The business that you have nurtured with blood, sweat, and tears needs to grow to remain alive and well. Growth comes from advertisement. Unfortunately, in today's economy it may be difficult to continue to fund an advertising budget that can quickly be drained by a nice ad in a popular newspaper or magazine. Fortunately, there are ways that you can promote your business without spending a dime.
Word of Mouth
A famous author once said, "Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy." Talk your business up. You have made the investment to offer a service or product in which you believe. Tell others about the business and encourage your satisfied customers to brag about the quality of service and products that you offer. Word of mouth goes along way in advertising.
Network
Whether it be in line at the grocery store, walking your dog, or at the church fellowship dinner spend time getting to know people. Show genuine interest in their lives. If you need to, write down names and tidbits of what your conversation was about so that the next time you meet, that person is no longer a stranger. Self-promotion is much more effective when your number one goal is not self-promotion. Build relationships. Show people that you care. The next time that a need arises for your company's service or product, who will they call? The person who took the time to build a relationship. Put people before profit, and soon profit will be the natural outcome of putting people first.
Internet
There are sites on the internet that allow free advertising. Google free classifieds. Look for sites that promote businesses in your area. Craigslist is one such site that allows you to advertise for free and you can pick the region nearest you.
Radio and Newspaper
Call up your local radio station and inquire if they ever do live radio promos and offer your business as a place for them to have a live remote. This gives the radio station publicity in the community and it also gives you great free advertising as they will be saying we are broadcasting live from...
Also, take the opportunity of contacting your local newspaper. There may be times that writers from your paper are looking to highlight local businesses. Volunteer to be interviewed. It's a great way for the general public to learn more about you as an entrepreneur and your business goals and offerings.
Free Advertising With Every Email You Send
If you don't already have one, create an email signature. Email signatures are brief bits of information automatically pasted at the bottom of every email that you send out. Keep the signature short: listing your name, business name, website(if you have one) and how you may be contacted. That Bean Casserole recipe that you send to Aunt Martha may get sent to hundreds of other people via forwarding and those people will all see your free promotional advertisement.
Free Advertising Due to Charitable Donations
Often times those who give to charities, for instance a children's hospital, will be listed in pamphlets or newsletters that highlight donors. Even though one should never give charitably to get patted on the back, a business will benefit from free advertising because of generosity to a local charitable organization.
Utilize Network Sites
Many people today have accounts set up with networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, etc. For instance, if you have a Facebook account, on the day that you are running a special on a product or a service offered, shout it out to everyone on your Facebook page. Encourage your "friends" to pass the information along. Who knows, maybe someone needs a deal on lawn care or a discounted price on that new fangled gizmo that everyone's talking about.
Business slow? Finances drained? Take heart. Implement some of these free advertising strategies and dream up some of your own. Soon the benefits of free advertising will become very clear, and your checkbook will thank you as well.