Low-Cost / No-Cost Customer Acquisition: Amazon Prime Day Edition

When I talk about low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition programs, people stare at me like I was in an episode of the X-Files and had a green mist surrounding me.

• "Do you mean saving a nickel on paid search costs on Google?"
• "Do you mean a lower cost per thousand on Facebook?"

Have you looked at all of the free advertising Amazon gets for Prime Day? Heck, your own industry trade journalists fawn over it, as well as others.

• From Retail Touch Points.
• From Retail Dive.
• From Forbes.
• From NYMag.
• From CNN.
• From Time.
• From USA Today.

Look, I could list a hundred thousand links if I wanted to. Everybody is doing the marketing for Amazon. Yes, Amazon has to kick-start the process with their own marketing, but when you have CNN doing the marketing for you, or USA Today using their distribution system of local papers, well, that's a lot of low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition going on.

I know, I know, you have two gripes with this line of reasoning.

1. They're Amazon, and you sell widgets. You are unique, and you are special, and you are smaller than Amazon.
2. Amazon isn't acquiring customers because they already own every customer.

You are a marketer or merchandiser or an analyst. You are paid money, and you are given health insurance. In exchange, it is your job to compete against large companies. You are paid to have your own version of Prime Day, something that draws attention to Your Company, something that causes other people to perform marketing for you at low-cost / no-cost.

Describe why you don't have a low-cost / no-cost customer acquisition program? What is stopping you?