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Getting your business on television for free.

by Doctor Marshall

Television advertising gives your company massive exposure.

Television advertising is a very costly form of advertising that is rarely afforded by a new Internet business. In order to take advantage of the huge exposure that television offers for free one of the only ways to manage this is to give something away for free. Make no mistake that getting free television exposure will not be a walk in the park and will require a good outlay of products or services over a reasonable amount of time. In exchange, however, you will get a very good response not only from the television advertising but the associated publicity of the activity you undertake.

Contributing to charitable events gives inexpensive publicity.

Charities are always in need of help and by offering your services or some free products to charities they will gladly promote your services for you. Charitable events often attract local television crews and if it’s a big charity event you may be fortunate enough to gain national exposure. The trick is to be as innovative as possible because there are likely to be a number of companies who are also willing to do the same in return for free publicity.

One excellent example of television publicity on a shoestring.

One computer company set up an entire intranet for the Dalai Lama and his government. In doing so they transformed a group of people who had relied on fax and pen into a globally recognized group with websites and email. They gained huge amounts of publicity and secured enough work to keep them going for years. They did have to invest a lot of time and money in going to Nepal and setting up the systems required but in doing so they catapulted themselves from a relatively small operation to a huge multinational interest that were recognized across the globe. Paying to fly out to India and dedicating months of time may not be an option you can afford, and equally the amount of exposure you gain may be too much for your business but the basic principle of offering a free service and being innovative in the process remains the same regardless of your business and it’s size.

Be innovative and remember that free publicity will cost.

Try to think of events that will attract television cameras and reporters and then get involved in that event. Make sure that your involvement will be noticed and if this means donating goods ask if you can include a small advert or banner on the product or products you donate. Do bear in mind that while you won’t have to pay directly for the advertising this doesn’t mean that the publicity you receive is entirely free. If you donate goods then you should bear in mind that the cost to you is how much your business paid for these items. You should also bear in mind that your time is money and that by donating services you are unable to complete services for paying customers.

The contents of this page are Copyright © 2006, Doctor Marshall - All Rights Reserved. Copyright stored at the Library of Congress in the United States of America. This page is taken from Doctor Marshalls Book: The Red Handbook for Business on the Internet.

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