How do you do cheap marketing?

Just answered this question. Just answered it in the following way. The message will not take 90% of the time.

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Alvin, I hear you, but you worry me with the lapse into "CRM, marketing, PR.... channels"...

Money is an airbag for sloth and unimagination. Cheap marketing? Not impossible, but it does require some simple rules for clients who ask for such things:

1. Be brilliant in your poverty. You cannot, on the cheap, make any impact if you are merely rolling out a discount version of the more expensive boilerplate that others with more money are already spewing. Poverty means risk and failure are everyday friends, they do not scare you into pretending things are what they aren't. It means resourcefulness is your primary tool for staying alive.

2. Brilliance is often counter-intuitive. Another phrase for counter-intuitive is surprisingly honest. Tear the bark off your client's industry and methods and petty affectations. Yes, be honest. The downside is low for two reasons.

• To most customers and clients, the secrets and absurdities you share will not be news. Therefore you will have displayed the character Diogenes talked about. A rare thing.
  
• For those to whom your message *is* news, you will have done a public service and commercial good. A sustainable thing.

There. Give that a go. Come back when you're ready for more.