Doing something without advertising is like winking at a beautiful girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does” S. H. Britt
Is there such a thing as free advertising? There sure is but sadly many are unaware of where and how to leverage on free advertising. Some are even unaware of the possibility of advertising for free. It is common knowledge that many companies the world over spend huge sums of money on advertisement via both the electronic and print media. Owing to the benefits of advertising, many media houses are making lots of money off the backs of many companies. It is also an open secret that even global brands such as coca cola do not take advertising for granted. Their adverts still run on television screens. They have a clear comprehension of the value of advertising.
Advertising is obviously so essential and yet there are business start-ups, small scale businesses and individuals venturing into entrepreneurship who have little to no capital to invest into conventional advertising, as in paid-for advertising. Sounds like a quandary? Should not be so. This article is written particularly with this category of businesses in mind. Running your business in obscurity is a recipe for business failure. The reality however, is that there is a sure way out of running your business in obscurity. Permit me to share some thoughts on free advertising that have proven to work for me and for many others.

Volunteer your services:
Many do not like the idea of volunteerism especially in business circles since it brings in no immediate profits in monetary terms. However, I dare say its a feasible idea for start-ups and individuals whose line of businesses are unknown. What it does is that it exposes your expertise, skill or service to the market you want to reach. In creating exposure and visibility, profitable business connections are made and your skill-set is sharpened. Before you know it, you are being paid for your services.
Provide quality products and services
Be the best at what you do. Hone your skills. Provide products and services that meet client specifications and excites them. A happy client is most likely going to recommend your product or service to others. This is what is termed grapevine. Client base will increase and so will sales in the long run. Never for once take clients for granted.

Advertise on free classified websites:
There are numerous sites that provide the platform to advertise your products and services for free. Sounds implausible? Such sites are easy to find and access. Websites such as tornaton.com, oxl.com, businessghana.com, bebree.com, global-free-classified provide the platform to literally advertise your products, services, and businesses to a global market, all for free. You simply register with them, as in create an account with them and you are ready to go, simply by following simple steps to have your adverts posted.

Advertise on social media sites:
Whereas others may be more concerned about socializing via social media, business start-ups, small scale enterprises and individuals venturing into entrepreneurship will do well if focus is fixed on promoting their goods, services and expertise. You may advertise freely using your account on Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter and many such social media sites. Also worth-noting is the fact that some of these social media sites offer users the opportunity to create “pages” to promote a variety of causes, businesses, products and services, all for free.
It ought to be established that all these sites I have mentioned have some services that can only be used for a fee (charges are relatively low) but truth be told, you can do without those services, at least for now; your adverts can still be placed and can still reach large segments of your target audience if it is done well and overtime.

Join professional websites:
Join professional sites in your area of expertise, business or industry and that offer free membership opportunities. These platforms provide professional networking opportunities. Over time, the more one is involved with these networks online, the more exposure one gets. Some offer free advertising opportunities on their platforms. If you are a writer for instance, you may join writers.net, faithwriters.com, booksie.com, short-stories.net and the likes.
The above suggestions are by no means exhaustive. The world of free advertising is an ever growing world. One must keep abreast with the times. Do Google searches periodically. There is so much more you can discover and implement to showcase your brands not only locally but internationally. Meanwhile the more you make use of the various avenues I have identified, the better you become at optimizing your adverts for better results.
I wish to also state that for greater impact and for a wider reach, it will be advisable to employ several avenues of free advertising and this can be done concurrently. Wish you the best in your bid to showcase your business, goods, services, expertise and brand to your target market.

The internet has revolutionized the way that people communicate. Things that used to be difficult to accomplish, such as finding a job, searching for goods, or looking for a specific service, can be done in a matter of minutes, by utilizing the internet as your search tool. Free advertising makes it easy to advertise different options to the public.

This form of advertising is extremely beneficial to business personnel and consumers. The good thing about using this method to market is there are no risk associated with it. You will never lose anything, which makes the returns ten times better than if you were using paid campaigns.

There are a lot of small business owners that choose to market their businesses through this medium. This way, they do not have to worry about losing any money, while their businesses are still growing. However, they can easily use this form of marketing to get their business in front of the right people at the right time.

When an individual decides to post ads for their business in this manner, they are opening up the possibility to become better acquainted with the public. They are putting their business name out there, so people know that your business exists. Through this form of marketing, you will be able to share and connect with people that are looking for the type of service that you offer.

Despite all of the benefits that go along with engaging in this marketing form, there are a lot of skeptics that do not believe in the power of marketing through free methods. Many business personnel have been taught that the only way to make money in a business is to spend money. However, this is not true.

Marketing in this method can work, if you know where to post. This is one of the hardest things for new business people to determine. There are a lot of different places on the internet, where you can post. However, determining the best places to post can be daunting.

To ensure the success of your free advertising campaign, you need to research your market. Try to identify where the majority of the niche market that your product services is going to online. For example, many people check out social media websites. A great way to promote your business without paying anything is to use these sites to your advantage. There are many ways to get your company name in front of the right people, you just need to have a game plan and a follow through.

Effectively promoting and marketing a product, service, website, or brand online can be quite the challenge in todays competitive environment, requiring a multi-faceted approach and a significant investment of at least time and effort.For companies that are serious about getting their brand name out there on the World Wide Web, paying an experienced team of experts to do all the hard work seems to make the most sense from an investing standpoint. Still, even with an extensive advertising budget, simply deciding what to invest in first can seem like a daunting task when youre just starting a campaign from scratch.
To provide a broad understanding of the main components of internet marketing, weve listed the following three promotion types that are essential in every marketing campaign.

Search Engine Optimization

Any website that aims to receive a large number of visitors on a daily basis should work to increase organic traffic through SEO. Organic traffic comes from visitors that stumble upon your site naturally while searching for a topic or keyword in a search engine like Google. By writing and posting content that targets popular searches or answers popular queries, youll be able to attract targeted traffic and, most importantly, if you can obtain #1 rankings, your site will be showing up at the top of Google whenever someone searches for a specific term or phrase, which is of course is a reputation booster.

2. Social Networking and Social Media

Every internet marketing campaign should involve the creation and ongoing maintenance of multiple social networking accounts. Social media marketing can be defined as the practice of posting interesting and entertaining media to your social networking accounts so that it can be seen and shared by all of your followers, who then share it with their friends, creating the commonly mentioned “viral traffic” effect. You should devote a significant portion of your time to keeping social accounts updated and posting the best new content you can find or create.

3. PPC and Other Advertising Methods

If youve ever browsed the internet for more than a minute, youve probably seen a text or banner ad before. Theyre ubiquitous online, with advertising networks like Google Adwords making it easy for anyone to launch a campaign and have their ads posted on relevant sites in their niche the same day. For starters, you should be learning how to use Googles pay-per-click (PPC) services to attract targeted visitors. A PPC advertising scheme only requires you to pay a set amount every time a web surfer clicks on one of your ads and is brought to the landing page on your site.

Bringing it All Together

After you attract a decent amount of traffic from the SEO and social media efforts, and have started getting conversions with the PPC, you can then calculate, on average, how much youre having to spend on PPC before seeing a desired action (i.e. a sales or newsletter sign-up) and from there youll be able to work out a rough estimate of how much it will cost you per conversion using PPC investments alone.

Its truegolf advertising and club marketing is going local, but perhaps not in the way you imagine. You may be thinking that your golf advertising and club marketing strategies have always been local, or maybe youve taken your club marketing campaign online, but arent getting the local hits youd like. Thats why your golf advertising strategies need a makeover, and that makeover should consist of local SEO club marketing.

You may be wondering what local SEO is and what it can do for your golf advertising campaign. Well, for starters, like all SEO, or search engine optimization strategies, the goal of local SEO is to drive more traffic to your golf course or private clubs web site, but with local SEO, you wont be getting just any kind of web traffic; youll be getting the kind of traffic that is most likely to turn into increased golfers and membership and for your course or club. That is, local SEO can enhance your club marketing campaign by attracting web visitors who live near your golf course and are therefore, much more likely to become a member of your course or club.

Local SEO will maximize your golf advertising efforts by connecting by ranking you on page 1 of Google places and other local directories like Bing and Yahoo. That way, when members of your community go online to find a gold course or private club near their home, theyll find your site quickly and easily. On the other hand, you can rest assured that your competitors are using local SEO for their club marketing campaigns, so if local web users dont find you on the web, theyll find your competitors instead. Dont let this happen to you; hop on the local SEO bandwagon today.

A good golf advertising campaign which harnesses the power of local SEO can prevent this from happening and make sure that your course or clubs web site appears at the top of search engine results pages when web users search keywords relevant to your site and location to search for golf courses and clubs nearby.

Another great advantage of local SEO is that its much less expensive than Pay-Per-Click advertising. With all the money youll save, you may be able to afford the services of a local SEO expert to make your golf advertising and club marketing efforts even more effective. For example, Increase Club Profits has a local search engine club marketing service designed to enhance your online golf advertising campaign and save you lots of time and effort in the process. That way, youll have more time to devote to making your golf course or private club a place where potential members will enjoy being. After all, thats what you do best, so why not leave the local SEO marketing to the professionals? Club marketing is what they do best!

Dont miss this opportunity to make your local club marketing strategies even more successful and profitable.