Can free advertising provide effective results? Where is the best place to place it? free advertisements advertising? What is the difference between good free online advertising and why is it beneficial for business? How to competently create advertising for free and increase company profits? What are the advantages of a flash mob for creating awareness about a brand throughout the country? The answers to these questions are in our article.

What are the benefits of free advertising

The obvious benefit of running free advertising is that it doesn't cost you anything. For business, such cost reduction will be very useful. Today, many buyers are starting to get annoyed by overly intrusive (and also very expensive) advertising. Therefore, to search necessary information More and more people are visiting free classifieds sites.

An interesting and proven fact is that users perceive free advertising as more objective. At the same time, free advertising confidently competes with paid advertising in terms of its effectiveness. Over time, as the company grows, it is not always a good idea to use free advertising. But at first, or even in the work of a medium-sized business, free advertising becomes a reliable tool for powerful promotion and justified savings.

Stickers and billboards with inverted alphabet in the subway

Elena Kolmanovskaya,

Chief Editor Yandex company, Moscow

We decide to launch advertising campaign when a great idea appears that meets 2 conditions - we like it and it is useful to people. So, for example, we decided to place stickers in the subway: “The driver does not give information, all questions should be addressed to Yandex.” Or street advertising - placing billboards on which the first word in the company name was an inverted “I”, this way managed to attract attention and provoke discussions.

What should free advertising be like?

You should carefully consider the issues of professional and competent preparation of free advertising. An advertising message can be delivered in different ways - graphically or using text, or it can combine both options.

The main condition is that you need a laconic, catchy and succinct ad. Modern users do not have the desire or time to get acquainted with the huge offer. That's why best option– graphic images with a minimum of text, which should accurately reflect the meaning and essence of its message. Learn to create effective advertising your company on course."

Guerrilla marketing as a way to advertise yourself for free

Companies spend 5 million rubles. annually to attract new customers, and consumers no longer pay attention to product advertising, as they see 2 thousand advertisements a day. One solution to the problem is guerrilla marketing, distinguishing brands from competitors at a minimum cost. The editors of the Commercial Director magazine have prepared a review of two examples where guerrilla marketing worked perfectly.

40 free advertising options

1. Newspaper advertisements. In the print media market, only newspapers with commercial and private advertisements remain among the free ones. If you manage to disguise your commercial ad as a private message, you can get a free advertising tool. Nothing bad will happen if the editors detect your attempts at such a trick - at most they will block the submission of advertisements from the current number.

2. Social stands. They are located on the territory of almost every yard. It is not forbidden to pin charges on them, but this method is unlikely to be particularly effective. After all, such stands are studied mainly only by people of the older generation.

3. Stamp printing with a memorable and distinct logo and information about the company. This option will not please you with its special aesthetics. Although we have been using such free advertising for more than 7 years, it confirms its fairly high effectiveness, especially in the areas of repair, household services etc.

6. Competent and understandable form of signature in the work e-mail. You should indicate not only contacts, your full name, and area of ​​activity. You can supplement the information with a short advertising message.

7. Mailings. You can organize your newsletter on your website, or use a specialized service or programs. You should be quite careful, since such advertising is often regarded by recipients as spam. Therefore, for proper effectiveness, it is important to correctly compose an ad by contacting a professional copywriter.

9. A business card is like free advertising. It should be summarized Commercial offer on the back of your business card. There is no need to provide contact information at all. foreign language– for foreigners it is better to prepare a separate business card.

10. Online auctions. An effective tool for organizing sales and attracting new customers.

11. Conferences and forums on the Internet for free advertising. There must be a message that is relevant to this conference or forum, otherwise it will soon be deleted.

Start a blog secretary

Inna Alekseeva,

CEO PR Partner company, Moscow

Savvy users usually notice hidden advertisements right away. In particular, when too correct spelling the company's brand (Ecco, not Ekko - after all, the second option is easier to write), intrusive advertising.

An excellent alternative to hidden advertising is to directly indicate the interest of the user for whom the product is being promoted. For example, a blog secretary will officially lead discussions on behalf of the company, defending the brand's reputation and conveying information about new products.

12. Joint marketing. Several companies are engaged in mutual advertising - 8-9 organizations, for more than . Joint advertising efforts allow you to distribute advertising more effectively, distributing brochures of your company and partners, placing logos and signs with each other, and cooperating in sales organization. As a result, advertising effectiveness increases at lower costs.

13. Aggregators of goods and services. Specialized catalogs for posting your products with prices and photos - similar to an online store. Typically, news publication and other features are allowed here. Such examples are the resources tiu.ru, pulscen.ru, etc.

14. Forums for advertising. Moderators and administrators of such resources are not very fond of free advertising - they delete information almost immediately. A more flexible approach is needed here. We select all thematic forums and the largest forums in your area. We read the topics and respond meaningfully. Only after understanding who you will be communicating with can you unobtrusively convey information about your product. Sometimes you can agree with the moderators to create your own separate topic in which you will act as an expert. For example, “Everything you wanted to know about buying laptops” if you are selling computer equipment.

15. Questions and answers services. Here you need to answer the user’s questions in a detailed, relevant and simple manner. In this case, the information in the message will solve someone's problem and convey information about your product. Examples of such services are otvety.google.ru and otvet.mail.ru.

16. Advertising with videos. You can also think about creating training videos, or prepare unusual advertising, attracting attention. We post any recordings made on video hosting sites - for example, Youtube. The main rule is maximum detailed description video so that video hosting users and search engines could find him.

17. Article in a magazine. Free magazines and online publications. If you consider yourself an expert in a certain field, you have useful information For readers, you can agree to write an article for free. But such free advertising pays off - you get an additional way to communicate about your company.

Useful content is more effective than direct advertising

Natalia Radchenkova,

Marketing Director of the Alfa Content service

Publications in industry magazines, media, blogs, in social networks about what worries consumers always meets with a positive reaction from the target audience. If you provide useful information and a solution to a problem, you will get many more loyal customers than if you simply introduce yourself with an advertising slogan. However, independent searches for really good sites that will provide free placement often lead to nowhere.

Today, for very little money, content marketing can be ordered from specialists, and every ruble spent will be repaid with interest. We recently made placements for a spare parts store on a popular auto portal and auto YouTube channels. More than half a million people saw the materials, store sales doubled, and referrals continue to this day without any financial costs. The bonus from useful articles and for business development is obvious.

19. Barter with banners. There are many providers on the Internet who are willing to provide space for your website on their server for free, but will only place a banner. Free hosting is acceptable for hosting a website for a start-up business.

20. Start a blog. IN Lately The popularity of blogging is growing significantly. An advertising offer can also be published here, but only if you can keep an online diary yourself.

21. Free advertising paired with another company. You agree with an interested company to produce advertising leaflets at its expense - advertising for both the partner and yours will be placed on them on different sides. You will distribute such leaflets.

You can avoid advertising costs with the help of partners

Andrey Khromov,

General Director of the company "Aristos", Moscow

For example, a company in the automotive components supply market agrees to place advertising on taxi cars (or on seat headrests). And the supplier will recommend this taxi to its clients. Costs in this case are limited only by the price of printing leaflets.

Such symbioses are most common in the field ecommerce. Most often, we come to an agreement that the online store includes our advertising leaflets with a promo code in each order to receive an additional bonus or discount. We do the same when delivering our orders.

Here it is important to choose a suitable partner for cooperation. You can work effectively even with conditional competitors, which are other online stores. Although it is better to look for more suitable options - for example, for a shoe seller it will be a shoe care company, for a tour operator - a beach accessories store, etc.

22. Advertising in public pages through articles. You can find it on social networks thematic groups– study the content of one of the public pages, write a new article suitable for this community. The group should also be mentioned in the text. Then we publish the article in our public page and report it to the moderator of the selected community. At a minimum, he will post a link to your community, and at most, he will publish the entire article in his group, indicating the authorship and link.

23. Become your own advertisement. If there is not enough money for advertising, become one yourself. Inform everyone about the company - including relatives, friends, acquaintances, casual interlocutors, etc. Put a sticker indicating the company on your car, wear a T-shirt with the logo, etc.

Provide information about the company on review sites

Alexey Shtarev,

Executive Director of SeoPult System

An excellent and completely free way for a company to promote itself is to communicate with people who write reviews. If they write about you well, thank them and promise goodies; if they write badly about you, show your participation and help them understand the situation. It will only cost you time, but the effectiveness of such work is difficult to overestimate. There are many services for searching reviews, in our system these are: free SERM module, which is used by many businesses.

24. Communicate and tell about your product/ company/service. Do not forget to participate in all public events where there will be an opportunity to convey information about advertising - including press conferences, seminars, exhibitions, fairs, forums, etc.

25. Participation in various competitions to receive grants, subsidies, or status the best company in your field. There is always a chance to win here, especially since the media usually writes about the event participants, providing free advertising for you.

26. Word of mouth – is considered the most effective advertising option. After all, people trust the advice of friends and acquaintances more. Even though you still have rare clients, you should inspire them through small incentives. You can even promise a percentage of the profits for referring friends.

27. Offer potential buyers a discount on products. You can sell at cost or dump - we need to attract the attention of the target audience, luring them away from competitors. However, you need to know when to stop so as not to make your business unprofitable.

28. Search engine optimization of the site. Inner work– optimization of the content and structure of the site. External factor– work with the reference mass on the site. Here you get an advantage over commercial sites - because you publish unique, original information. Therefore, users link to non-commercial sites more often.

29. Exchange articles with other sites. Advertising in the form of links to your website placed in articles from various resources. Special articles should be prepared that can be shared with other resources. That is, you prepare articles for advertising for free in the form of a link or banner to your website. But the articles must be of high quality so that the site owner wants to publish them.

• Unique selling proposition: examples, development tips

31. SMS mailing. An effective tool for advertising existing and new company clients about news and promotions. Today, various free mailing services are available on the Internet, although they usually become paid after the test period.

32. Making memes– in the form of pictures with a funny caption. Such advertising is based on viral spread, effectively declaring itself on the Internet.

33. Organize flash mobs. A pre-planned mass action. The more creative and original the planned scenario, the more potential clients will be able to attract. Moreover, such events are actively covered by various media, and people tell them to their friends.

34. Live advertising– cheap, but very effective tool advertising. If properly organized, such advertising can be very successful. The basis of such advertising is that a person wears suits, accessories, clothes, signs with advertising on himself, sometimes even corresponding tattoos, etc.

35. Souvenir products– company advertising is placed on stationery. Such products are distributed free of charge. A very effective tool when the client uses your souvenirs– pens, notebooks, notepads, etc.

• Promotion on Instagram: who is it suitable for and how to start it

36. Unidentified urban object. Strange objects are put on public display that may not be related to your products. For example, in different areas of the capital, cars covered with advertising leaflets were placed to advertise the film “Fool”.

37. Street performance. The UMMC-Agro company accompanied the launch of the new brand to the market with a street event in the city. The green elves took part in pagan dances, invoking summer and mentioning Mr. Green (brand name).

38. Graffiti, with an image of a company logo or product. Suitable for application to walls and sidewalks.

39. Intriguing news that can interest people and motivate them to forward them to their friends. For example, on large banners of a pharmacy chain there was a message “Clip this coupon and get a discount.” News appeared in various media that he cut out a 2-meter banner, for which he received a discount at the pharmacy.

40. Go for a trick. The director of a costume store hardened a thousand coins, each coated with a layer of gold and silver. When purchasing, the seller discreetly placed such a coin in his jacket pocket. The buyer was delighted with this find and was sure to tell everyone he knew about it at every opportunity.

Free seminars for clients

Vladimir Sizykh,

Marketing Director, Smart Business Technologies, Moscow

The number of participants in one seminar is 15-30 people, half come to the office, half prefer online classes. Among the costs for the company is payment for employee time, and about 5-10 thousand rubles are spent on tea, coffee, and catering. With the help of seminars, 2 serious problems are solved:

• informing customers about services;
• establishing feedback with customers.

It is unlikely that it will be effective to sell services at seminars. After all, the event is usually attended by people who do not have sufficient authority to make the final purchasing decision. But they can tell you what their companies need, and the information they receive can be an important tool for successful marketing work. Another aspect is that seminars become a successful option for working with clients, but only if you have a reputation as an expert. Otherwise, such an event will be too small.

• Trigger emails: how to achieve good conversions with almost no effort

3D drawings are an inexpensive way to advertise

Maria Zborovskaya,

business analyst at Prozbor, Yekaterinburg

The return obtained usually significantly exceeds the investment - approximately 3-4 times. For example, street artists painted several cups of coffee with the company logo in front of the Loft Cafe in Donetsk. The costs amounted to 10 thousand rubles - they paid off in the form of revenue in a few days. Even at the stage of creating such advertising, the number of visitors increased by 30%. Moreover, many took photographs and published pictures on the Internet, posted information and city newspapers, thereby increasing the recognition of the cafe and the number of visitors by 40%.

What to do before launching a free advertising campaign

Step 1. You should decide on target audience of your product. If possible, you need to get the most detailed and detailed portrait of the client. With what emotions, where and under what circumstances does he make a purchase? You need to assess whether your products meet the expectations and needs of your target audience.

Step 4. We calculate options for the development of events. We need at least two scenarios for possible developments - optimistic and pessimistic.

Information about the author and company

Elena Kolmanovskaya, editor-in-chief of Yandex, Moscow. "Yandex" - Russian portal, offering users key Internet services, including Internet search, website directories, payment system, maps, encyclopedias, email, spam filtering system, free hosting, catalog of store product offerings and much more. etc. The company makes money from the sale of advertising, 80% of turnover comes from contextual advertising. According to research companies TNS Gallup Media, FOM and Komkon, Yandex is the largest resource on the RuNet in terms of audience size.

Inna Alekseeva, General Director of PR Partner, Moscow. Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and the Faculty of Philosophy of Novosibirsk state university. Trained in the field of sociology, PR and journalism in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany. Since 1999, she worked in various positions in PR agencies, then as PR director at the DOKI real estate agency, and headed the PR service at DeltaCredit Bank. Took first place among heads of PR agencies in the ranking of Profile magazine (2012). Entered the top 10 most influential women in Russian business, published by The Moscow Times (2012); won the “Impeccable Reputation” category at the international award “Business Women – 2014”. Author of trainings and seminars “Training top officials to work with the media”, “Marketing top officials”, “Secrets of effective PR”, “100% PR: reboot”, etc.

Vladimir Sizykh, Marketing Director of Smart Business Technologies, Moscow. CJSC "RDTEKH - Smart Business Technologies". Field of activity: management and technology consulting, development and implementation information systems. Number of employees: 286. Annual turnover: 2.029 billion rubles.

Andrey Khromov, General Director of the company "Aristos", Moscow. Aristos LLC. Area of ​​activity: management of the Philips branded online store (www.shop.philips.ru). Number of staff: 80

Maria Zborovskaya, business analyst at Prozbor, Yekaterinburg. Prozbor LLC. Field of activity: information and consulting support for commercial and financial activities organizations. Main clients: industrial and trading companies Ural Federal District, working in the b2b and b2c markets (projects for sales automation, calculation of investment efficiency, etc.)

Manually posting information to message boards and resource directories is a long and tedious process. You waste many hours of your precious time doing routine and monotonous work - filling out many registration forms. You're not just wasting time, you're wasting your money.

We suggest you forget about this problem once and for all!

Smart Poster is a powerful program designed to fully automate the process of sending to message boards, resource directories, FFA, and guest books.

It is enough to configure the program once for a particular directory (board) in order to subsequently send out mailings with one click of the mouse.

Main features of the program:

• The multi-threaded distribution module allows you to send messages at the highest possible speed for the Internet connection being used.
• The most powerful parser, working with both an object-oriented document model and plain text, allows you to add any boards, directories, guest books to the program database, and send messages to them, regardless of whether they use Java scripts, sessions, cookies, control pictures, dynamically changing fields, etc.
• Support for multi-page forms. You can add complex forms to the program database, the submission of which consists of several stages (for example, filling out an authorization form and a message adding form). In this case, any number of intermediate forms (stages) is supported.
• The built-in database manager allows you to create database backups, import/export address lists, group lists by category, and quickly check addresses for availability in order to identify non-working resources.
• Function of automatic search for new message boards and resource directories. The program contains a parser for the results of four major search engines (Google, Yandex, Yahoo, MSN). It is enough to write a search query and the program will independently crawl all pages with system results, go to each address, analyze the page for the presence of forms and compliance of its fields with the specified criteria, after which the found addresses will be added to the program database. The batch mode for setting field values ​​makes it easy to configure all found addresses for mailing.
• Supports the ability to send mailings through a proxy server.
• Function for determining Google PR and Yandex citation index.
• Function for checking addresses for existence.
• POP3 auto-confirmer for automatic confirmation of registration in Internet resources.
• Built-in proxy manager with the function of checking proxy servers for existence. Socks and Http proxies are supported.
• Database modularity. You can easily create databases with your categories and addresses. Databases can be easily saved into one file for transferring to another machine. While saving the database to a file, it can be encrypted for subsequent exchange or sale.
• Advanced search for addresses within the program database using any criteria.

Why Smart Poster is better than other advertising programs:

• Smart Poster is very easy to use. Any user, regardless of skill level, can easily get started with the program.
• Search for new resources in a fully automatic mode by analyzing search engine results
• Thanks to the multi-threaded architecture of the mailing engine, Smart Poster works faster than other advertising mailing programs. Broadcasting to several hundred boards takes on average only a few minutes. Users have the ability to manually set the required number of streams, which allows them to send out messages at maximum speed.
• You do not need to have any specific knowledge in order to add new boards to the program database.

Who just needs the Smart Poster program

All users of the Smart Poster program receive:

• Free board database updates.
• Free program updates.

Let's check the compass. If you do not use any of the following means of distributing advertising on the Internet, why not? You know well the tool that has been neglected, you have studied its functionality, tested it and found it not the best option? Then everything is fine - indeed, every business has its own methods.

Or have you not even tried to use this tool? Or did they not know about its existence? If so, you're a little behind the times, and it's time to find out more about what you're missing.

Your own website

Let's not talk much about this - I devote a lot of space and time to articles about what a website should be, how to promote it, and similar issues. Here I will say only one thing: you must have it.

Banner advertising

When properly designed and well placed, it can produce a powerful effect. Naturally, it needs to be developed in several versions (text and banner design) and tested which works best, so that later you don’t waste money on placing options that “didn’t hit” the target audience.

E-mail newsletter

Maintaining email newsletters requires more effort - you need to collect a subscriber base, write a series of first letters and then maintain readers’ interest in the newsletter. If you send a letter to your mailing list once every few weeks, when you urgently need to sell something, readers will quickly unsubscribe from such mailings. It is necessary to dilute advertising and offers with interesting content. So, mailing takes some effort, but it's worth it. After all, with its help you offer goods and services to those Internet users who have already expressed interest once - subscribed to the newsletter.

Social media

An excellent means of advertising distribution. The good thing is that you can advertise in a targeted manner - that is, by selecting your target audience. They are also great at launching a viral effect – after all, on social networks it is very easy for users to recommend something to each other.
Arrange

Viral Marketing

Since we are talking about it, let’s say a few separate words about this method of advertising distribution. You can trigger the effect of viral spread of advertising yourself - for example, by promising some kind of gift to users who complete certain condition. For example, those who invited five friends to your site. These five friends also want to receive a gift and invite their friends. The condition is not difficult to fulfill, and advertising spreads quickly, and with a personal recommendation from a friend. The main thing is to choose a gift that is attractive enough (a book, a discount coupon, something like that) so that the person wants to spend a few minutes of his time. There are now a number of services on the Internet that allow you to automate this process.

Forums, groups and other platforms

Forums, groups and other platforms that correspond to your topic. If you visit them from time to time, leave useful posts and comments - that is, become recognizable and authoritative, then your promotional offers will get a very good response. Even just leaving an advertisement in such a place can bring you new clients - after all, this place is simply saturated with people from your target audience. But it’s better to “cultivate” it like a garden in order to reap a rich harvest for clients not just once, but constantly.

Notice boards

Their functionality is not rich, but they have one serious advantage - they are very well indexed by search engines. Thus, leaving a notice on the board with correctly selected keywords, you can get a good effect.

So I have a question for you. Which of these online advertising tools are you familiar with?

What are you already using? What do you still not use and why?

Try to implement these methods without delay.

To successfully promote an online store, it is important to periodically conduct technical audit site. It can be done automatically using the Seo-Tool-Vosion program