Free Marketing VS Paid Marketing

There are a couple of fundamental differences between free marketing and paid marketing, though there is quite a bit of overlap between the two.

The major differences are these:

1. Free marketing trades work for money. You have to do things yourself, and you have to work hard to do the marketing tasks.

2. Free marketing also trades time for money. It works very slowly, and you have to persist in order to see results.

3. The free tactics that really work, build cumulative power. They give trickles at first, and then more trickles add to the first trickles, and it keeps building and building. SLOW to start, POWERFUL later.

4. The learning curve is pretty stiff, you have to really learn what works and what doesn't.

Paid marketing has the potential to be faster, but many forms still take time to show their real potential.

Pay Per Click is instant, and works like a faucet - pay the bill, the water runs. Shut off the money, and the traffic stops immediately. It has no residual effect, and no peripheral benefits.

Other paid forms may have a residual effect or peripheral benefits. But most do not have as much power long term for either residual effect OR peripheral benefits as well executed free methods do.

I really like free marketing. In fact, I like it so well, and get such good results from it that I don't even know HOW to market with money! I have tried a few forms of paid advertising, but in reality, every single one has delivered LESS of a return than good free marketing does. Here is an example:

I paid for Pay Per Click ads, at 5 cents each. I got one site visitor for each click. My site traffic showed exactly the same number of clicks that I was charged for. I did not get ONE SINGLE purchase from a month of using pay per click. I fine tuned my ads, and had the ability to show improvements in where they went in the site and how long they stayed, but the overall visitor quality still remained low.

In that same time, I posted an article to promote the same site. That article has given me only 5% of the traffic that Pay Per Click gave me in a month, BUT, the article is still giving me traffic, and I am not doing anything else to keep getting it. The article is also giving me higher quality traffic, that is actually more interested in what I am selling.

Certainly PPC works for some businesses, otherwise it would not be used. But I could see no reason to use it when it only cost me, and did not return. On the other hand, article marketing shows a consistent return.

I have paid for other ads also, and those ads have consistently performed at a lower rate than ads that I bartered for, or which I got through collaboration.

Most of the money I spend on marketing, is put into paper, gas in the car, hosting space for websites, printer ink, and other supplies.

Most of the money that my clients spend on marketing is spent to pay someone else to do free marketing tactics for them - they are paying only for the time it takes to do them. Because they consider that a permanent trickle is far more valuable than a temporary and expensive flood that may or may not give the results they want.