Free Marketing for Your Collections Business

There are as many marketing schemes out there for small businesses as there are small businesses.  Marketing “gurus,” marketing companies, and marketing plans will have your head spinning with ideas—but when you look into the actual Return On Investment (ROI), you might be disappointed to learn that many of the schemes that work for one company might have a completely different success rate (or lack thereof) for another.  That’s why focusing on avenues of free marketing still makes the most sense for small collections companies that are wishing to expand their business and reputation.  Below are a few of the most-used free avenues for online marketing. 

LinkedIn

Do you (or does your company) have a profile on LinkedIn?  If not, you’re missing one of the most valuable, FREE online marketing opportunities available to your collections firm.  On LinkedIn, your employees can connect with your business, which adds a human face to your company, providing something that has too often been lost—particularly within this industry. You can also connect with other businesses and prospects who will be potential customers for you down the road. 

Facebook

According to the most recent numbers available, Facebook has hit the one billion active users mark this October 2012.  “Active users” means users who visited the site within a month.  If we were looking at the website in terms of population, those numbers would put Facebook as the third most populous “country” in the world. 

There is a lot of confusion about Facebook in the online marketing world.  While on one hand, many people recognize it as a viable marketing opportunity that is both free and accessible to most people, they also realize that Facebook is used primarily as a social networking site for individuals.  While LinkedIn focuses on business to business connections, Facebook focuses on social interaction among individuals—interaction that often doesn’t include easy acceptance for business marketing.  However, when a company chooses to use Facebook as primarily a placeholder page with company information, this is still a better choice than not having a Facebook page at all. Even if you don’t have a lot of daily action taking place on your page in the form of status updates and “likes”, you are still represented on a platform that has 900 million users and your Facebook page still gives your company greater search engine visibility on the Internet.