Free advertising ideas for your Business

[DarrenC]

Many of us can't afford to pay large amounts of €€ $$ ££ like our competition - there's nothing wrong with that, but how can you market your website without it costing you and still be competitive.

Magazine promotion - write to an editor of an internet magazine, be brief, don't spam them or waffle. These guys and girls get hundreds of emails every day so it's also a good idea to include an eye catching subject title.

Press releases - submit a press release to the likes of www.prweb.com and www.pressbox.co.uk, both sites give you the option of getting your news article on Google and Yahoo News.

Word of mouth - you won't believe how many clients I have signed up by simply talking to the taxi driver after a night on the beer, or someone at a bus stop.

Article submission - write interesting content full articles and submit them to the large number of article submission sites out there, i.e. www.articledepot.co.uk etc.

Yell.com - you can submit a free listing which includes your telephone number and address. I've had some business from these in the past - personally the paid option is a no go.

Newsletters - 20% of my client base first subscribes to my newsletter, and then sign up when they read the first issue. It's a good opportunity to show people you know what you are talking about and gives people confidence - it can also be used to give you an additional income if you accept advertising.

Forums - again another good way to bring in potential clients, I was a moderator of a large (well the largest) travel forum until I ran out of time to do the job properly, but during the period of participating in the forum, I gained around 5 new clients.

Online interviews - I've participated in a number of interviews, and this has gained me a number of clients AND over 500 links to my website, by simply answering questions on a specific subject.

For the experienced amongst you will already be aware of these marketing suggestions. Feel free to add.. and hopefully we can build up a list of useful ideas to market your website effectively for free.

Darren

[Humphrey]

I am involved in the new Business Basics Small Business Co-operative website and, whist not totally free at 50p per week, is an 'at cost' solution to small business networking and business generation.

Members are expected to preferentially resource business needs from within the membership. Members offer special discounts to other members. You can also arrange a web page if you take the £1 per week membership.

The web site is already taking membership registrations at www.bizbasics.co.uk and will formally launch on Jan 1st.

This is what being in business is all about and worth a visit.

Humphrey Klinkenberg

[DarrenC]

Okay, can I add - please don't promote your own business in this thread. I wan't ideas, not services! :) ... but you did remind me of another idea..

Networking - whilst most websites charge, many have a free option, or you could contact your local business link office (http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/directory?r.s=h), who will be able to put you in touch with networking groups in your area. I've been a few breakfast networking sessions and have been able to promote my business to other small business owners.

Website directories - submit your companies website to the hundreds (thousands worldwide) of online directories - some are better than others. The top 2 are Yahoo and DMOZ (but you could be waiting years!)
Yahoo is giving free directory listings to UK and Ireland companies, but it takes a longg time.

[DarrenC]

Classified Ads - promote your business on classified ad sites - they are a number of free classified ads sites that could drive traffic to your website or through the telephone.

[confused]

Not forgetting good old leaflets/flyers, depending on your business of course! My local paper do deliveries for £20+vat/1000 with the paper or £45/1000 for just your flyers. Of course, theres nothing wrong with taking a walk around on a nice chilly winters evening and doing them yourself.

[hunny]

Hi Darren,
Thanks for that - i've just enlisted on yell.com.
Anne. :D

[DarrenC]

Umm confused - that's not FREE advertising. :)

Anne, no problem, glad I could help

Darren

[confused]

erm
so it isnt LOL sorry !
but I suppose if you deliver them yourself its sort of free (apart from the cost of the flyers)

[DarrenC]

erm
so it isnt LOL sorry !
but I suppose if you deliver them yourself its sort of free (apart from the cost of the flyers)

Which still isnt' free :lol:

Design your own leaflets - design your leaflets using Microsoft Publisher, or another desktop publisher software. Make sure the leaflet is eye catching and attractive. You can then distribute these leaflets to local shops and busineses or put through peoples letter boxes.

[directmarketingadvice]

Word of mouth - you won't believe how many clients I have signed up by simply talking to the taxi driver after a night on the beer, or someone at a bus stop.

Personally, I'd classify that as networking.

"Word of mouth" for me would be people who visited your site or used your service and told someone else (ie a subset of referrals).

The other parts of referrals would be solicited referrals and, in the case of a website, "tell a friend" style viral marketing.

If you want to increse sales and have a small marketing budget (e.g £0), I'd say the 3 things you should look at first are:

(1) improving your current marketing ie getting more out of what you're already doing.

(2) implementing an effective referral system (really part of (1), but it's important enough to mention separately).

(3) Paying for results rather than advertising. That is, set up deals where you pay people for bringing you clients. It's not free, but you don't need a marketing budget as you're not paying upfront, you're only paying out of profits.

Steve

[DarrenC]

Some good points Steve.

The referral idea is interesting - it's something I'm toying with at the moment for my main travel website. Get a villa owner to sign up for advertising and earn x% commission - do you mean this type of referral?

[directmarketingadvice]

The referral idea is interesting - it's something I'm toying with at the moment for my main travel website. Get a villa owner to sign up for advertising and earn x% commission - do you mean this type of referral?

I'm not sure what you mean. Who would be advertising what with whom?

I'll give you a couple of examples of what I mean:

(1) A mortgage broker I know has an arrangement with an estate agent.
The estate agent doesn't have his own morgage service, but mentions the broker to his clients. If the client gets his mortgage through the broker, the broker pays 20% of his comission to the estate agent.

(2) I have a deal with an accountant in my town where he mentions me to his clients. If they're interested in growing their business, he puts us in touch. In return, I pay him 25% of the fees I receive from those clients.

Ona different note, perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic to a website is to come up with ways of bringing existing clients back more often.

Too often we focus on our prospects and just assume that the client knows to come back and come back often.

Steve

[fridayteam]

Online interviews? Do you have a link for this idea?

[click2britain]

Hi All,

There is another way of marketing called search engine marketing (SEM) which was not mentioned here. If you would like to market your products UK or worlwide through search engines then, PPC (Pay Per Click) & PPCa (Pay Per Call) is another option to do so.

Also, you can setup an amount or budget to spend per month or day & run your different campaigns. This is currently known as, one of the most effective & provides good ROI (Return On Investment) of marketing method. There are many small to medium sized companies doing this kind of marketing at the moment to promote their products & services.

I hope this helps...

[DarrenC]

Lisa, PPC etc wasn't discussed because it's not FREE! :lol: :p

Friday team, I've done a number of online interviews, around 15 I've done over the last few years - one travel interview I did got me 200ish links to the site.

Basically, the individual who wants to build up content contacts me, asks me a number of questions, about running a small business, marketing, travel etc. and I reply to the questions.

http://www.vacationrentalsdirectory.net/article.php/901696.htm

I get a link to my site and when other people use the interview for their site, I continue getting links - IF it's interesting enough. It's a win win situation for both parties.

[fridayteam]

That's a brilliant idea. Thanks Darren.

[DarrenC]

No worries Roz.

If you want to interview me please feel free to PM me ;) same goes to anyone else - but be nice and ask me simple questions :lol:

Darren

[fridayteam]

Same goes for me, would love the opportunity!

[ne-fishing]

Search engine advertising is very important therefore optimising your website is essential. Use Meta tags and ensure you make good use of your keywords within your website content. Also submit each page to all major search engines such as google, yahoo and msn. You can use free submission services such as: http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html

[sparklyscotty]

Not forgetting good old leaflets/flyers, depending on your business of course! My local paper do deliveries for £20+vat/1000 with the paper or £45/1000 for just your flyers. Of course, theres nothing wrong with taking a walk around on a nice chilly winters evening and doing them yourself.

Where do you live? I might be interested in a flyer drop!
-Angel-

[DarrenC]

Search engine advertising is very important therefore optimising your website is essential. Use Meta tags and ensure you make good use of your keywords within your website content. Also submit each page to all major search engines such as google, yahoo and msn. You can use free submission services such as: http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html

Why use free submission services?

Design a webpage, link to it from another domain and the bots, and spiders will come looking. Before recent changes I used to be able to have a new page indexed in Google within 24-48 hours, nowadays it seems more like 3-7 days.

[ne-fishing]

I used to thinks this however, since I started using the submission service my search engine exposure has dramatically increased. For this reason I now submit each page to be on the safe side as it only takes few seconds. As a result I have a number of different number 1 spots for my selected keywords. I regularly track the search engine referrals to the NE-Fishing website to ensure keywords are working.

[confused]

Where do you live? I might be interested in a flyer drop
Im near Blackburn, Lancashire

[10 Yetis]

or.. if you are a good customer of your local pizza, or any other take away company, (I am!!), why not ask them to put a flyer in with their home deliveries... and maybe you could then put a reciprical ad on your site for their services.

I have done it for a consumer product and it worked well.

[DarrenC]

Andy, that is an excellent idea!!

Hmmm how much does it cost nowadays for some professional looking flyers? Design and printing?

Darren

[confused]

I designed mine so that was free, I prices up A5 flayers and got prices from £65 upwards/1000, that said, after 5000 leaftelts the price increase was small. Initially I got 2000 done of some guy on ebay for £38 including postage, they wernt briliant but ok. Recently the ones I have had done are b/w photocopies - poor I know but at the moment I cant afford hunderds of pounds on shiny leaflets for people to throw away, but they seem to be doing the job.
A word of advice, if you are considering printing your own (not a bad idea for a few thousand or so), beware if using an inkjet printer especially if you plan to put them into takayway bags, inkjet+moisture = runs !
Great idea about putting them in takeaways though, as long as the takeayway does actually put them in the meal and not the bin.

[DarrenC]

Good advice - thanks confused! Do you think though that if you are also promoting their business on the flyers that they are less likely to dump the leaflets?

My concerns on flying are;

1. How do you measure how effective they are?
2. What a waste of money if they are just been thrown away.

Darren

[confused]

Im advertising in a few areas, local shop windows, emails, flyers, local paper etc, the first thing I do when I get a call is ask where they heard about me. Initially I did it sort of systematically, did one area of 2000 leaflets (by hand) , that way I knew exactly what response they had had.
As for how many have ben thrown away, its difficult to say, some may keep them "just in case", some may bin them without even looking.

[DarrenC]

confused, I suppose it depends on your business - for example if I did a flyer campaign it would be to promote my clients holiday homes which are available to rent for holidays - I'd not get a phone call, but if they were interested they would enquire about the property direct with the owner, so I wouldn't find out where they came from.

[fridayteam]

I love the pizza delivery idea! Nice one!

[gazza72]

Flyers do work, I use them all the time
I have put an 0844 number on my flyers, the benefit being I only get calls when I want them, lets say I want to relax at 8pm for example, I can make sure that no business calls reach me after that time, they either go to my email box or reach me as a voicemail
The 0844 number is totally FREE and does not replace your current number firestormtelecom DOT co DOT uk

[PointandStare]

design your leaflets using Microsoft Publisher

You have no idea how those words make me cringe!

:)