As a business owner, you want to build your brand, earn credibility, increase productivity, boost sales, and ensure success. The best way to achieve that is by marketing your business right and reaching as many people as you can.
Countless brands are looking for ways to make that happen and if you are one of them you’ve come to the right place.
I will cover 7 effective ways to help you get free publicity and take your business to the next level.
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HAVE A BUSINESS WEBSITE
Having a company website is key to communicating your message, values, mission, and goals. It is by far the most cost-effective way to raise brand awareness, get free publicity, and reach your marketing goals. So, design a company website.
Ensure a return on investment from your website by having an attractive, simple, and user-friendly design that appeals to your audience. Use the site to build your business, market your brand, and reach as many people as you need.
Include all the important information such as your services, products, achievements, testimonials, location, working hours, and projects completed to help visitors understand your brand as well as what you stand for.
Use a CMS like WordPress or Wix to design the website yourself at a minimal cost or hire a web designer on Fiverr.
Once you are satisfied with the look and feel of your site, optimize it for SEO to attract a bigger audience and increase traffic. Make sure you rank high on search engine results pages to get the attention you need.
Learn and implement the best SEO techniques to ensure that happens. For example, use meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords on your web content. Follow top SEO blogs like NP Digital, Search Engine Watch, or Backlinko.
If you don’t have enough time to learn about search engine optimization, hire an SEO expert to speed things up. Go to reputable freelancing sites like Upwork or Fiverr and search for freelancers.
Become a blogger to grow your audience, attract more people, and increase traffic to your site. Add a blog section to your website and share content that’s relevant to your niche.
BECOME A THOUGHT-LEADER
The most effective way to get free publicity is by becoming a thought leader and a well-known voice in your industry. You want people to trust and value your opinion. You want them to know that you are the perfect source for certain information and come to you for advice. So, have an authoritative point of view and become a dependable information source to ensure success.
Become a blogger and write content that readers want and find useful. Always look for ways to upgrade yourself and stay up-to-date with the latest news and trends in your field.
Pick a niche that’s relevant to your industry and stick to it. Know your audience to ensure you share information that converts. Find out what they want and cater to their needs. Keep your business mission in mind when choosing a niche to make it easy for prospects to trust your offer once you start promoting your product or service. When people trust and value your advice, they will easily get into business with you.
Leverage content marketing to get the most from your efforts. Create viral posts to command attention and raise brand awareness. Aim to create at least one viral post and get the attention you need. This is the best way to get people to notice you and search for your business.
Identify top blogs within your niche and learn from them. Pick at least 3 viral posts and study them. What is it that draws people’s attention? What drew yours? Was it the headline? Was it the way the content was formatted? Or perhaps it was something else? Answer these questions and use the same tactics to write your first viral post.
A few things to keep in mind when creating your post are; the use of eye-catching headlines, subheadings, high-resolution photos, and short, clear paragraphs.
Use different content formats on your blog to boost engagement. For example, share how-to guides, complete guides, reference guides, and infographics. You can also write an eBook and market it to your existing networks. Make sure readers get value from your content to retain them, get referrals, and establish relations.
Join the best Q&A sites like Quora, StackExchange, HowStuffWorks, or Researchgate to attract attention and share your knowledge. Join relevant discussions and answer questions related to your niche. Give practical and valuable advice to pique interest and get users interested in the rest of your content.
When you become an authority figure in your industry, look for opportunities to guest blog on reputable sites. Clarify your goals and know what you want to achieve from your posts to ensure success. In this case, your goal is to reach a bigger audience at no cost. So, keep that in mind when selecting blogs to submit your guest posts to.
Identify blogs that have industry authority and high engagement and send your pitch. Convince them to allow you to guest blog on their sites. Prove your expertise in your industry and show you are passionate about what you do. Share links to your blog and give them access to your content to influence decisions. If you produce valuable content, you will easily get a yes.
Look for guest post opportunities on reputable sites like Smashing Magazine, Investopedia, MyBlogGuest, Copyblogger, Social Media Examiner, Entrepreneur, HubSpot, or Creative Bloq.
USE SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is by far the most effective way to get free publicity for your business because you can reach millions of people without paying anything. So, create social media pages for your brand and engage with your audience.
Identify the best platforms to use and create profiles. Use top social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Understand each platform to get the most from it.
Each platform has a different audience and users interact with your content differently on each one of them. So, upload posts that best suit your audience and use the language and tone they can relate to.
Incorporate images, hashtags, and videos to boost engagement and grow your audience. Use images relevant to the content you are sharing.
Download free stock images on unsplash.com or freepik.com
Write catchy tweets, use live video, and include popular hashtags to attract attention and boost engagement.
Join groups within your niche and be active on all of them. Like and share other people’s posts. Join relevant conversations and share your opinion. Leave constructive and noticeable comments on posts and encourage users to visit your profile and engage with your content.
Create a group and invite people to join. Build an engaged community and upload posts that encourage interaction. Pick one platform for your community and use it to connect with your customers, attract new ones, raise brand awareness, and establish your brand.
Understand your audience and share content they need and value. Ask for feedback and listen to constructive advice.
Offer online customer support to address common issues and send timely responses to questions.
Nurture leads and share content that addresses clients at different stages of the buyer’s journey. For example, provide educational content for customers on the awareness stage and upload product demo content for early adopters.
Open a YouTube channel and use it to promote your content, attract a bigger audience, and improve your brand identity. The best part about starting a YouTube channel is that it’s free. All you need is your time, an effective content strategy, and dedication to get subscribers and convert them into customers and brand ambassadors.
RUN ONLINE CONTESTS
Create a social online contest to grow your audience, increase engagement, build your mailing list, build brand loyalty, generate leads, boost sales, and grow your business.
Consider your brand and audience when creating your contest. Stick to your main message and make sure it represents your brand right. Offer value to your audience and ensure they benefit from the contest.
Brainstorm prize ideas and choose prizes that will add value to participant’s lives. This will help you to get tons of entries and encourage users to engage with your business. Consider your audience’s needs when selecting prizes and give them want they want. Answer key questions; who is my target audience? What are the top 3 things that can help make their lives easier? And how can my business ensure that happens?
Some of the best contest prizes to consider are money, spa gifts, kitchen appliances, vacation for 2, shopping vouchers, limited edition products, free services, free coaching, webinar access, free product upgrades, and free business marketing materials.
Offer free products and include giveaways to encourage people to join. Make the freebies exclusive to participants only to attract attention. For example, you can give away free branded mugs, branded t-shirts, branded caps, an eBook, or 1-month free access to premium content on your membership site to everyone who joins the competition. This is a great way to pique interest and generate buzz for your business.
Online contests are one of the best ways to get free publicity and if you do it right, you can easily increase your conversion rate and reach your goals.
Create your contest with the top social media platforms like Facebook or third-party tools like RafflePress, SweepWidget, or Outgrow.
Implement the best practices and follow the rules given by your chosen platform to succeed.
Promote your upcoming contest on social media platforms to reach a bigger audience.
Tweet about it, upload Facebook posts and use Instagram Stories to raise interest. Write a post about the competition and upload it to your blog. Share the event with your email subscribers. Record a promotional video and upload it to your YouTube channel, your website, and across all social platforms.
Publish a press release to get people excited and keep them looking forward to the competition.
Partner up with top bloggers or another brand to prove credibility, attract lots of attention, and reach a bigger audience.
BUILD RELATIONS WITH JOURNALISTS
Work with reporters to get media coverage and raise brand awareness. Build strong and positive relationships with the media. Identify at least 2 journalists who cover content related to your industry and connect with them.
Convince them to cover your story and write about your business. Understand the journalist’s work before sending your pitch. Read at least 5 articles written by the journalist you want to work with to determine whether they’ll be interested in covering your story or not. If the writer focuses on content related to your niche, start building relations. Connect on social media. Follow the journalist’s profiles and engage with their content.
Once you understand what the reporter does, send in your pitch. Remember, high-profile journalists or media outlets receive countless pitches daily so, make yours count. Write a short, descriptive, and clear email. Get to the point and avoid sending long pitches.
Your email should include important details only such as your business purpose, values, target audience, your product or services, and the reason you want to work with the journalist. Include that in your email and answer three important questions; why do you exist? What do you want to accomplish? And why do you need media coverage?
Explain why your story is relevant to their readers and mention what they’ll benefit from it to convince the journalist to work with you.
Send timely responses to questions and provide your contact details for accessibility. Share links to your blog and relevant social media pages for social proof.
Other media outlets to approach are relevant magazines, newspapers, blogs, television channels, and radio stations.
CREATE NEWSWORTHY EVENTS
Do something newsworthy to get attention from the media. Create noticeable events that will keep editors, journalists, and other media outlets interested in telling your story. The great thing about this is that if you do it right, the media will approach you and not the other way around.
Sponsor or organize a charity event in your community. For example, a sporting event or cooking competition. Channel the money towards a good cause and share the event on social media. Identify at least one group of people who can benefit from your work and use the money you raise to help them in some way. For example, send food or money donations to orphanages, local hospitals, or disability centers.
Contribute to non-profit organizations. Identify and approach one non-profit organization and see what role you can play in helping them reach a specific goal. You can donate stationery, clothing, food packages, computer equipment, or custom sportswear depending on the company you work with.
Find out from the company director if you can mention the organization to your followers and talk about your contributions as a business. If you are allowed to do so, talk about the mission and challenges that the company faces as well as the role you played in helping them meet some of their goals.
Other newsworthy events to publicize are a new product rollout, a grand re-opening, and milestones reached, for instance, a 100 percent increase in sales.
The best thing about organizing newsworthy events is that the press will hardly say no to you when you send in your pitch or ask to be featured on their channels.
GIVE YOUR CLIENTS PRESS
Last but not least, give your customers press. Share client stories with the media to attract attention and reach prospects. Talk to happy clients about their experience with your product or service. Ask them if they’ll be interested in having their stories sent to media outlets. Explain why you want to give them media coverage to convince them to say yes.
Be honest. Make sure your customer knows that you want to market your brand, increase conversion rates, and most importantly get free publicity. If clients are satisfied with your work, they will be happy to help.
Once you get permission to send stories, pitch them to relevant media outlets. Include all the important details such as the business purpose as well as challenges faced and goals achieved.
Explain how your product or service helped the customer overcome problems and meet challenges. Mention how you helped the company transition from where it was to where it desired to be. Highlight the role you played as an organization in addressing employee needs and taking the business a step closer to reaching its goals.
Get the press excited about sharing your story with their readers. Talk about the value you bring to customers’ lives and the role you play in ensuring clients reach their goals.
Giving your client press is a great marketing strategy because it is key to establishing trust, attracting a bigger audience, and convincing prospects to buy from you. So, prioritize it.
You can also share client stories on your social media business pages as well as the company website or blog.
Use Instagram Stories to tell a compelling story.
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