What is effective and what is not? Everywhere you look or at least everywhere you search you see everyman and his dog trying to tell you that they have the best marketing strategy available, they are Google Experts they can increase your conversion by 400,000,000%... OK so that is a slight exaggeration, however where do you draw the line and find out who is for real and who is just out to take your money?

It is a fair question... more to the point though, what works and what is just a waste of time and effort... I heard once that any publicity is good publicity... so on that guise it all works, however wouldn't you rather invest your time where you are going to get the maximum return for your effort? I am sorry to say that there is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing. There are so many ways in which you can do it, certainly in today's web 2.0 world, there is video, there are articles (tried and true), you can create your own newsletter (you still need an audience).

Well first of all if you are going to be doing any Marketing, unless you are recording the data so you can see what is working and what is not then you are wasting you time. There are a number of different ways in which you can track how your marketing is doing, and it was not so long ago people were actually selling user scripts that would allow you to ad tracking to your pages... well a lot has happened in a short amount of time. Google have refined their Analytics service and to be fair there is really no need to look at anything else, this does a great job for tracking... well everything you need it to... and its free!

Right so now we can track it...

Marketing is all about connecting with your Audience, so who is your audience? By that I mean who is your ideal customer or prospect? This is really quite important, the reason being that not everyone is going to find the same things appealing. So choosing or rather realising who you are talking to or targeting is going to be very important in what you put out as your marketing efforts.

One of the quickest and easiest ways in which to reach your audiences is simple, VIDEO, there are some great advantages to video, the biggest of all is that the Google Monster LOVES video, over half the traffic online today is from Video, so it would make sense to get into that as part of your marketing efforts. There are a number of ways you can do it too, most PC,s and all MAC's come with built in webcams these days, so no longer do you need to have a camcorder to be able to get your mug on the internet. However if you are a little shy or really don't want your face there to begin with until you are comfortable with having it there, there is still another way. Make a presentation in Power Point (PC) or Keynote (MAC) and take a screencast of it... again this can be done for FREE even if you don't have Power Point, Keynote or Camtasia. There are open source (FREE) applications for almost everything. Power Point for example you can get Open Office, this is an open source app that has ALL off the MS office applications, so you can use this and make your Power Point presentation (I believe it is even available for MAC).

So great now you have your message to send out, you still need to capture it right? So again, there is open source screen capture software too, you can google it or you could use something like this BB Flashback Express. This has pretty much all the functions and usability that you would expect to find from Camtasia, only its free. It is up to you as to what you choose to use, just get in there and start.

Now you have your video... what next? OK upload it to YouTube if you don't have an account, sign up for one it is free, there is an advanced marketing strategy that includes setting up multiple youtube accounts, however that is for another post

Again there are plenty of free video sites also that you can sign up with that will help you to get your message out there.

Make sure you track what is happening... and have fun with it... the moment it stops being fun... try another angle!

Let me know of your success.

About the Author

Andrew Hawkes is an Entrepreneur that has had good times and bad, he draws on all the experiences that he has had, military and in business, to provide solid information that anyone can use and understand to improve the results in thier own life and therefore show others to imrpove thiers. He believes that anyone can make a difference in the world and that ultimately anything is possible.