Free Advertising
Free publicity and word of mouth is probably the best and cheapest form of advertising. Learn to use it to your advantage.
What Is Free Advertising?
Through the various changes that have taken place in our recent studies and measurement of advertising techniques, it has been found that advertising definitely works better than not advertising. It is certainly more beneficial than promotions and it works on almost any type of media, like print, radio, internet, or television.
It pays to advertise not only for consumer-oriented products but also for industrial ones. Advertising helps to launch new products and also to boost the sales of established ones. In fact, advertising is also beneficial in recessions as it enhances the state of the companies.
This works on the principles of mass involvement through buying and this could be termed the best example of the theory of Social Communication in Advertising”.
Studies have indicated that those organizations or brands which have higher advertising-to-sales ratios than their competitors have greater profitability that can be calculated by their return to interest ROI and better market share through a share of market SOM.
Use Google My Business To Optimize For Local Search:
One of the most powerful free ways to advertise your business is through google my business, which enables companies to manage their presence on Google Search and Google Maps. The tool can bolster your rankings in local search results.
Ranking high in local search shows you’re a legitimate and relevant company: you wouldn’t rank number one in Google for pizza places near me if you had closed down six months ago. Plus, if you rank high in local search, more consumers will choose your business over a competitor’s.
In today’s fast-paced world, convenience is key. Click here or scroll to the bottom of this post to learn how to advertise on Google for free.
Check Out Yext:
The more places your business is listed online, the better your chances of showing up in search results, and the easier it is for potential customers to find you. To ensure great local SEO, the details of your listings on every website and online directory need to match up.
For instance, if your website lists your company’s new phone number, but Yelp lists your old one, this inconsistency could hurt your SEO. Yext scans the web to find every place your business is listed, so you can tweak your listings to guarantee accuracy.
Attend Networking Events And Mixers:
Connecting with fellow professionals at industry networking events is a great opportunity to meet potential consumers in a place where they are eager to discuss your business. The niche topics of networking events ensure you’re meeting high-qualified leads. For example, the Best Technology Startups of 2020 event will primarily be filled with participants who are interested in technology and startups.
Particularly for small businesses looking to make their first connections, networking is a chance to get your name out there, meet potential partners, and find opportunities for growth. Plus, it’ll keep you up-to-date on trends in your industry.
Speak At An Association Or Local Event:
Similar to networking, speaking at an event about a topic related to your industry is another way to exhibit your expertise. Giving a thought-provoking and powerful speech will draw attention to you and, by association, your business, which can increase brand awareness and prove your business is qualified to tackle consumer challenges.
To start, brainstorm different topics and volunteer at various upcoming networking events and trade association conventions. If you’re afraid of public speaking (don’t worry, a lot of us are), you could enroll in a local toastmasters chapter to improve your game.
Put Up Brochures Or Flyers:
Putting up brochures or flyers in local libraries, coffee shops, and businesses is a unique way to market to offline locations where people spend a good deal of their time. You can create free brochures and flyers on PowerPoint or Canva. Depending on your industry, it might even help you reach an ideal clientele: if you’re a physical therapist, for example, perhaps you could hand out brochures to local gyms or nearby hospitals.
Run Geo-Targeted Facebook Ads:
Facebook has more targeted advertising capability than any other platform. In addition to being able to advertise to a certain type of consumer based on interests or job description, you can target people who fit that criterion in a certain location. By putting a few dollars per day behind a geo-targeted Facebook campaign, you’ll build up a loyal following over time. Be sure to continue posting great content as well to keep this new audience engaged.
Invest In Direct Mail Campaigns:
With direct mail, you will know that the right audience in your nearby area is receiving your promotions. While a single batch of mailers may not be enough to drive tons of business, doing frequent distribution campaigns will increase the number of impressions you make on your audience, which in turn drives brand awareness and keeps you top of mind.
Surprisingly, there are also a lot of free ways to supplement your paid advertising efforts. By incorporating free advertising tactics into your strategy, you can remove some nonessential costs and dedicate your budget to deeper, more long-term plays.
In fact, we suggest some of these methods regardless of your budget. To help you spread the word about your business without breaking the bank, we’ve compiled a list of ways to get advertising for free.
Does Free Advertising Work:
Studies have also proved that organizations or brands with higher advertising-to-promotion ratios tend to dominate the markets with sales volume almost double of their competitors. It has also been proved that heavy-up advertising not only enhances the sales of an organization or brand immediately but continues to work for years even after the advertisement has stopped running.
(Kopalle 2000) This mainly happens with television advertisements. Even newspapers and magazines are effective in enhancing the sales of a company. Advertising through printed media and radio helps to increase brand familiarity among the common people.
More exposure guarantees the development of more purchasing interest among the customers. Nowadays even “the internet plays a big hand in advertising since it is easier, cheaper and gets a brand more exposure”.
We have also seen that advertising works during times of recession too. This is because through advertising it is possible to gain long-term brand building and exposure which most businesses tend to sacrifice due to the pressures on the bottom line which shows the profit or loss.
During recessions, consumers spend less and when organizations reduce advertising, it has a negative effect on the consumers as this further reduces their spending motivation deepening the recession. Good business policies, on the other hand, suggest that when the competitors are reducing their advertisements, an organization that increases or at least maintains its advertising enjoys an increase in its sales volume.
Recessionary advertising impacts consumers even after the recession period. But for advertising to work it must be good and effective since it is not necessary that all types of advertising must work equally well.
Advertising only works when we follow the general pattern of a continuous cycle. The first step is to test the marketing media. Apart from the traditional sources of media, nowadays there are many other sources, like cold calling and cost-per-click campaigns.
These mediums need to be tested to determine which one works best. (Nair 2004) Then we should properly evaluate the results to see which strategy returns a high ROI and rank the marketing methods accordingly. After we have evaluated the advertising medium which works best for us, we should invest in it and eliminate the other advertising mediums.
We need to repeat this cycle constantly so that the present campaign is better than the previous ones and to find an optimized method. Thus, it is evident that the more the consumer sees a brand or product in a newspaper or website, or TV, the more they will tend to like it.
Effective advertising can change markets by improving profit margins. Advertising has both long-term and short-term powers. Through the former, it conveys new information, builds awareness, and enhances credibility and through the latter, it can convey brand image and develop a positive reputation of a brand or organization.
The great power advertising possesses can seldom be recognized and achieved in reality and those organizations that can consistently develop effective advertising campaigns will have a prosperous future since good advertising is like an invisible cloak.
Advertising that creates a positive attitude and persuades consumers by creating liking and arousing desires and feelings in them for a particular product or brand is more effective and impacts the sales volumes more than others do. But most of the time advertising requires patience, time, and above all repetition.
The products must be worthwhile and consistent for good advertising to work and deliver what it promises to the customers. A good marketing strategy, brand perception, knowledge of its benefits, and enhancement of its values are the key elements to successful advertising.
How To Get Free Advertising?
Here are some engaging ideas for free advertising. And these are:
- Write guest posts for other blogs
- Answer Quora questions
- Publish content on LinkedIn
- Offer to do interviews on other businesses podcasts
- Promote your website on your email signatures
- Send emails newsletter
- Do a free product giveaway or contest
- Create YouTube videos
- Take advantage of your partnership
- Post on social media
- Experiments with video and image platforms
- Encourage happy customers to give online feedback
1. Write Guest Posts For Other Blogs:
There are a few major advantages to guest posting for a well-established blog. You can benefit from connecting to that blog’s audience, and you can also start establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Since guest posting on a popular blog allows you access to an established audience and high domain authority, this practice can sometimes be more beneficial than posting to your own blog.
Plus, you can link back to your own website from your article, giving you an inbound link that boosts your domain authority and can increase your own website’s ranking in search engines.
2. Answer Quora Questions:
Writing content for Qoura can expose your business to a large audience: in 2018, Quora reported a worldwide audience of Three hundred million monthly visitors. Besides the large built-in audience, your business can answer direct questions from prospective customers. This lets you interact with high-quality potential leads and establish yourself as an expert in the subjects that matter most in your industry.
3. Publish Content On Linkedin:
LinkedIn is a platform to connect with professionals, which is why it’s also a great place to share business-related content. LinkedIn’s blogging platform lets you demonstrate your expertise within your industry. Your connections and other LinkedIn members will engage with your posts and share them, doing the free promotion for you.
With almost half of all social media traffic coming to B2B company sites from LinkedIn, it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t publish and promote content on LinkedIn.
4. Offer To Do Interviews On Other Business Podcasts:
To figure out which platforms your team should prioritize, it’s important to diversify your promotion platforms to discover where your audience is already consuming content. Some of your audience might prefer listening to podcasts over reading articles. To reach those people, contact a few businesses with podcasts and pitch interview ideas.
5. Promote Your Website On Your Email Signature:
With all the emails you send every day, it is a shame if you are not taking advantage of the promotional potential of your email signature. Your email signature can also be unexpected property to promote a sale, contest, event, or even a new blog post. Add a link to your business’ website on your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles, as well.
6. Send Email Newsletters:
An email newsletter can be a useful vehicle to promote content, share business-related news, and build deeper relationships with both potential and existing customers. There are plenty of free tools out there that assist you in designing, sending, and optimizing your newsletter.
With the right time investment, an email newsletter can be the perfect place to share quality content with leads and potential consumers, establishing your brand as helpful and informative.
7. Do A Free Product Giveaway Or Contest:
A product giveaway or contest is an easy way to incentivize new viewers to check out and subscribe to your social media channels or website. Plus, handing out inexpensive branded products like t-shirts or mugs is a good way to spread your brand name. Word of mouth is alive and well and a little swag can go a long way.
8. Create Youtube Videos:
YouTube has more than two billion active users which accounts for almost half of everyone on the internet. Creating engaging, informative, and shareable YouTube videos is one of the most efficient ways to sell your brand. If done right, your YouTube videos will entertain viewers enough to share your content and seek out your website.
Moreover, in a recent study, eighty-five percent of people said they have been convinced to buy something after watching a brand’s video, and people reported being twice as likely to share videos with their friends than any other type of content.
9. Take Advantage Of Your Partnerships:
Partnerships are an opportunity to offer supplementary services that you don’t provide. For example, a web design company and a copywriting agency might choose to partner together, so when a client requires written content for her web pages, the web design company can offer copywriting services from their partner.
This increases consumer satisfaction, and it also provides exceptional advertising opportunities. When your partner’s consumers need your services, your partner will point them in your direction.
10. Post On Social Media:
Nowadays, social media is crucial to most marketing strategies. Luckily, most types of social media platforms and posts are free even to businesses. While many platforms will let you advertise, you can still post or tweet for no cost if you are on a budget.
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are suitable places to start for most businesses. They all offer a way to share video, text, photo, and link-based posts and have large user bases.
To learn more about other forms of social media, check out this post. Pick the platforms that best suit your audience. Then, post links, photos, videos, or text posts about your company, product launches, or any other occurrence that you’d like to promote.
11. Experiment With Photo And Video Platforms:
While Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn could be great platforms to start on, expanding to platforms like Instagram or Pinterest will give you more opportunities to show product shots or embrace the heavily-visual strategy of influencer marketing.
Aside from spreading awareness with free images of your product or service, most social platforms, including Facebook, offer live video and story features that can allow you to create video promotions related to your products. For example, you might use Instagram Stories or Facebook Live as an outlet to publish tutorials on how to use your products.
Because these videos and photos are on social, you can also boost their sharing ability by hashtagging them, creating interesting captions, and encouraging fans to react with actions like Like and comments.
12. Encourage Happy Customers To Give Online Reviews:
Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to market your product. Consumers trust the opinions of other consumers, especially when there are many great testimonies. If you have happy customers, encourage them to write a review about their experience on popular review platforms like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. If you want great reviews on Facebook, be sure to create a Facebook Business page if you don’t have one already.
How To Advertise For Free On Google?
As mentioned above, you can create a free page on Google My Business which can help you rank higher or first in search results. Here’s how it works.
Create Your Google My Business Account:
First, you will want to create a Gmail account for your business. Then you will want to register for google my business with that account. Google will first ask you to enter the name of your business. Then, you will be asked to select a Delivery Area. In this form, note the mileage and area where your target audience lives.
Optimize Your Business Page:
After your setup process is complete, you’ll be able to fill out your profile. As you do this, you ideally want to fill out all the information Google requests for the best search optimization. A few key things you will want to include will be:
Your Address:
A phone number, email address, and other contact information. Your website, Pricing or menu information, This year your company opened, Hours of operation, Photos of your business and products, and a detailed description of what your business offers
Other Business Attributes Such As Free Wi-Fi:
The above items are things locals might search specifically for. For example, if someone searches for a cheap Mexican restaurant open after 8 pm, Google will examine the details in the business profile and prioritize your restaurant if it seems like a great match. Here is an example of what it looks like when a Google business fills out all its information:
Verify And Monitor Your Business Page:
Once you have created your Google My Business profile, be sure to verify your listing so Google knows it’s a real, legitimate business. There are a few ways to do this including email, postcard, and phone verification.
You can also download the GMB app to monitor how your business is doing on a smartphone. This post walks you through the different verification processes.
Do Not Forget About SEO:
Along with Google My Business, taking advantage of free SEO strategies can also help your website rise higher in search results. These tactics can be simple and easy to work into blogging, web design, or other processes. Do not let your advertising budget dictate how many people your business can reach. Start putting together your advertising plan today.
Benefits Of Free Advertising
This is beneficial to manufacturers, traders, consumers, and society as a whole. Advertising offers the following advantages.
Introduces A New Product In The Market:
Advertising plays a significant role in the introduction of a new product in the market. It stimulates people to purchase the product.
Expansion Of The Market:
It enables the manufacturer to expand his market. It helps in exploring new markets for the product and retaining the existing markets. It plays a sheet anchor role in widening the marketing for the manufacturer’s products even by conveying the customers living in far-flung and remote areas.
Increased Sales:
Advertisement facilitates the mass production of goods and increases the volume of sales. In other words, sales can be increased with additional expenditure on advertising with every increase in sales, selling expenses will decrease.
Fights Competition:
Advertising is greatly helpful in meeting the forces of competition prevalent in the market. Continuous advertising is very essential in order to save the product from the clutches of competitors.
Enhances Good-Will:
Advertising is instrumental in increasing the goodwill of the concern. It introduces the manufacturer and his product to the people. Repeated advertising and better quality of products bring more reputation for the manufacturer and enhance goodwill for the concern.
Educates The Consumers:
Advertising is educational and dynamic in nature. It familiarizes the customers with the new products and their diverse uses and also educates them about the new uses of existing products.
Elimination Of Middlemen:
It aims at establishing a direct link between the manufacturer and the consumer, thereby eliminating the marketing intermediaries. This increases the profits of the manufacturer and the consumer gets the products at lower prices.
Better Quality Products:
Different goods are advertised under different brand names. A branded product assures a standard quality to the consumers. The manufacturer provides quality goods to the consumers and tries to win their confidence in his product.
Supports The Salesmanship:
Advertising greatly facilitates the work of a salesman. The customers are already familiar with the product which the salesman sells. The selling efforts of a salesman are greatly supplemented by advertising. It has been rightly pointed out that “selling and advertising are cup and saucer, hook and eye, or key and lock wards.
More Employment Opportunities:
Advertising provides and creates more employment opportunities for many talented people like painters, photographers, singers, cartoonists, musicians, models, and people working in different advertising agencies.
Reduction In The Prices Of Newspapers And Magazines Etc:
Advertising is immensely helpful in reducing the cost of newspapers and magazines etc. The cost of bringing out a newspaper is largely met by the advertisements published therein.
Higher Standard Of Living:
The experience of the advanced nations shows that advertising is greatly responsible for raising the living standards of the people. In the words of Winston Churchill advertising nourishes the consuming power of men and creates wants for a better standard of living.
By bringing to the knowledge of the consumers different varieties and better quality products, it has helped a lot in increasing the standard of living in a developing economy like India.
Final Words
In conclusion, Advertisements are very useful but they can also be damaging. Thus, it is upon us to use them with sense and ensure they are entertaining and educative. None of us can escape advertisements as we are already at this age. But, what we can do is use our intelligence to weeding out the bad ones and benefit from the right ones.
it should be stated that Human behavior is altered by stimuli outside the mind, but absorbed by that same mind. It is this absorption that must be considered when understanding the human psyche. Advertisement has a tendency to increase the need and create needs.
The biggest problem with this now would be the fact that now teenagers and children have become a target audience, resulting in addiction toward images and brands in the public sphere. In the process, advertisement is believed to generate profit maximization for a company.
