Getting Free Publicity for Your Business
Publicity doesn't have to cost you a dime. In fact, publicity that costs nothing is the best kind of publicity. It's hard to believe that companies are aware of how valuable public media can be for their business, but it's true. And there are plenty of ways that you can get free publicity for your business. Here are 37 ways to get great publicity for your business from the comfort of your own home:
1) Blogging (free)
2) Social Media (free)
3) Website Creation and Design ($100+/month+)
4) Email Marketing (trivial fee or free if you're building an email list first and it gets enough subscribers on its own. Or free if it's a one-time email and you're not expecting to engage in ongoing conversations with your customers)
5) RSS Feed creation (free)
6) YouTube ($100+/month+)
7) Podcasting (free or cheap, but it's very time consuming and difficult to get started.)
8) Competitor site visitors (who probably won't know about your business unless you tell them – look at the blog of the company that competes directly with yours. Are they doing a good job? Are they getting good exposure?)
9) Publicity by word of mouth ($10-$20, like a sign at an event where people are talking about their favorite products).
10) Press Releases (free as an option with PRWeb.com, other services are $299 for a press release and are designed to get you on the Associated Press wire with your story in every major paper in the country)
11) A business card (free if you make your own; it'll just be another piece of junk that someone throws away, but it could work.)
12) Online news releases ($275 at PRWeb.com and $295+ to get distributed by an agency like PRNewswire).
13) Pay-per-click advertising (depends on how much you're willing to spend – $0.01/click to $10+/click)
14) Pay-per-mile advertising (also depends on how much you're willing to spend – typical rate is 25 cents a mile, but more if you're buying billboard space or extremely expensive advertising arrangements)
15) Referral fees (most marketing campaigns are designed to get your customers talking about you, so it's only fair that you pour some of your profits back into the customer who referred them. A $20-$100 referral fee tends to be popular.)
16) Specialty advertising (a relatively new concept in marketing is pay-per click banner ads for trade magazines and newspapers. You can also use Google's Adsense program. Banner ads are cheap if it's not a major paper.)
17) Public relations firm (depending on what you're trying to do, you can spend $5,000 to $200,000 for a PR firm or agency to get your business free publicity. You can also hire freelancers who charge much less than that.)
18) Product placement (you've seen the commercials where they pour the Diet Coke into the glass and it fizzes. They pay big money for that "honor." Modeling is another cost – but there are ways to get people to model without paying them… perhaps we'll talk about this another day. )
19) Accreditation (most professional associations will allow you to pay a fee to become a part of the group, usually about $75)
20) Trade show sponsorships (costs vary widely – from free if you're just a small business with no money and are able to talk your way into a small display booth, to $20,000 for large corporations that want the floor space. It's usually worth it.)
21) Free media kits for trade magazines (there's an entire industry now that helps people get press kits published in magazines at cost – but still at no charge to you).
Conclusion: The most difficult part of getting free publicity for your business is knowing what's out there, and where to get it. Here's no hard-and-fast rule. There are many avenues to publicity. But first, you have to know a few things:
1) What kind of business are you in? The most obvious public media sources are newspapers and magazines. But also consider radio, television, the Internet (blogs? ), etc.