Free Marketing Ideas

Free Marketing Ideas is about finding practical ways to start, promote and grow a business without wasting money.

The site originally focused on low-cost and no-cost marketing methods. It now also covers the use of AI in business, practical tools and research into something even more fundamental: where customer demand already exists.

Glenn Blackman MBA

I’m Glenn Blackman MBA and I have been involved in marketing for over 30 years. I started off working for a major high-street bank and later became a business and marketing consultant, advising many different types of businesses.

More recently, I have handled the marketing for my own businesses, often without relying on large advertising budgets or expensive pay-per-click campaigns. That has meant continually looking for practical ways to find customers, test ideas and use technology to do more with less.

The Weekly Demand Hunt

One of the main projects on Free Marketing Ideas is the Weekly Demand Hunt.

The idea came from an unexpected experience selling eclipse glasses locally. After buying a box of 100 because smaller quantities would not arrive in time, we advertised the surplus and received more than 2,000 enquiries in around two days.

The important lesson was simple. We did not need to create demand. The demand already existed and supply was falling short.

That led to the Demand Hunt. Every week, Free Marketing Ideas searches for evidence of products and services people are already trying to buy, emerging shortages, regional demand and other situations where supply may not be keeping up.

The aim is not to produce generic lists of business ideas. It is to identify real or emerging demand that somebody may be able to supply.

Read how the Weekly Demand Hunt started or get the Weekly Demand Hunt free by email.

Low-Cost Marketing

Low-cost marketing remains an important part of Free Marketing Ideas.

I have spent many years testing different ways of generating enquiries and finding new customers while spending little or nothing on paid advertising and promotion.

The “How To” Marketing Toolkit brings together many of those methods, tools and templates.

AI And Business

Free Marketing Ideas also explores practical ways businesses can use artificial intelligence.

This includes using AI to improve marketing, research, productivity and business development, as well as understanding how AI systems discover and recommend businesses.

You can find practical tools, articles and books across the site, including the AIRI Artificial Intelligence Recommendation Index and my book about becoming a business that AI systems are more likely to recommend.

Free Ideas, Research And Experiments

I use Free Marketing Ideas to share useful ideas, research and real-world experiments rather than simply repeating marketing theory.

That includes things that work, things worth testing and, just as importantly, ideas that turn out not to be particularly good once the evidence is examined.

Take a look at the Free Marketing Ideas blog for the latest Demand Hunt findings, marketing ideas, AI developments and other practical business ideas.