Free Marketing: 101 Low and No-Cost Ways to Grow Your Business, Online and Off

CHAPTER 26

FIND GOOD MARKETING PARTNER SITES

For many businesses the customer base is already hanging out online on blogs, websites, and discussion forums related to its target niche market.

A quick search on the major search engines for each of the best keywords associated with your niche will produce several pages of potential partners. Each of these sites are potential partners for you to work with. These websites are the places where your future customers are already hanging out.

You'll find several other websites to add to your targeted list of potential partners if you add the word “blog” or the word “forum” to each of your Google, Bing.com, or Yahoo.com search queries.

Once you have your list, it's time to start forming relationships with each of the targeted sites. Even if you only wind up working with one or two of the fifty sites you find, it will have been well worth the effort.

In some cases your only option to gain exposure on these target sites will be to purchase advertising, but in almost all cases there are other creative possibilities available to you. Begin an intentional campaign of attracting the attention of the key decision makers on these sites by contributing to their success and by expressing your desire to partner up. Here are some creative ideas to try:

• Try to identify the people behind the website. You need to know who the key players are so that you can form real relationships with them.
• Make useful comments on blog posts or articles on their site ...