Getting the word out about your business can be ridiculously expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Creativity, planning, and sweat equity can go a long way towards getting your name out there. Here are 25 free, or almost free, ways to advertise your business.
- Create a YouTube video advertising your product or service. This is a highly effective way to explain exactly how your product or service works. Videos are especially helpful when you offer something that is new and potential customers may not understand it. A 3 step format is a relatively foolproof way to explain something new, such as how underpants knomes make money. For example: “Step 1: Collect underpants. Step 2: ? Step 3: Profit”.
- Establish a network of Twitter and FaceBook followers. Your followers already read what you have to say and, hopefully, find you to be a credible source of information. You should leverage this audience and send out some information about your business. Just be careful not to bombard your followers with too much information, too many posts about your business, or to do anything that could compromise your good reputation.
- While you’re at it, update your LinkedIn profile. Make sure all your social networking profiles are updated often. If you’re LinkedIn profile still says you’re still working at the campus bookstore where you graduated 5 years ago, it might be time to go through all your profiles with a fine-toothed comb. Potential clients, investors, and even your competition will be sizing you up by researching your name online. If they don’t like what they see, your first (and possibly last) impression may be blown to bits.
- Write an industry-related blog. Blogging is an invaluable way to tout expertise in your chosen field. Make quality posts and make them as often as possible. You’ll be surprised how quickly your subscriber list grows and people discover how knowledgeable you are. Once you establish a solid blogging reputation, you can then direct traffic to your website.
- Use Craigslist to advertise your product or service. Leverage the millions of daily visitors this website receives daily. Depending on what you offer, you may be able to post to the “Resume / Job Wanted”, “For Sale”, or “Gig Offered” sections of Craigslist.
- Tell your family, friends, acquaintances, and everyone else you know about your company. With so much focus placed on online advertising, sometimes it’s easy to forget about people in the real world. This is especially true if your chosen field is in Web Development or Web Design. Make sure that whenever you meet a new friend, acquaintance, or colleague, you work in a quick description of what your business is all about. You don’t want to bore people by dragging on and on, so try to keep it to 60 seconds or less.
- Offer an incentive for anyone who refers a new client. Gaining new clients can be very expensive, so you should reward anyone who does part of the work for you. You can offer cash or vacation days to employees, discounts or free services to existing clients, you get the idea.
- Team up with other business and work out a win-win deal. If you’re a lawn maintenance company, teaming up with a store that sells home improvement supplies could be a great idea. For example, you can have the store place your business cards at the checkout counter for all their customers to see. Then, when a customer checks out with grass seed and lawn fertilizer, they might see your card and think “I need a professional to help me out. I’ll give this company a call and see what they can do.” It’s magic!
- Make sure your website is search engine friendly. Search engines have an array of top secret metrics they use to score your website. The scan all your content, images, links, and so forth and determine pages within your website should show up in search engine results pages. Play nice with Google by frequently updating your content, using SEO friendly links, structuring your content properly, and including the right keywords.
- Send out press releases to reputable websites on a regular basis. Do your research and find several popular press release websites. Use these websites to spread the word when something important happens relating to your business. Examples of when to write a press release include hiring a new employee, launching a new product or service, hosting an event, etc.
- Set up an RSS feed. If you frequently publish articles, setting up an RSS feed is a necessity. You want to give your most loyal visitors a way to read your content without having to always visit your website.
- Set up an email marketing campaign. There are basically 3 steps to building an email marketing campaign.
- Gather email addresses. The most common way to do this is to have a newsletter signup form on your website or blog.
- Enlist the help of a design firm, like Moxie Technoxy, to create an email marketing template for you to use in all your mailings. This will convey a consistent, professional, professional image to your contacts
- Use an online service, like ContantContact or iContact, to send out your messages and track the results.
- List your website in industry-related directories. Conduct some research to determine if there are online directories where you can list your product or service. Make sure to use a reputable directory that will add value to your business. Otherwise, you could end up doing more harm than good.
- Get other reputable businesses to link to your website. Create a list of industries that relate to, but do not compete with, your business. For example, a limousine rental company might consider floral shops, cake bakeries, and DJs. Next, contact as many of these related industries as possible and ask to “swap links”. This means that you agree to link to their website and they to yours. The thinking is that both of you will benefit from the partnership because your industries are complimentary to one another.
- Make meaningful posts in industry related forums. This helps in at least two ways. First, making helpful posts lets others know that you are knowledgeable in your field. Second, most forums allow you to create a signature that will display beneath each of your forum posts. Make sure to add a link to your website or blog in your signature. This allows forum visitors (including Google) to easily visit your website.
- Set up your email client to include a signature. Make sure your signature includes your name, your company’s name, a phone number, an email address and your website’s URL. No matter who you email, you should make sure your signature is included. This solidifies the connection between you and your business. It also creates additional brand recognition and gets people thinking about your company when they correspond with you.
- Always carry business cards. Make sure to always carry business cards and hand them out to anyone who might be interested in your business. Business cards, especially creative ones, can have a lasting impression on those who receive them. Even if your card has a simple design, high quality paper can go a long way toward making a strong statement.
- Distribute flyers. Flyers let you convery much more information than a business card, so they are great for sales, special events, and the like. Distributing flyers is (more or less) a three step process.
- Determine who your target audient is. For example, a store selling high heels could safely assume their target market is females ages 16 – 55.
- Print flyers that advertise your product or service. Ideally, you'll have a goal in mind for your flyer recipients when designing the flyers. For example, you might want them to come in for a sale on peep-toe pumps. You could include a coupon with the flyer to motivate users to complete the goal.
- Distribute the flyers to locations where your target audient can be found. In the case of the shoe store, the flyers could be passed out at beatuy salons, shopping malls and female-focused gyms (like Curves). For added flair, you could use a paper clip to attach your business card to each flyer.
- Make sure your business is visible on Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps. Online maps can be your best friend when you have a brick and mortar location. If a potential customer is trying to decide which pizza kitchen to eat at tonight, they might not even consider yours if it isn’t on the map. Visit each online map service and make sure you’re listed. If you aren’t, create an account and follow the necessary steps to get your store on the map. You’ll be glad you did.
- Ensure that you are listed on the online version of the Yellow Pages. Basically no one uses the print version of the Yellow Pages, but the online version is alive and well. A basic listing on this extremely popular website is free of cost.
- Use social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Social bookmarking can be instrumental in driving traffic to your website. Many websites, such as The Oatmeal, have contributed their success largely to sites like Digg. Getting started with social bookmarking is a three step process.
- Add social bookmarking links beneath your content.
- When a visitor enjoys your content, they can choose to bookmark it.
- If your content receives a high enough number of bookmarks, it might show up on the front page of the respective social bookmarking site. This could potentially drive a ton of traffic to your website, so cross your fingers!
- Register at Technorati. Technorati is a popular blog search engine which collects, organizes and distributes blog posts from across the world. If you’re a blogger, you should consider signing up at Technorati and claiming your blog.
- Run a contest. Come up with a unique contest that will generate interest in your product, service, or website. You can give away discounts on services, free products or cold, hard cash. Consider advertising your contest on YouTube, the radio, etc. for maximum exposure.
- Give out freebies related to your industry. A typography website could give away a free set of fonts. A web design agency could give out free layouts. A landscaping company could offer a complimentary lawn analysis. The idea is to generate traffic and interest in what you have to offer. Just give a small sample of your goods at first and hopefully it will lead to purchases of the real thing in the future.
- Enlist some help on the cheap at Fiverr. For five bucks, you can afford a wide range of advertising services. Here are some services I saw posted today:
- I will hang flyers around my school and city for $5
- I will wear your company shirt on my college campus for the day for $5
- I will add your RSS feed to all of my blogs, profiles, and sites permanently for $5
- I will put your sites banner on my blog that gets over 100k impressions for a whole month for $5
- I will write your web address on my head for $5
