Review: Cool free image editing tool to check out - Pic Monkey

Oh, I do love a free online tool. The latest one I've come across is PicMonkey and I'm rather sad I've only just learned about it. It allows you to do a whole host of photo editing but without the complexity (and expense) of Photoshop or the clunky-ness of apps like Acorn.

You can do a bunch of things - colourise, add text, add effects, use filters, fix blemishes, round corners - all very useful stuff. I've been a little OTT with the "before and after" below, but you'll get the idea. This is super-easy to use and uses "real" language to explain the effects.

So if you're not a graphic design pro but need to make occasional image edits - personally or for marketing activities like social media- it's a great solution.

And as it's free it's a tool to test drive and then bookmark in your zero budget marketing toolkit.

Off to have more of a tinker....

BEFORE

AFTER

Web Design Review: Single page web design - what's to like, what's not

If you're a business that uses the web to attract business or convey key information, your website is a vital asset: I'd argue - your most important online asset. Yet we often put a LOT of time into a website when we're building it - then forget to review it regularly to:

(a) ensures it's up to date
(b) that everything still works and
(c) that it's keeping up with current web trends.

(And as good zero budget marketers know, it's about optimising what you're already doing, rather than continually starting from scratch.)

In terms of current web trends, one trend is "single page" style sites - I'm seeing more of these lately, particularly in the bar and restaurant space. They feel a bit "old school" and "new school" all at the same time.

The style has some benefits - primarily that all the information is in front of you with virtually no clicking required. So I think it can work well EXCEPT when web designers forget that a BIG chunk of people access the web from mobile devices - largely, Smartphones (particularly to look for bars and restaurants). So if you're ever going to invest in a mobile version of your site, now is the time. But I digress...back to the single page site.

I thought it would be helpful to look at a specific example: the site for Hanoi Hannah, a newish restaurant in Windsor. It's a spot that we were planning on trying for dinner, so I looked it up to get their details and make a booking.

First impressions: I love the design - it immediately "brands" it as funky and let's you know the style of dining you can expect. It has a real "fresh" feel. You can also find what you want fairly easily -  when what you want is location, phone number and opening hours.

Challenges: You actually want to read all the cool stuff on the right - but when you zoom in it becomes pixelated so you can't read it...I suspect a bad case of "print design incorrectly applied to the web".

It also suffers from not incorporating a newsfeed - which matters when you're trying to call and book for dinner on the 7th January but after several "sorry, no-one is here to take your call" phone answering machine responses I checked the facebook page and find they're closed till 14th Jan. Unhelpful! A newsfeed from their facebook page would have been an easy way to ensure the message they put on that page showed up on their website.

Finally, they haven't made a mobile version, so it becomes very hard to navigate on my iphone. I've included a screenshot below.

Finally - when I was looking for the site on my iphone (and subsequently on my computer), I noticed their web design company hasn't done the best job with the meta tags and page descriptions as the automatically generated google snippet that displays in search results is just generating image names.

Wrap up: This site is a great start - and all the "challenges" can be addressed. So if you're pondering a web update to a streamlined "single page" site, learn from what works and doesn't work in this example.

Handy (and cheap) deep etching service for photos

Just a quick one today - but this is such a great potential "zero budget" service for any of you selling online, or in PR, that I thought it rated a mention.

Pheditor is an Aussie based super cheap a photo editing service.

You upload pics to be "deep etched" (basically cut out of their background) and they do it in 2-3 days for $5 a shot or less If you have to pay a graphic designer to do it, you will pay anywhere from $30-$60 an image. So it really is a bargain and firmly in the zero budget marketing tools camp.

Why would you deep etch an image? It gives you a clean image to use online, or in a catalogue or editorial spread. I've used a pic from their blog to illustrate.

I've never used these guys, and I don't know them, but this is such a good price it's worth checking out if you need the service.

Looking for cost savings isn't just for small business

Sometimes the assumption with "zero budget" marketing is that it's only for new / start up / tiny businesses. But every day huge businesses are looking for ways to cut their spend, wherever they can, if it's not delivering results OR if they have come across a smarter way to approach a marketing challenge.

In January of this year, the Procter & Gamble CEO advised Wall Street he was scaling back his company's $10 billion annual ad budget (mostly in traditional media) to take advantage of free impressions offered by Facebook in the form of Likes and status updates. Yes, you read it right, $10 billion!

General Motors has recently followed suit in cutting their Facebook spend. That's two out of America's top three biggest advertisers. More on this here.

The two decisions were made for different reasons (GM isn't convinced Facebook ads are effective; P&G was seeking free media efficiencies) but they're linked.

It appears to be dawning on some businesses budgets that if your marketing content is interesting enough - engaging enough - you don't NEED to advertise on Facebook. Advertising on Facebook is can be free, if you can create something compelling enough to go viral. It goes back to ensuring your product, service - or marketing message - is remarkable.

Or put simply - stop shouting, start engaging with your market.

Some tips for Facebook marketing (on the cheap)

It's not exactly news that social media is big news for marketing. In fact, it seems to be all that some magazines and blogs talk about!

But for all the buzz, is it worth the time and effort and opportunity cost?

You see, social media marketing LOOKS free. But for anyone who's had a crack at it, you'll know it's extremely TIME intensive. It's also a slow build - especially if your business is not in a "hot" space, like fashion or music.

I've yet to see a case where social media was a huge marketing lead generation tool for business - but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. What I have seen work well is community building and "engagement" in the social media space. It's also hit the point where if you're NOT in the social media space, you look like you're 'old school'.

So with that in mind, are there tools out there to help you? Luckily, yes - and they're a lot cheaper to access than they were a year or two ago.

TOOLS

I've used Lujure.com and Woobox.com.

All are multi-purpose and have quite low subscription levels - from free to around $30 a month on average.

I've used Lujure to build a landing page inside a Facebook page - so that instead of landing on the generic wall, you can link to a particular tab that's specific to the promotion you're running.

And I've used Woobox to run a promotion inside Facebook.

Both have been relatively easy to use and are worth trying out. (You will need to invest in some graphic design for images though - otherwise your promotions will look too homemade).

TIPS

Some other things you may not know about Facebook marketing but you might want to try:

• You can claim a USERNAME for a page (sometimes called a vanity URL). So instead of the "messy" URL that Facebook will auto-generate for you, you can have something like: Facebook.com/WiggyBusiness.
• If you post images, you're more likely to be "liked" or shared. So avoid text based "updates" only. Why do you want people to click "like"? Because it improves your chance of being seen by the person and their friends.
• The more you post, the more likely you are to continue to collect fans. Once a week is not enough. Several times a day is better. As is posting outside business hours, as this is when most people check Facebook.
• Timeline gives you much great visual impact - and soon you'll HAVE to use it. So put some thought into your large image and profile pic.

What you should understand before building a website

I had one of those frustrating conversations last night, that reminded me that people still don't understand this web truism:

WHAT A WEBSITE LOOKS LIKE IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS HOW IT WORKS.

Now by "how it works" I mean both critical aspects:

The build - the mechanics that drive it and affect how easy (or impossible) it is to update, how well it can be indexed by Google, etc.

The sales - does it get your prospects / customers / members to do what you want them to do. Do they buy, or comment, or sign up.

If your site won't - or can't - deliver you a result, who CARES how pretty it is.

This is not to say there's no role for design. But if the world's most successful ecommerce sites are Amazon and eBay, you should have got the hint that looks aren't worth much!

I've been in online marketing since 2000. 12 years. I've worked with ALL sorts of sites, in all sorts of business. What I've seen is that websites built on CUSTOM systems are never a good idea in the long run, unless you're prepared to spend a lot of money.

By custom systems, I mean that every web company (and their dog) have built a CMS (content management system) over time. Or they've had a graphic designer "design" a pretty site and then coded it to suit.

If you are on a limited budget do NOT go this route (and even if you have a good budget, you may find that using a back end system almost no-one else uses will limit you within 2-3 years).

What should you do?

Use a cloud based computing solution like Wordpress or an open source system like Joomla or Drupal. If you want an ecommerce store, use MagentoGo or Shopify or Big Commerce.

Don't start from scratch unless you've got millions of dollars (or hours) to waste OR your website actually DOES something unique that needs unique systems and programing. Most don't. Most are online brochures or online stores.

It is not cutting corners to use these systems.

It's SMART. It's a good use of your funds. It's still a "proper" website. You wont be locked into one developer. Millions of people are using these, so you're not paying for the upgrades. It's not a short cut. It's not doing it poorly. Build your success on the learning of millions of businesses before you. That's what a smart zero budget marketer does when they can.

How to use product photography to sell online

If you're a small business selling products online, you can't underestimate the importance of product photography.

But businesses do underestimate this - all the time. Seriously, with some sites you're lucky to get a single, badly lit shot! (Sometimes this is a cost consideration - marketplaces like eBay usually limit you to 1 photo unless you pay more. But most of the time, it's just poor execution.)

Even if you have a low or zero marketing budget, there really is no excuse! You can get a cheap camera for a hundred or so dollars and do a better job than most online stores do. You could even use an iphone and use one of the hundred or so photography apps out there that can improve even the worst photos.

Depending on your product, photography can also often be sourced from the suppliers, so there's little excuse to not provide...well, MORE.

You see, the secret isn't really GREAT photography (although that helps). It's having A LOT OF PHOTOGRAPHY. When people can't touch and feel, try to give them the next best thing. Pictures, pictures and more pictures.

I've included this listing from fab Melbourne online stationery store Notemaker. This is a fantastic example of how to use product photography well. Why?

-It gives you lots of angles & perspectives.

-It shows you inside and out.

-It shows it to you in someone's hand (valuable for PERSPECTIVE, which can be hard to judge online, even if measurements are provided).

- The COLOUR in the shots is consistent between shots. Consistent, and natural lighting if possible, is the way to get this.

Now what can be really worthwhile is including video (Asos does this with many of their clothing items). But that's a bigger ask than photography, so I won't get off topic.

So, consider what you're selling online. We talk a lot about words, and design, but consider if there are enough pictures to really SELL it. If not, head off an get cracking!

Post by Kimberly Palmer at Brazen Productions - smart marketing, words & events

What makes an effective Facebook advertisement?

Have you ever been engaged - and then visited Facebook? After changing my FB status last year to engaged, the advertising I was served was ALL related to weddings. Or losing weight. Or wedding dresses. Or wedding accessories. Had I been seriously in need of suppliers, it would have been pretty helpful actually...which I did notice when wearing my "marketing" hat.

(That said, I really enjoyed being able to change the status to married as I looked at a lot of those ads way too many times. Hint: don't run the same ad for months at a time!).

I've yet to have the occasion to run a Facebook advertising campaign for a client, but I'm watching and waiting for the right chance. Why? They currently seem to be an inexpensive - and less cluttered - way to conduct CPC (cost per click) advertising than Google IF you have a product or service that matches the environment.

Why do I make this distinction?

People are searching on Google for information. A huge variety of information. That's not the case with Facebook. People are on Facebook to catch up with friends and family (or at least find our what they're doing without even having to speak to them!).

So the Facebook audience are less likely to look at advertising and less likely to respond to certain types of advertising. Yet there's also less ads on facebook that you'd expect to find. Even if you voluntarily click on "see all" next to "sponsored", there were only about 20 ads where I "fit" the profile set up by advertisers. These are things like age, gender, education level and where you live.

So if it's a less cluttered space, and if you have something that you feel will appeal, it's a cheap marketing test. So if you do have the right product or service, the next thing to consider is what makes an effective Facebook advert. (For the sake of this article, effective just means what I think works, as I'm not privvy to the success of these ads).

These three adverts I've grabbed at random because I think two work well, one is uninspired, but there's something to learn from all of them.

Advert 1 - The "hook" in this advert is the competition side of it. LOTS of people like to win tickets, so it's a great way to get traffic. The cute little image stands out too. What is less apparent is what's being advertised - North Coast Holiday Parks. I'm assuming this is a flash way of saying "caravan parks". When you click on this, you go to their page. The lost opportunity with this great little advert is that you can "enter" without "liking" the page. The opportunity to win should have been traded for a like. And they should have brought you to a special landing page in Facebook, rather than the generic wall. This isn't as exxy as you might imagine - you can build one for free at places like Lujure. Why do you want a Like? Then you're actually likely to be able to market - and potentially SELL - in the future.

Advert 2 - The issue with this advert - there's NO real hook. It's just shouting at me about vague deals. This could have been great for a "sponsored stories" type of advertisement (in Facebook you can run "facebook ads" or "sponsored stories"). You could run a POLL on your page as a "post" and have this show as the advertisement. The poll could be something like "What place would you most like to travel to.." as the website that's being advertised seems to be a generic online travel site, not one about Malaysia specifically. So much more can be done with a fun product like travel to sell...

Advert 3 - This ad has such great copy because it draws you in, telling you a story. LOVE that about it. It's going to hit a pretty small market though - those considering University and possibly already pondering studying to be a pharmacist. As such, I'd question the marketer's decision to include someone like me in the demographic - that is, almost 40 and already having a University degree. So big ticks for the copy, less so for the targeting, as it means you may be paying more in the CPC auction that necessary (as the wider the market, potentially the greater the CPC bidding competition).

In summary - Facebook advertising can be a pretty good zero budget small business marketing tool, but just because it's "cheap", doesn't mean you shouldn't think carefully about how to use it. By that, I'm talking ROI (return on investment) - and how to ultimately get a LIKE ... and then a SALE!

Why you want to spend time on SEO - search engine optimisation

Been wondering whether it's worth spending more time on SEO? [ SEO is Search Engine Optimisation, which could otherwise be known as "the important (and zero budget marketing) way of making sure you're ranking where you should be in Google"?]

According to a new 2011 Australia Institute survey, 46% of respondents said the order in which search results appear "always" or "sometimes" influences their purchasing decisions, and only 15% said they look past the first page of results.

The survey questioned 1,084 people in July 2011. It also found:
- 37% did not know search engines displayed paid advertising,
- 34% did not know search rankings would change based on what engine they use and
42% believed that relevance was more important than paid advertising.

So, that should really answer your question. It's still very important - perhaps more than ever - to be on the first page of Google. You need to consider SEO.

Before you panic, you can probably make this happen (if you're not in the world's most competitive space) by doing just a few things consistently:

- Write useful and meaningful web copy, which is great for your audience but great for Google too. Make sure you includes the key words and phrases you think (or know -if you're tracking it) people will use to find you. So if you're a Melbourne graphic designer, make sure you use this phrase all over your website - and not just in copy, but in links, headlines, page titles, et. Google rewards relevance.

- Get other sites to link to you and link to other sites. The first is more important.

- Keep updating content on your site over time - don't set and forget. Google likes freshness.

This is enough to get you started. There are people out there that know a lot - and share a lot - of information about SEO. So once you've got your head around the basics, go out and educate yourself. This is a zero budget marketing tool you can't afford not to be using.

Report Source: "How Market Concentration Threatens Internet Diversity", Australia Institute, 2011

This blog is written by Kimberly Palmer, Brazen Productions

Using Google Analytics for more than the obvious

A tool that is so powerful and free is always going to be an essential in the zero budget marketing tool kit. I'm talking about Google Analytics.

Yet Google Analytics provides you with so much information about your business that you often only take in the basics - how many visitors, how long are they spending, what page are they leaving from, what is the bounce rate (where they only visit one page and leave) and maybe how many goal conversions or what key words are bringing people to your site.

It is worth digging deeper occasionally, as it may reveal some business issues that need your attention. This can be less about analysis and more about recognising a trend.

Here's one example...

Browsers - with many of the clients I help manage, I've been watching an interesting trend emerge over the past couple of years. By far the most popular browser was Internet Explorer...but no longer. Gradually Firefox gained traction and interestingly, Safari is also now extremely popular.

Why the Safari dominance? The proliferation of iphones and ipads.

Why does browser matter? If your website was built more than 3 years ago, it may not have been tested well (or at all) on a browser like Safari. So does it work as it should on Firefox, Safari or Chrome? And if not, how much of your hard won traffic is getting a sub-standard experience?

Free list of tools to help select Google keywords

Search engine optimisation is zero budget marketing gold for many businesses. It's also something pretty basic that MOST businesses don't get.

Understanding WHAT keywords people are searching for - and thus what you should potentially NAME your business or ensure you write about in your copy - is the first step. I am by no means an SEO expert, but I've regularly been able to get very quick traffic & buyer growth for clients just by updating copy and headers to include the right keywords. Many website use way too little copy, so just a little can go a long way!

Whilst there are paid tools and services around to work out what services you should use, Google has several of it's OWN tools that you can use.

Google Insights and Google Adwords Keyword tool are two that I've used regularly, but thought I'd share this helpful and comprehensive post from Link Assist which has TWELVE free Google tools you can use.

So do sites like Groupon or Living Social work?

If you're a consumer business, how can you get a bunch of customers, really, really fast?

Whilst Groupon isn't operating in Australia, if you follow marketing news, you'll have got the gist of who they are - essentially a "deal a day" from all sorts of business. In Melbourne I subscribe to the Living Social offers - and whilst I've yet to buy, I have forwarded on items to others and they've bought. Now whilst the shopper in me loves a bargain, the marketer in the me wonders ... is it successful for businesses? And could it pay for itself, at least enough to pass my "zero budget marketing" litmus test (you need to make a lot more than you spend from any marketing!).

My gut feel would be that a great offer will get a great response. And a great offer to someone like me is a deep discount. There's nothing more irresistible than a serious bargain...

So even if they sale isn't "profitable", the value would likely be in the database building. That said, experience also shows that "vouchers" (coupons in American lingo) see people spending MORE than the value of the voucher.

So I was interested to see this post on Digital Buzz's blog, discussing some research on those who'd advertised in the US with Groupon. The upshot seems to be that it IS more profitable than unprofitable...and that around 50% of buyers spent more than the coupon value in the case of the profitable ones. The post highlights a specific example for American Apparel, where a $25 coupon worth $50 generated an average spend on $70.

Now, the missing piece of the puzzle is what it COSTS to get your offer onto a service like Groupon or Living Social. If anyone knows, do share!

How to drastically grow your site traffic overnight using PR

PR is one of the greatest weapons of the zero budget marketer.

But not the sort of PR that most people THINK is PR - putting out a media release to any and all comers.

Well targeted PR is what's key. Being in/on the right medium for your product or service. This means that with your limited time you can focus on researching the right medium and ensuring the pitch is interesting to someone else (there's a whole other blog post on what NEWS actually is!).

I just saw a great example of selecting the right medium - and thanks to The Start Up Daily for sharing the details of their success with Springwise.


I love Springwise; a fantastic site & newsletter that shares news of very creative, entrepreneurial startups. I always finish reading it and feel inspired...and with a few ideas in my back pocket. Yesterday they featured a business idea that I thought was very clever - a daily blog featuring a vignette of wisdom from a business book each day. The revenue model will be kick backs on book sales. Obviously a volume game, but I think it has potential.

So I signed up. Here's the kicker. Apparently, so did 41% of the visitors from Springwise! 41% is a DREAM conversion rate. It's MASSIVE.

The Start Up Daily had obviously found the RIGHT place to attempt to get coverage. The author, Karl's, post said he was shooting for 1000 subscribers by 1 Feb. When I visited yesterday he was at 2,500. And today he's at 3,300!

What a success. Now, as long as Karl keeps on putting out great updates, and he keeps reminding people to do so, they'll share. And he'll keep growing.

So the zero budget marketing tip today is that PR is your best friend if you (a) have a great story to tell and (b) find the right place to target the story. And the right place isn't necessarily a daily newspaper...in fact, in today's online world, the right blog post can apparently blow your aspirations out of the water.

How to build a business website using wordpress (part 2)

Step 4. Once you've found your design & installed into onto your host, you now need to think CONTENT. This SHOULD be the easiest part of the process - but is often the hardest. (I'm a marketer and I am much better at writing engaging copy for my client's businesses than I am for my own!) You need to break it down into areas of interest that are relevant to your prospects - whilst still showcasing what you can do. Different themes may also have different places to include copy so that it appears in the right way in your layout. You'll need to take the time to learn this first. Most themes do come with instructions - plus a little bit of trial and error goes a long way.

TIP:You also need to remember to make your copy Google friendly. This is a whole other post (actually, hundreds of posts!) but some of the basics include considering what keywords you think people might search for your kind of business on - and then includes these through out your site, as often as possible and in everything from body copy to headers to links.

Step 5. Think about what else you can include on your site. So not just pictures and words, but perhaps one of the thousands of wordpress plug-ins that can be installed to increase the functionality of your site. This could be anything from a twitter feed to an email subscription box to polls to....anything that will add value (or traffic) to your site!

TIP: Some plug-ins don't "agree with" certain themes, so not all plug-ins will work with all wordpress sites.

NOW...I still have to work out how to MOVE my new website from the temporary URL to my brazen.com.au URL. Once I have this nailed, I can post about how to do it (assuming it works of course!)

How to build a business website using wordpress

I always prefer advice from someone who's DONE what they're suggesting others do. Someone who has been their OWN guinea pig.

So when it came time to pay my annual renewal for my Brazen.com.au website, I looked at the bill and thought "I can probably do something better and cheaper". For one thing, I couldn't change much on the site as it was a very early version CMS (Content Management System). For another, it had such issues as having meaningless URLs, not great for google loving.

So I decided to give it a shot.

I took my love of the simple wordpress tool and did some investigation on wordpress.org. That is, a version you can install with a web host to give you a lot more control over functionality and look and feel.

In summary, it wasn't super fast or super easy. But it wasn't super hard either, considering I'm not a techie at all. In fact, the tricky bits for me where learning how to FTP a file, something a techie person would probably laugh at.

How to build a business website using wordpress

Well, Wordpress.org have a little "it's as easy as 1,2,3" on their homepage.

And whilst it is pretty easy, I feel someone needs to spell out the steps in a little more detail.

So here goes.

• Step 1. You will need a web host. This is not expensive. I decided to go with JustHost and it's a whopping $6 a month. Or $72 a year. And this included multiple websites, unlimited data and lots and lots of email addresses. To put this in perspective, my last "cheap" host was around $450 a year! Now, if you expect a tonne of traffic and need 100% uptime, this sort of cheap host won't be the right solution, but it's fine for your average SME website.
  
• TIP: Most webhosts have a 1 click install option for Wordpress. So you DONT need to download and install the wordpress software. For example, with Just Host, there was an instructional page with a few steps to follow and in a few minutes, I was ready to start adding content to the site.
  
  
• Step 2. You also need to buy a URL of course. I had one already but I wanted to build my new site without taking down the existing one. So I bought another URL for $12 from JustHost and built it on that. When I canceled my other hosting I didn't want to just re-direct the URL to my new URL. Now this might sound a bit tricky, but I just pointed my URL to a holding page that I also set up in JustHost for no extra cost and pointed to the "new" site. My plan is to MOVE the pages over, just working out how to do that now!
• TIP: If you're building a site, it's much easier to START fresh rather than move pages.
  
  
• Step 3: You need a design! There are about a thousand that are included with Wordpress BUT they are pretty much all set up to be blogs. Now, you can think a little creatively and make this work. For example, your "home page" that has the blog posts could just be headed up "latest news". But it isn't the ideal solution.
• TIP: I purchased a design from Elegant Themes (the Minimal Theme). It was $39 to subscribe, MUCH cheaper than having someone build me a custom theme. I then had to install it via FTP. I had to install an FTP program - Filezilla - and this was what I was least comfortable with. It didn't work the first time so I posted a query on Elegant Theme's support blog, which was answered within 24 hours. And then all worked well!

I'll continue this " How to build a business website using wordpress" in my next post.

Free tool for you - Have you tried Gumtree?

Now it's been a little while since I've had a total and utter zero budget idea for you. But this is a goodie, I promise! Have you discovered Gumtree yet?

Gumtree is a fab (not so) little community noticeboard - which has listings by Aussie city. It's like Craig's List, but for those of us downunder (although being eBay they're totally global, you just wouldn't know it).

So why do I care about a community noticeboard, I hear you ask?

Well, did I mention it's free?! And it's also got excellent SEO (search engine optimisation) which means a listing on Gumtree is often what you find on Google when you're hunting for just about anything.

So have you got something you can fit into one of their categories? You have to think laterally. I tried it out for my client, Flexicar. I wanted to get some people to try the service for free, so I put an advert on Gumtree to see if I'd get any nibbles. I spent a whopping $7 or so to make it a "top listing" (so it wouldn't get pushed down the page) and I not only got over 100 website visitors in a month, I got around 9 actual prospect inquiries.

Now, don't get me wrong, that's not going to set the world on fire - but it's nothing to sneeze at when other times I can spend hundreds and hundreds to get that many leads.

From Gumtree:

Gumtree.com was started in March 2000 as a local London classified ads and community site, designed to connect people who were either planning to move, or had just arrived in the city, and needed help getting started with accommodation, employment and meeting new people.

We've grown a lot since then through word of mouth and we're proud to say that Gumtree is loved by its rapidly growing community. We now cover 72 cities across 11 countries - the UK, Ireland, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore and Hong Kong - and are the UK's biggest website for local community classifieds including flat share, flat rentals and jobs. More than 25,000 new rooms are advertised a month, which means at least 10,000 rooms are rented a month through Gumtree. We now have more than one million visitors every month.

Our aim at Gumtree is to give you a simple and easy-to-use tool that lets you quickly find you might be looking for. You can find everything you need to live your life with the help of your local Gumtree community; from a job or a flat, date, a nanny for your kids or a bargain to a language teacher and a tennis partner.

Have you tried this with Google Adwords?

I've played around with Google Adwords with several of my clients, with mixed results.

Adwords are a great tool if enough people are looking for what you have to sell. But when you're selling something people might NOT be searching for, you have to think a bit more creatively about how to get their attention and hopefully entice them to visit your site.

One thing as marketers we DO know is that the web is used early on in a buying cycle. Consumer and Business buyers use it to research the category they're interested, often a while in advance of actual intent to purchase.

So you might get them browsing, but getting them to visit your site and BUY is the trickiest part.

So I thought I'd trial a bit of "old school" DM using this "new school" medium and ran the voucher ad below recently...

I linked it to a landing page that explained the offer - and included a promotional code to enter if they chose to join the service. My rationale was, if people were "tyre kicking" already, this might get them over the line.

In the first four weeks of running this little advert, SIX people joined the service using this promotional code.

At a cost of around about 60 cents per sign up [not including time for my creative brilliance of course :) ].

Now to understand whether six is a lot, you need to think about what each customer is worth.

For this service based business every customer means in the vicinity of $600 a year.

At 60 cents to attract, this makes a whopping ROI on this advertisment 1000%

If only all our marketing gave such a great return!

Now, I don't have the goose that laid the golden egg just yet. I'll have that when I can get 100 customers to buy using this offer.

But I'm off to a great (zero budget) start.

Why don't you try it for your business and let me know how you go!

I love this super cheap tool - so many forms, so little time!

I get so excited by what you can find on the web these days. I'm doing some work for a charity at the moment and I wanted to build an online event registration form that compiled a database and also sent the event registrant a confirmation email. We have a great IT company that does a lot of work free for the charity, but they'd have to spend some additional IT time on this and they were going to have to charge us $600. Now this isn't a lot of money, but when you're a charity, it's enough! So I went to good ole Google for an investigate and found a tool that I love so much I can't stop telling people about it.

Wufoo.com is a completely idiot proof form builder. It's FREE if you only want 100 entries a month, which was all I needed, but even the version you have to pay for is only $24 a month for up to 3,000 entries AND it manages payments.

This tool has so many uses: as a database/sign up form, as an event registration, as a survey tool, as a means of taking payments.

It only took me about 30 minutes to customise a form in the colours I wanted, upload a logo and start collecting responses. Seriously.

I think I'm in love. Check it out at www.wufoo.com.

How about a completely free website?

This post is getting back into the totally, no holds barred, got no cash at all, zero budget marketing zone.

When organising a charity race day recently, I set myself the challenge of setting up a website completely free of charge, including integrating payment for the tickets.

The answer came in the form of (don't tell Blogger) -Wordpress. I had the idea courtesy of the clever and lovely Australian mook (mag/book) DumboFeather - which, when I visited their site, found had the feel of some blogs I'd seen. So I checked out Wordpress and found that they have the ability to create a blog with pages and other "widgets" - meaning you can essentially set up a proper and dynamic website free of charge. You can even have your own URL (instead of a sitename.wordpress.com) if you cough up about $100.

So then for the payments part. For this I went to Paypal. I set up an account, again for free, with payment only when you take funds (it's around 2.4% plus 30c a charge). I created a "buy it now" button, got some code (which I couldn't work out how to put on the blog) but I also got a URL link that you could put in an email. I used this link to literally link the words "buy a ticket" to this URL and hey presto, I was able to sell tickets.

Now if I wanted to get into building a database, I could have integrated something like zookoda and I'd be off!

And if you think all this sounds too tricky, remember I'm a marketer, not a techie. I managed to set up the site and the paypal option in a couple of hours. If I can do it, you can do it.

If anything but free is too expensive...

I was advising a landscape designer the other day - a one-man band, country based - who would like a website but was finding the prospect of putting one together as a big job.

I asked who might use the site, and it was really only people who had been referred to him, so it was a place he wanted to showcase his work.

Like most of us, he didn't have a big budget handy to pay someone to do the site. And though I recommended a number of great third-party providers than would be quite cheap - under $1k for the whole lot, content management, hosting and even a custom design - it still sounded like a lot to him.

So I thought a great place to start was with something like this - a blog. Blogging has gone far beyond the concept of an Internet diary and has moved into the realm of a great potential - and search engine friendly - business tool.

You can bit some great design templates through the various blog sites out there. We found a lovely, semi-abstract plant one for him. You can use free add ons, like zookoda, to allow people to subscribe to your blog or conduct email marketing. You can upload pictures of your jobs and tell the stories about how they're created. You can add your business profile and your contact details. You can even buy a cheap .com of your own (TPP Internet will sell you one for two years for around $70) and automatically re-route it to your blog's domain, so it gives the appearance of a stand alone site.

So if your actual level of investment available to build a website is ZERO, give a blog a go!