Free Marketing Ideas

Free Marketing Ideas is about finding practical ways to start, promote and grow a business without wasting money, as well as spotting unusual demand and potential shortages before they become obvious.

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 demand is beginning to run ahead of supply.

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 Demand Hunt

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

The idea is simple. We search across the UK for signs that demand may be starting to run ahead of supply. That could be a product becoming difficult to find, people struggling to find a particular service, an emerging shortage or an unusual spike in demand in a particular town, city or region.

Sometimes that information may reveal a business opportunity. At other times it may simply help people get ahead of a potential shortage before everyone else starts looking for the same thing.

Want to see how it works in practice? See our retrospective Demand Hunt example, where we applied the research process using only the signals and information available on an historic date.

Where The Idea Came From

I have always been interested in spotting things before they become obvious. Before the toilet roll shortages during the pandemic, for example, I had already built up a supply at home. It became something of a joke amongst friends, who nicknamed me the “Bog Roll King”, but shortly afterwards toilet rolls became notoriously difficult to find.

A more recent experience showed the other side of the same idea. After buying a box of 100 eclipse glasses because smaller quantities would not arrive in time, we advertised the surplus locally and received more than 2,000 enquiries in around two days.

The important lesson from both experiences was similar. Sometimes demand starts running ahead of supply before most people realise what is happening.

Spotting that early can be useful for completely different reasons. You might be able to supply something people are struggling to find, or you might simply want to make sure you can get hold of it yourself.

What We Look For

The Demand Hunt searches for unusual evidence of products people are struggling to find, services in high demand, potential shortages, regional and local spikes in demand, emerging trends and other situations where supply may not be keeping up.

We look across the UK, from national trends to signals affecting individual towns, cities and regions. A shortage or surge in demand does not have to be happening everywhere to be interesting.

The aim is not to manufacture stories or produce generic lists of business ideas. We look for evidence and only send a Demand Hunt when we find something worth sharing.

Read how the Demand Hunt developed from our eclipse glasses experience or get the Demand Hunt alerts 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 insights.