Everyone is looking for some kind of popularity in this world.It is obvious if people follow money follows you. No matter what you do to attract an audience.
The same applicable to business, to create more footprints you need more footfalls but to invite more footfalls you need to take your brand to people where they are going.
Advertisers can choose either outbound or inbound advertising and sometimes both based on their expected outcome.
Outbound marketing will create brand impact but unfortunately, there are no strong tool or ways to measure the ROI.
Whereas inbound marketing on another hand can be measured and drive more sales compared to outbound.
Advertisers having big pocket will go for outbound marketing whereas the bootstrap one will pick an inbound way to drive sales.
Advertisement can take any media to achieve its needs. Advertisers are left with multiple options like TV, Print Media, the internet (mobile and desktop), hoardings, pamphlets, events and many.
According to Statista around 35.5% of the total spent is spent on television due to consumer preference and 18.9% spent on internet marketing for both mobile and desktop.
The spent on the mobile advertisement is forecasted to increase over a period of time across the globe and it will capture more shares in the global advertising market.
It is in the blood of all marketers to get high ROI in any form of advertisement. Apparently when it comes to high returns online will be the first choice over any other medium.
For example: A simple calculation even a layman could easily understand, A property developer to advertise his property on Print media which has a circulation of 5lakhs costs you 25thousand or two days, so for 8 days they need to invest one lakh.
But when the same property developer displays his property on an online leading portal like Magicbricks, he gets more visibility for continuous one month at a competitive price.
You get calls from buyers only on the day of advertisement in print media whereas in online buyers can contact you anytime seeing your presence.
Like this, we can keep on piling up the advantages of online medium over tradition media.
Due to overwhelming responses and increasing traffic day over a day online portals also started charging high to deliver a countable number of leads. Though some leading portals provide freemium services the end result of any free services are not delivering like premium.
Brands with high cash flows can invest more in advertising but bootstrapped start-ups and small organizations need some effective ways to do free advertising online.
This post is compiled for the sake of businesses which fall into that category of doing free advertising online.
List of effective ways to do free advertising online
1.Classifieds
The main source of revenue for any small or established print media is only through advertisement and classifieds takes a major share in that.
You might have seen an annexure with the dailies in the weekend where ads are classified based on the locations and categories.
As the internet grows many websites are started to display advertisements exclusively where buyers can drop in to find the seller, it can be both individuals and small businesses.
The typical business model of any classified website is, it allows users to post their requirements for free but to top the listing advertisers need to pay a premium.
The cost of advertisement of any portal depends upon the respective site traffic rate.
For example, The cost of advertisement on MagicBricks is higher than 99acres because of their high traffic rate. As the number of users is high the chances of getting leads is also high for advertisers.
Most local and global classifieds are offering free services to post your requirements and products but to get some add-ons you need to pay little.
These portals only generate you handful of leads and the conversion of leads into prospect lies with the advertiser, not with the portals. But it is one of the best ways to do free advertising online.
2.Get free online PR
Putting your business name on any popular magazine for free is almost mere impossible but you can do it on popular websites which got more subscribers than the leading magazines.
You can send any kind of press releases like new product launches, new product features, organization structural changes or about your CSR activities to publish in the PR sites which will take the words to the outside world.
Few of the free PR websites which may be useful for your business.
| 1.1888 Press release | 2.24-7 press release |
| 3.Click Press | 4.Free Press Release . com |
| 5.Free Press release center . info | 6.Newswire . com |
| 7.indiaPRwire . com | 8.newsWireToday . com |
| 9.PR . com | 10.PressExposure . com |
| 11.Pressbox .co .uk | 12.Briefingwire . com |
| 13.DirectionsMag . com | 14.DirectionsMag . com |
| 15.onlinePRNews . com | 16.PressReleasePoint . com |
| 17.Scoopasia . com | 18.FreePrnow . com |
Craft an informative press release and send it to multiple sites to get notified by masses.
3.Find a niche blog
SocialMediaExaminer reported that 45% of marketers rely on blogging as the important piece of their content strategy.
Hubspot reported that marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their efforts.
B2B marketers that use blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t use.
Find out the popular blog in your niche and write a compelling proposal for a guest post. Do some basic research on the blog before start writing proposal.
Look for authoritative blogs which influence its readers through its words. It is difficult and competitive to get your article accepted but be patient if you get a green signal then you could actually do SEO wonders.
Parallelly try contacting mid-segment bloggers with a decent number of views and followers, it is easy to get consent from these bloggers.
I am receiving a lot of requests from businesses to publish an article on Socialtalky.I accept quality contents for free without any backlink and to post with backlink we charge a premium.
Follow some formal dialogue in your proposal, for example, look at the below proposal I received very recently.
Just try this method it will definitely bring a good number of footfalls to your business.
4. Social Media Advertising
Being a marketer you might have read more about social media marketing and the impact it creates. I am not going to repeat it but putting some important facts.
Facebook is still the most widely used social media across the globe. It got 75% of male internet users and 83% of female internet users.22% of the world populations use Facebook.
Instagram got 38% of female users and 26% of male users.Female users are more on Instagram than men.
81% of millennials check twitter at least once per day(src: wordstream).
Rather than simply promoting your business posters and updates start sharing engaging contents like puzzles, memes, videos, fact sheets related your business.
Adopt and lead the trend in social media periodically.
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