Ways to get free / cheap advertising

[yousaint]

Hello,
Here is the place to you share your ideas about how to get free or cheap advertising for a small business.

This is one way I have heard of: donate some of your products / services to a magazine for a competition prize (this will take some negotiation).

Benefits:
You will get a full / half page editorial advert for a lower cost than just buying the space,
Competitions are more interactive (demand more of the reader) than a plain advert,
Running an interesting competition (e.g. Write a jingle, design a logo, send in a video of you using product) will be even more attension grabbing, and you could get a company logo / advert designed very cheaply.

How about you?

 

[Pete Williams]

I have found that good hard graft in terms of the internet has helped my sales increase and a good product knowledge. I get a lot of repeat business.

Something I often do is write articles about topics in my field and submit them to article submit sites. People are free to use your articles but every time they do they must publish your link. It works!

Cheers

 

[Rob Holmes]

Online and offline networking is rewarding for us.

Good old traditional customer service breeds referrals as well.

Rob

 

[top-click]

Taking on a charitry as a pro-bono client - they generally have a board of directors that sing your praises IF you give a great service

Rob

top-click

 

[SillyJokes]

Doing a competition is OK if you are looking local where the prize doesn't have to be exceptional - but if you want a big national magazine, in my experience, they want a decent major prize AND they will charge you to put it in.

I have done various competitions online and in papers and I think that they have limited appeal (for us at least). The promo value is hard to quantify and actually sending out the prizes is a surprisingly time consuming, difficult and thankless task.

 

[keirms]

As a personal training company we've done lots of things cheaply...
Newsagent cards - around 40p a week and there's at least 20 in our area
Posters - anywhere and everywhere!
Leafleting - not more than 1% response but considering we are a luxury item we think that's quite good.
Direct Mail - waste of time for us.. spent lots and got not much in return!

We're now focusing on SEO and getting our website high up on google...

Pete - can I ask which article submission sites you use and how much they cost (roughly speaking).

Keir

 

[Pete Williams]

Hi Keir


I use goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and also write content for buzzle.com

They are all free, in the 2 months I have been submitting my back links have increased by about 60%.

 

[keirms]

Wow! That's pretty fantastic! What a great way to climb google, I'd better start writing!

 

[SillyJokes]

Do something startling and unusual.

We made a world record whoopee cushion for Comic Relief and the promo was very good - this was not free of course but it was very low cost for the exposure gained, plus we raised good cash for Comic Relief.

Enter some awards - there may be some run by your local business link etc.

We won a ecommerce award last year and it has been very good promo and was free to enter. Closing date for this year is July 31st.

http://www.ecommerce-awards.co.uk

 

[brads777]

pendleweb.com offer free business advertising with your own page,you send them your business details and any photos you wish to use and they design your page for you.Its completely free,the only thing they ask in return is for you to display a few flyers or business cards at your place of business and to help spread the word about the website,its great.

 

[BRACK3N]

How about getting us to do a Jingle

 

[OllieSquare]

I recently set up a website for this exact purpose (cheap and easy advertising). Businesses advertise their logo, linked to their site, on one of 600 squares on the homepage. Users can promote the site and each other through social media, therefore gaining traffic and helping each other out. As more squares get filled, the daily traffic increases and your logo gets seen & clicked more.