Priceless Advertising: How to Promote Your Business for Free

By Ryan M. Faist

The average person is exposed to 5,000 ads every day. They come from every direction and device. Everywhere you look, you can find an ad. That’s why paid advertising doesn’t work as well anymore. Consumers are simply bombarded with it. Fortunately, there’s a more powerful way to reach your customers. It’s called earned media, and it’s essentially free advertising. Written by a former journalist and marketing agency executive, Priceless Advertising reveals the insider secrets to not only getting the media to promote your business for free, but in a way that:

•Reaches more customers
•Builds market credibility & consumer trust
•Eliminates production and placement costs
•Increases the perceived value of your products and services
•Dwarfs your competitors’ advertising
•Distinguishes you from your competition
•Boosts search engine rankings
•Excites social media engagement
•Skyrockets consumer awareness
•Charms potential investors

If you’re tired of spending fortunes on advertising that doesn’t produce results, don’t worry. You’re about to discover the power of Priceless Advertising.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ryan M. Faist
• Release date: Sep 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463220351

Ryan M. Faist

RYAN MICHAEL FAIST is a journalist, marketing executive and graphic designer based in South Bend, Indiana (home of the Notre Dame Fightin’ Irish). In addition to creating and publishing a local arts and culture magazine, he also has served as the senior writer and public relations coordinator for an Emmy Award-winning marketing and advertising firm. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Faist has earned numerous awards from the Indiana Chapter, including First Place in Profile Writing at the Best in Indiana Journalism Awards. He also has served as a judge for the Green Eyeshade Excellence in Journalism Awards. When not working, Faist loves to read, spend time with friends and family, and wrestle with his French bulldog. They are the cutest breed, aren’t they?

Book preview

PRICELESS ADVERTISING

Copyright 2018 by Ryan M. Faist

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

www.PricelessAdvertising.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Public Relations Epiphany

The Magic of a Great Press Release

How to Seize the Media’s Attention

The One Thing TV Stations Crave

The One Thing Newspapers Crave

The Secret to Getting Media Coverage

The Fifteen Second Rule

How to Make Media Friends

The Best Time to Contact the Media

How to Avoid Spam Filters

What to Know About Email Attachments

How to Appeal to Humanity

The Cardinal Sin

How to Use the Secret Weapon

The Most Common Mistake

One Last Thing (Actually Two)

About the Author

References

Chapter One

The Public Relations Epiphany

If I was down to my last dollar, Bill Gates once said, I’d spend it on public relations. Gates is the second wealthiest individual on the planet, a man who founded a business that revolutionized the modern word. Of all the things he could spend his last dollar on, he’d choose public relations. There’s a reason why.

Earned media is the practice of building and maintaining a great public image for your business via free media coverage. Earning favorable publicity for your business will increase sales and revenue quicker than any other means – especially advertising. Ever heard of the Million Dollar Homepage? Several years ago, a college student set up a single-page website and offered to sell advertising space for $1 a pixel in order to pay off his student debt. A few news outlets featured his story, and before long, he made a million dollars. How? He generated a little publicity - for free - and it went viral.

For some mystical reason, public relations is the one type of marketing that most small business owners completely neglect. I’ll never understand why. I know people who will allocate tens of thousands of dollars toward advertising without blinking an eye and yet won’t spend five minutes thinking about PR. They should listen to Bill Gates. And just about every other successful business person in the world. If they did, they’d be richer.

This isn’t to suggest that advertising doesn’t have its merits. But let’s face it: the advertising landscape is much different than it was 30 years ago. It’s simply not as effective. People are inundated with advertisements to the point where most of us have learned to tune them out. Consider this: 86% of consumers skip TV ads, 65% of consumers skip online video ads, and 44% of direct mail is never even opened (by the way, the sources for every statistic cited in this book are included in the references section at the end; I’m a big believer in research).

Not only is advertising less effective, but it’s also expensive. Even short-term social media campaigns can quickly eat into your marketing budget. Earned media, on the other hand, is much more cost-friendly. In fact, if you know the right secrets, generating powerful media coverage is free. You don’t have to pay for the placement of your coverage like you do with advertising. Schedule a 30-second commercial on your local 5:00 p.m. newscast or place a color ad in the Sunday paper, and you’ll receive a hefty invoice. If you earn coverage in these valuable areas, you get it for free.

There are also no production costs. With advertising, you have to pay to produce your ad. Even if you create it yourself, it takes time and effort. If you earn your placement, media outlets produce it themselves.

But cost is far from the only way that earned media outperforms advertising. For one, it reaches more people. Four times as many people watch news stories than the advertisements that accompany them. Any media story featuring your business will reach an exponentially greater number of consumers than any paid advertising on the same platform.

Earned media also builds credibility. People are wary of advertising because it’s paid content. Getting your business featured in the news establishes legitimacy and trust (even despite the whole fake news controversy), which is an invaluable way to distinguish yourself from your competitors.

Earned media is also an effective way to invite consumer engagement. Most advertising is one-way communication. Media coverage, on the other hand, attracts interaction from the public. When your business is the subject of a news story, a natural conversation develops that dwarfs the impact of a one-way advertisement.

Earned media also boosts your business’s search engine rankings, which advertising doesn’t do. When prospective customers Google your product or service, 90% of the time they’ll choose one of