How to mass market a product/service?

[Bojangle]

How can I mass market a product to consumers? what is the best way and most affordable way? I know of kijiji ads, facebook ads... what else?

Also, what is the best way to capture leads (emails, names, etc)?

Can I buy twitter postings (a company with a big following sells posts on their account to their large following)?

Does anyone know of any legitimate email marketing companies? Ones that have their own lists and send out emails for you?

THANKS!

[James]

Hi Matty,

The methods that you have mentioned so far are essentially a waste of time and money. Trust me I have tried them several times. You do not want to rent or buy other peoples' lists because they will not be targeted towards your product/service and the people receiving the messages will not be responsive. Think about what you would do if you received a random email about some product or service that you have never expressed an interest in. Would you even look at it?

What I suggest is that you set up the following:
Blog
Facebook page
Twitter Account
Google+ Account
Pinterest account
Youtube account (very powerful for SEO)

Link all of these things together and put up a bunch of content (you can get content written and videos made cheaply on fiverr.com)

Drive traffic towards the blog or a squeeze page where you will have an opt-in form. You always want to ask permission before sending emails. This is not just for ethical reasons, it also increases the responsiveness of the list because as far as they are concerned they have chosen to be marketed to and are actually expecting to be contacted by you.

Here is a post by Seth Godin (marketing genius) about permission marketing:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/...-mark.html

Here is some information about using this method for email marketing campaigns
http://www.squidoo.com/email-marketing-a...troduction

I hope this helps!

[Tomas]

I would say that aweber is the best for email marketing. I have used them in the past and gotten great results. You will have to make sure you don't spam people though.