When you are deciding to promote your business, you can use either advertising or you can use publicity. If you have read any of my columns before, I have always been an advocate of using publicity and in fact, I only promote my website through publicity.
You might think Im crazy, but its worked out for me. In the time that Ive been doing this, I have expended almost no money, which allows me to sink even more into my business in other ways. Traditional advertising, both online and off, are often a bigger waste of money than most other things your business does.
People are bombarded with advertising almost every moment of every day and are not waiting for you to come and try to sell them something more. Because of this, more people are wary of advertising each and every day. This also means that you must learn to adapt to this shifting environment and that means using publicity to promote as much of your businesses as possible.
Publicity is something someone else writes or says about you when you do something good, interesting or noteworthy. Because of this, things that are promoted through publicity are often considered much more by the prospective customer than something hawked directly by the seller.
Publicity comes through a great many venues such as press releases, referrals, search engines, viral marketing and anything else that is presented to a prospective buyer without your direct influence.
The problem is that it takes someone to start the ball rolling, and that is often yourself. With this in mind, you should use press releases and referral links to boost your search engine ranking as well as to bring in new customers directly from those pages.
Publicity is also something that can be much easier than you might think. You do not necessarily need a professional, though one often helps. Many people dont have the necessary objectivity to write about your businesses from a neutral sense and this is essential if you want to develop massive publicity.
Good luck!
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