How to Advertise Free

Right now, big companies are constantly asking their advertising agencies for an advertising idea that goes viral. What they are really asking for is free advertising. While nothing in life is really free there are ways to get free advertising or at least dramatically reduce the cost.

There are many techniques you can use to get free advertising. Which ones you choose may depend on the nature of your business and how free you want your ads to be. Here are some ideas to think about.

General Free Advertising Ideas

Networking is one of the oldest, easiest and most effective ways to advertise. Look for events and activities that impact your business and plan to be there. Try and meet as many people as possible and at least give out business cards. The only cost to you is time and your business cards.

Another inexpensive way to advertise is flyers. Many organizations will allow flyers to be posted. Senior citizen centers, schools, libraries etc. all have places where products and services can be posted. The only cost to you here is the getting the flyers printed and taking time to distribute them. Some people even have magnetic signs made that attach to the sides of their car. If you are frequently on the road, this may be a good way to advertise your company.

There are also sites like merchantcircle.com and craigslist.com. They give you the opportunity to advertise your business online at no real cost to you even if you don't have a website.

Press Releases are another way to advertise for free. If you can supply interesting business news and keep it to just the facts you will likely be allowed to run your PR.

Frequently if you are already paying for some advertising then publications may provide you with a certain amount of editorial space. This usually happens when you already have a significant relationship with that publication. But it can also happen when you are new and they are trying to get your business. The great thing about this free editorial space is that it looks like a story about your company and it appears that an outside source is providing the material. So it can look like a powerful endorsement.

Product placement is another way to get free advertising. If you have a product you can send it to various TV and movie studio prop departments. Of course you have no control over when or if your product will ever be used. However, if it does show up you will be thrilled with the free exposure. Unfortunately, studios have gotten smart about the value of this exposure so now there are people who specifically on product placement. However, you may get luck and all it costs is the price of sending your product to the studios.

Viral Marketing

Now, let's get back to the subject of free viral advertising. In a nutshell, viral advertising is creating something so creative that people want to share it with others on their own. It gets sent around the internet without you having to pay for it. The key here is that the advertising has to be extremely creative. Increasingly, that means it's probably some sort of video that people just feel like they have to share with everyone.

Since these creative pieces are typically passed from one friend to another they never get tagged as spam. When you see something from someone you know they odds are very good that you will not only accept it but you will also click on it. In the case of viral marketing you will also pass it on to some of your friends.

When something does go viral there is also usually a lot of free PR that comes along with it. All of this keeps adding exposure to your company and you website. The expression that you can't pay for this kind of advertising really applies here.

The cost of viral marketing is really dependent on the cost of the initial creative piece that gets sent around. Typically things that go viral are not slick, well polished pieces. There are by nature more like home movies or amateur production pieces.

In all of these free advertising concepts you can see that there are some costs to you either in the form of time or an initial production like business cards, flyers, products etc. But it's still much less expensive than traditional advertising methods and in some cases it may be more impactful.

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