Friday, February 13, 2009

The Top 3 Ways to Get Free Advertising on the Internet

By Alex Wu

Company budgets are tightening world wide to compensate for the economic crisis that has spread across the globe.Give your employer a reason to keep you by finding free advertising space online.Maintaining a free advertising campaign online takes planning, patience and networking skills.Here are the top three ways to get quality free advertising space on the Internet.

Press and related media coverage are hands down the best method for free advertising.Whether you meant to be in the news or you are manufacturing the news of your company or product, you need to learn how to take advantage of the media.One of the best ways to get your news message or press bite out there is to put it in the form of a press release.

Press releases are easy to write and easy to circulate.Go online and look at examples of press releases from your industry.Be sure to craft a couple of possible story angles into the press release to make it easy for journalists to find the story.To circulate your press release to a large audience utilize free press release sites.By submitting your press release to the site it will be viewed immediately by thousands of content editors and writers around the globe.

Make a list of your chosen press release sites and check off your submissions as you go.So how do you monitor the results of your new free public advertising campaigns?Easy, utilize a tool like Google's Google Alerts that will send you notification when your company is mentioned.Choose the keywords that you want in your search parameter including your website name, company and product name.

The second best method for free online advertising is to get direct coverage or advertising space on blogs and community websites that are geared to your industry or demographic.Contact editors directly and pitch stories based off of your press release.Ask if they would like to trade advertising spaces or if they would be willing to post an advertisement for you on their site to add content.

Make friends with editors by maintaining contact and building a professional relationship through courtesy and persistence.Often times editors will not have room to cover your company or product but you can set yourself up for future coverage by keeping your presence in front of their minds with monthly calls.

The third best way to receive free advertising is to spearhead a giveaway or contest in collaboration with another company, service provider or non profit organization.Make sure that through negotiations both parties benefit from the endeavor.You will want to receive the emails of participants for future marketing.Also ask about placing an advertisement on their website that links through to your website and promotes the contest.

Follow through on the new client leads you will get from the contest.Send out creative emails with promotions to your potential customers.If you can win over customers in the process you will gain valuable word of mouth advertising.One of the most powerful methods of free advertising is through word of mouth.Capitalize on that by making sure your customers have a good experience. - 16651

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