How to Get Free Publicity For Your Small Business

Believe it or not, you can get free publicity for your small business. How? Simply pick up the telephone, and call your local media (newspapers, radio, tv), and tell them all about your small business. If they think your business sounds interesting and newsworthy, they'll come out and interview you - and just like that...voila, free publicity!

You may not be aware of it, but countless numbers of small businesses are taking advantage of free publicity every single day. They've discovered the media loves reporting about local human interest stories. It makes them appear more caring and sensitive about what's happening in their own community.

When large, powerful media corporations display this kind of concern for the community, it leads to more readers, listeners and viewers - as well as more advertising revenue. So giving exposure to local small businesses is in their best interest as well as yours.

However, it's not always as simple as picking up the telephone and having the media show up at your front door. Timing is everything, and the media may have many other, more important stories in the pipeline they have to get to first. That's why persistance is so important. If you contact the media and they don't show any interest in reporting about your small business, keep trying.

Gently nudge them on a weekly basis. Don't be rude, but be persistent. Reporters understand the necessity of persistence, because quite frankly, that's how many of them get their stories.

It also doesn't hurt to be both creative and aggressive. I once heard of a story where the owners of a brand new mom and pop submarine sandwich shop literally walked in the front door of the local tv station, and started handing out free submarine sandwiches to all the employees - including the security guards.

The news chief was so impressed with the sandwiches, she dispatched a news crew to interview the owners of the sandwich shop that very afternoon. The story made the 6:00 news, and the sandwich shop had a very successful grand opening thanks to the power of free publicity.

I know of another story where the owners of a new automobile detailing shop went to the town's biggest newspaper and started washing and waxing all the cars that were parked in the VIP parking spaces. That evening, the shop was featured on the front page of the newspaper.

As a result of that free publicity, the company was literally deluged with phone calls for months. They quickly outgrew their tiny little shop and were forced to move to a larger building, and hire more employees.

Free publicity - there's plenty of it out there. But it won't come to you, you have to go and get it!

NOTE: This article is available in video version here.