Free Advertising: Does It Exist & How To Do It

If something is free, that means you haven’t paid for it. So, are there ways to advertise your business without spending a penny? Technically, there are. However, there are also ways to achieve ‘free’ advertising in another sense.

You see, advertising usually works as such: you pay to get your adverts placed somewhere – this can be online, on TV, in a newspaper, on a billboard, etc. There is another type of free advertising where you do spend some money, but the actual advertising of your business is done for free. Effectively, this is done by using your customers to advertise your business for you.

With that in mind, here are some ways to take advantage of free advertising:

Social media comments

Social media replies and comments are easy ways to advertise your business. All you have to do is pick viral tweets or celebrity/influencer accounts and comment on their posts. Comment normal things – don’t actively advertise your business or post links! It’s completely free to do, and you have a huge chance of multiple users clicking your name when they see you’re a brand. As a result, this might drive traffic to your site.

Who knows, you may even get lucky and see one of the influencers contact you asking for free stuff. So, you can start influencer marketing as well!

Social media giveaways

Another tactic that takes advantage of the power of social media. This is one of those things that you do spend money on, but the advertising is free. Host a giveaway on social media where you give free products or money to one person. As part of the giveaway, everyone has to share the post, add it to their story, like it, follow you, and tag a friend.

Simple requirements, but it means that your post is getting shared around loads. Thus, it’s free exposure and advertising for your brand. A small upfront cost leads to excellent advertising benefits.

Free gifts

Handing out free gifts to consumers and customers will also help you advertise for free. Give people things like custom stickers, bags, coffee cups, lanyards, etc. All of these products are branded, meaning your customers will literally be walking advertisements for you.

Make the free gifts as functional as possible to encourage your customers to use them. They’ll go about their daily life advertising your business to everyone that sees them. It is such a smart and effective way of spreading brand awareness as far as the eye can see.

There you have it; free advertising does exist and it is really effective. You can see from the final two ideas how the act of advertising your business is free. You spend money on the giveaway or the free gifts, but after that the advertising and promotion you receive come with no costs at all. Ideas like these are really helpful for emerging businesses with small marketing budgets. You can’t afford to keep paying for online ads or massive TV adverts. So, you need to think of sneaky ways to expose your business for free.