In fact here’s a top 10 list of way to have advertising frequency at zero cost.
- Have a blog for your brand or company
- Have a myspace page
- Advertise on youtube (even if you create it with your handycam)
- Have a website with free hosting
- Use chalk art on sidewalks for branded messages (with permission)
- Tell your friends – yes, using your voice
- Email your ‘permission’ database
- Sample your product (if it only costs ‘time’)
- Use second life as a brand forum
- Have an offer which deserves free PR
- Guerilla outdoor (risky bonus method)
Feel free to comment and add your ideas to this non-exhaustive list.
You could also potentially seek out well known and respected personalities that need your product or service and put in place a profit share arrangement – for the tangible results they have on your business (distribution, sales etc). So Natural Foods put together a similar type of arrangement with Ian Thorpe.
A “low cost” advertising solution that is often utilised for new consumer products, is the very effective use of visually stimulating and interactive Point Of Purchase. Red Bull, V Energy Drink, Mars, Coke Zero, Ferrero Rocher (Tic Tac) are just a few examples of organisations that have utilised low cost mediums (counter cards, flyers, cash register change mats, front counter merchandising units etc) to give their products a point of difference and more importantly influence the consumer at the point of transaction.
Have a product so remarkable that you can’t avoid it becoming a word-of-mouth success.
Good, I see it in another aspect.
Where comes the traffic –
from search engine,social bookmark,
myspace, youtub, email list….
You could advertise on your car. One of the most mobile and versatile ways to create visualisation of you product or service is to put artwork on your car. Take it too public events where you can maximise your exposure. Some small cost involved in doing this but you are only limited by your imagination.
Is Second Life actually free? Surely a “presence” in Second Life is somewhat overrated as it’s unclear how many folks you’re really encountering. Also it is extremely random in terms of the target. The last count I saw claimed 1.9m residents, of which 10% had sent more then 40 hours there… but for an Aussie firm less than 1.9% of the users where from down this way…
Source: http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/02/09/europe-takes-lead-in-second-life-users/
Other free options include:
– adding product information to your email signature
– posting information on web forums (with the signature of use again)
Other almost free options include:
– wearing a T-shirt with product information/URL on it
– bumper stickers with a URL (even cheaper variation on Alex’s excellent suggestion above)
cool blog