7 Ways to Get Free Publicity for Your Brand

As a business owner, you undoubtedly want as many people as possible to know about your brand. The more people who know about your brand, the more people you will be able to convert into customers, after all. One of the best ways to make as many people as possible aware of your company is by getting as much publicity as you can. Many businesses think you need to spend a huge amount of money on marketing and public relations firms if you want to get lots of publicity, but this is not necessarily the case. Although it can definitely be beneficial to pay a public relations firm or marketing agency to generate publicity when you have something important to announce, or to it is possible to generate free publicity as well. With that in mind, consider some of the best ways to get free publicity for your brand right now.

Promote on Social Media

If your business is not spending a considerable amount of time on social media singing your own praises and being as interesting as you possibly can, then you may be overlooking an excellent modern business marketing tool. One of the best ways to get free publicity for your business is to post about your brand on social media. Of course, it is not enough to be merely present on social media. If you want to use it for publicity purposes, you need to use it to announce new services, to show off your products and what they can do, and create funny or engaging or informative content (ideally all three) so that people take notice of your social media marketing and pass it along by sharing online.

Utilize SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the best tools of the digital age to increase publicity. You can use basic SEO techniques and digital marketing strategies to get your brand's name out there and make people take notice. Whether you write your own press releases and optimize the content or you create a blog that helps people in your target audience with the issue they have, a better your grasp of SEO and website accessibility can certainly lead to more people finding your business for free. If you have no idea how to implement SEO techniques, it may be worth paying a small amount initially to get you started. You can then learn techniques to build upon your paid-for SEO and gain more publicity for free. Incorporating SEO to your marketing strategies to increase your site ranking and traffic can be a great benefit. SEO is already proven for the home service businesses, and it will undoubtedly work for online businesses.

Help a Good Cause

Ensuring corporate social responsibility by way of helping a good cause is one of the nicest ways to get free publicity for your brand. Many small companies think they cannot go down this route for PR because they do not have a lot of money available for opportunities such as sponsoring local school children or donating expensive equipment to a local hospital, but you can donate your time too. If you get your staff together to build homes for people who need them, pick up trash in your local community, or help local schoolchildren learn how to read, for example, you can get just as much positive PR as you would get from donating a check—and you will probably have an amazing time doing so too.

Use Press Releases

Press releases can be used as an excellent source of free publicity in their own right. What are press releases? They are basically a short article that is released to the press whenever something newsworthy happens within your company. For example, you can send one out ahead of a new product launch or when your company hires a prominent new member of staff. You can also send one out when you do good deeds for charity,r when your company goes green, or you create an online course, for example. Many newspapers, trade magazines, and industry websites are crying out for content, so they will agree to post your press release providing it is well-written and has something of note to announce; and this will give you lots of extra publicity for no extra cost other than the time it takes to draft a decent press release.

Win an Award

It is possible for your company to enter itself, or encourage your customers to enter you, into a range of industry awards; and by doing so, you can increase your chances of actually getting an award and therefore getting lots of great free publicity. The key is to be regularly on the lookout for awards for which you may be eligible such as rapid company growth, pleasant work environment, business innovation, or specific advanced technology services like website graphics and photography or even a PCB design collaboration. You can incentivize people to nominate you for awards if you can not do so yourself, and you can often do this simply by asking nicely on social media. So even if you don't think you stand much of a chance, consider entering anyway because you just never know.

Encourage Good Reviews

These days, most people will not even think of making a purchase from a company that they cannot verify as being a legitimate company that treats its customers well. Their primary source for finding this out is often online reviews. So, if you want to get some more free publicity for your brand, encourage your customers to leave reviews and make referrals for your brand. A good way to do this, although not strictly completely free, will not cost you very much at all. Simply enter every customer who leaves a review into a raffle to win a small prize, and you will probably see an uptick in people who are willing to do so. This, in turn, should result in more people being willing to buy from your brand. Of course, it is good reviews you are looking for; so in order to get them, you need to ensure that you do not promise anything you cannot deliver and that you do deliver on your customers' expectations.

Guest Blog

If you, or one of your employees is skilled at writing about things relating to your industry, then a really good way to get lots of free publicity is to write lots of useful and entertaining content and guest post it on industry blogs and magazines that are very well known by your target audience. By doing this, you can set your brand up as an authority and ensure that as many people as possible know about who you are or what you do. You will very soon become a trusted source within your niche and that will encourage more people to make a purchase from your brand. It doesn't just have to be blogs either. Magazines, ebooks, podcasts, radio, and TV appearances can all help to boost your profile and provide good free publicity for your brand.

When you think about gaining publicity for your brand, consider the most important aspects of your organization such as those you might include in a vc pitch deck. When you generate free publicity, you save money that your company can use to develop new products and services, hire more experienced staff, engrave complex graphics onto promotional materials, or create what your business most needs to succeed. So it is always worth trying these easy ideas before you resort to costly techniques when you need to boost your PR.