to one at yours?