12 minute read
Advertising can be extremely costly for any business, but don’t worry we have your back. We’ve compiled the 11 best free advertising ideas you can use to gain traction for your company. Including these techniques into your inbound marketing strategy will get your foot in the door with your audience, save you money on expensive advertising, and allow you to allocate those funds to other business aspects.
- Use Google My Business for Local Search
- Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs
- Answer Quora Questions
- Publish Content on Social Media
- Offer to Do Interviews on Podcasts
- Promote Your Website Via Email Signature
- Send Email Newsletters
- Network at In-Person Events
- Speak at an Event
- Create YouTube Videos
- Take Advantage of Partnerships
1. Use Google My Business to Optimize for Local Search
Google, the most powerful search engine in the world, is the epicenter for people looking to find products, services, events and more. Google My Business allows companies to have a local presence within their search results, especially on phones.
This is an enormous platform with over 3.5 Billion searches per day worldwide. Being able to rank organically on the first page or towards the top of the first page is a huge achievement for any business. Doing this legitimizes your business and lets customers know that you’re relevant to their needs. In terms of free advertising ideas for your business, optimizing your website for Google searches is an extremely valuable activity.
2. Write Guest Post for Other Blog Sites
Writing guest posts for other blogs allows you to tap into that blog’s audience and provides free advertising opportunities for your business. Not only is extending your reach important, it gives you an chance to win them over and earn quality backlinks to your website.
Another key factor of writing guest posts on other blogging sites is that you start becoming a thought leader in your particular industry or as a Subject Matter Expert (SME). These activities will eventually build your domain authority and brand identity.
3. Answer Quora Questions
Quora is an online platform where people ask questions on topics that concern them and other people, usually experts on those topics, answer them. As answers are submitted, other Quora users vote on whether those answers were helpful or not. The answers with more “up-votes” rank higher on the page.
Being able to answer questions on Quora enables you to interact with a massive audience, and more importantly these participants are considered high-quality leads since they are looking for very specific information. Becoming a notable figure on Quora allows many link opportunities back to your site and is absolutely free.
4. Push Content on Social Media
Social Media includes platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. It’s not a secret that social media is now responsible for enormous interaction among the world’s population. In fact, it has been estimated that there are over 1.4 Billion active users on Facebook daily. That’s almost a quarter of the entire global population using this app daily to post information, share videos, communicate with others, and learn about things that interest them.
All these social platforms differ in their own ways and dominate their respected audience and market share. Although these social media apps have paid advertising options, there are a lot of free organic reach opportunities, which can be exploited with hashtags, links, keywords, and share buttons.
Here is a quick summary of each social platform, which industry they are best suited for, and how to use them properly:
- Facebook is probably the most known of all these platforms and is still very important despite being considered one of the first social media platforms. Facebook is popular among all demographics, because it allows you to post a variety of formats such as text, videos, photos, events, groups, gifs, photo collages, and more. Because it is so robust and easy to use, you will find people of all ages, from all over the world using Facebook. It is seen as not only a source of entertainment, but also a source of breaking news, global events, and customer service. All industries can benefit from posting organically (free) and/or paid ads on Facebook. Extend your reach with hashtags and include clickable calls-to-action such as links or phone numbers.
- Instagram is a photo and video sharing platform. People use Instagram to share photos, videos, and collages with an extensive array of fun filters. Instagram has a huge audience which means massive exposure to any company advertising its products on Instagram. The demographics for Instagram tend to be among people in their teens to people in their late 40’s and 50’s. The best way to advertise for free is to post organically and use 7-20 hashtags per post. They don’t allow links to be clickable unless you launch a paid advertising campaign from Facebook. If you offer a product that is very eye-catching or event or service that needs some branding, Instagram is the place for you.
- Twitter is a micro communication social media platform. Although you can post photos and videos on Twitter, the majority of the information is in the form of short text messages. Twitter is very important for breaking news headlines and social groups. People use Twitter to get information quickly because the platform is geared towards posting short messages. Twitter, like Facebook and Instagram, has a large audience with similar demographics and is vital for any business that wants to interact with its online audience. It’s a great platform for companies that deal with media content and also brands that depend on a social community to attract customers, spread the word quickly, and maintain an online presence.
- LinkedIn is a social platform geared towards professionals. It’s a great place for networking, finding job opportunities, hiring employees, and learning about particular companies or industries. Ideally LinkedIn is good for industries such as staffing agencies or companies looking to attract and employ talented individuals.
- Google Plus is Google’s social media platform. Similar to other social media platforms, especially Facebook, it allows you to share content with your friends who are placed into what they call “Circles”. These circles are interest-based communities so everyone in them has similar interests. They even offer group video calls called “Hangouts” for free that bring conversations to life with photos, texting, and emojis. Connect with friends across computers, Android, and Apple devices. This platform is valuable because it is part of the Google ecosystem and Google is THE world’s top search engine. More and more Google is incorporating G+ into its local Google Business searches.
5. Offer to Do Interviews on Podcasts
Podcasts have grown in popularity over the past few years. If your marketing research shows that your audience may be inclined to gather information in audible format, podcasts might be a great option for you. This is yet another free advertising idea that, with the right planning and execution, allows you to capitalize on the opportunity to spread the word about your brand or business via Podcast internet radio.
6. Promote Your Website With Your Email Signature
Probably one of the easiest and obvious forms of free advertising for your business is an email signature (aka eSignature). Yet, most people will say the idea never popped into their head about it.
Emails are one of the best promotional vehicles in modern-day communication. Emails are very personal forms of communication, where the sender and the receiver share personal communications with each other. Unlike social media posts, which are promoted to a wide audience, emails are private. Your email signature is an excellent way for you to promote your business, any promotions you may have, your social media links, and your contact information. Including a picture of yourself and/or your logo will make it even more personal and successful. Because of the direct communication and the personable feel of an email, people are more inclined to interact with your team, brand, and business.
Learn how to setup a quick and easy Gmail email signature here.
7. Send Email Newsletters
Email newsletters (aka eNewsletters) are very effective forms of communication between your business, your customers, and potential customers. It’s an informative and very personal format that educates your audience on what is taking place at your business. It allows you to develop deeper relationships with your customers and establish your brand as being more than just a product or service but as a provider for their needs.
Email marketing software such as MailChimp and Constant Contact help segment your contact lists and launch email campaigns very easily with pre-built drag and drop templates with optional time sending technology. These are to top two platforms for email newsletters and a great idea for every business that wants to generate valuable leads from potential customers or re-market current clients.
Constant Contact offers a FREE 30 day trial and MailChimp allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers absolutely FREE.
8. Network at In-Person Events
Network, network, network! This is a key advertising idea (that is usually free) especially for small to medium-sized businesses including marketing agencies, financing companies, real estate brokers, and more. Networking events are a great way to meet leaders in your industry and high-quality leads because these events are attended by people who are highly interested in the topics for which these events are being held. Also, the audiences at these events are usually made up of business owners, people with buying authority, and referrers.
9. Speak at an Event
They say talk is cheap; it’s also one of our free ideas for advertising too. When you give a well-planned, thought-out, and executed speech at an event where people are there looking for valuable information from leaders in their field, it can add tremendous value.
When people are inspired by you, they automatically buy into your philosophy, which translates into fans and more business opportunities. Performing these live speeches will eventually build your brand’s presence and help you become a legend in your industry.
Watch 3 ways on how to advertise your business for free by Tag Marketing
10. Create YouTube Videos
YouTube, owned by Google, is the world’s leader for watching videos online. YouTube has over 1 Billion users on a daily basis. It’s the go-to platform for people looking for educational videos, fun entertainment, how-to’s, DIYs, and more. A majority of the world wants visual content delivered to them on every topic imaginable. So creating engaging and informative YouTube videos is an excellent way to promote your brand and business for free.
It also acts as the first form of personal contact between you and your potential customers.
Providing a link to your website is key to channeling your viewers to your website and turning them into buyers.
YouTube has enabled many people to become so-called “YouTube stars” because they’ve amassed millions of views. You can even monetize your videos and get paid, maybe even picked up by sponsors. It’s easy to say that, we’ve taken this free advertising idea to a whole new level.
11. Take Advantage of Partnerships
Forming partnerships with complementary companies is fantastic for referrals. After all, we’ve all heard someone say, it’s all about who you know.
Many businesses are unable to fulfill all the needs of their customers. So partnering with another business related to yours, but does a different set of functions, can be pivotal. By sharing resources and keeping your ears open, both companies can benefit with little to no additional cost.
Here is a real-world example: I got a phone call from a person who just started up a mobile locksmith company. He wanted to market his business but was very far away from a decent budget that would get us to his sales goal.
So I replied, I’d love to take your money, but it would honestly be better if you saved that money and tried some of these free advertising ideas (listed above). Once you save up some more working capital, come back to us and we’d love to work with you. One idea, in particular, was to find a local business that offered related services and partner up with them.
At first, he was disappointed, but he respected our advice. We gave him a few resources to help him out and told him to call us anytime if he had questions. About six weeks later, I got a phone call from him again and he was ecstatic. He thanked me and said he tried a few of those free marketing ideas with some success. Especially that partnership idea because he found a local company that handles CCTV systems, they don’t do locksmithing, but get asked for that all the time. So naturally, they were a good fit and sent a bunch of business each other’s way.
This mutually beneficial relationship actually generated enough revenue that he was ready to buy that marketing package we discussed and wanted to get started the right way.
Free Advertising Ideas are Good, but Limited
Free advertising opportunities do exist, now more than ever, but all businesses get to a point where they aren’t getting the results or growth they need to compete. This is when they need to get in contact with an established marketing company like Tag Marketing.
At Tag Marketing, we love to partner with local B2B companies like yours to unlock your full potential and accelerate growth with creative, transparent, growth-driven, and inbound marketing strategies.
We are a family-owned and operated marketing agency and we treat our clients like family as well. Our team is 100% client-focused and results-oriented. Our agency’s success is in direct relation to your business’s success.
Tag Marketing is located all over Illinois including Bartlett, Chicago, Brookfield, Roselle, Geneva, Carol Stream, and Schiller Park. So you are never too far away from an in-person meeting.
Give us a call today at (773)-680-6952 or schedule a FREE 30-minute consultation online.