It’s a tough gig when you have a product that you want potential clients to know about, but you have a minimal marketing budget.
Marketing costs are one area of business that often gets neglected, but it is necessary to ensure funds are put aside to fund future marketing strategies. If your business is low on marketing funds, free publicity is the way to promote your product. It’s the only strategy if your marketing budget is non-existent.
1. Before you do anything, take out a free 90-day trial listing on FoodService Select. It’s here your potential clients in the food industry view your product and where you can collaborate with other professionals in your industry and niche.
2.
Guest post on other blogs or websites in the food service niche. Guest
blogging means you offer free content written for the benefit of that blog’s
readers; it highlights your product and expertise with a link or mention. Guest
blogs can help content managers fill content on their website while giving you
a link to your product. Not all websites will publish guest posts, and some may
charge a small fee to place the post on their site. Be sure to pitch a post
topic that hasn’t been featured on the site before.
3. Offer a giveaway of your product on Facebook via your Facebook page. To enter, people have to comment on the post and are also likely to tag their friends to win too. Always ensure your giveaway meets Facebook rules. If you’re hesitant about running the giveaway on Facebook, create a blog post on your website and promote this link on Facebook instead. You could also try the same on a social platform like Instagram, particularly if your product is quite visually appealing.
4. Offer a free product to a blogger for a review ensuring their audience is the one you’d like to target for your product. Many bloggers request a monetary fee to review; others are happy to receive just the product. If you’re unsure of a blogger’s requirement, simply ask them.
5. Send free product to the food publications that your potential clients most likely read. There are no guarantees people will write about your product, but you never know in whose hands the product will land. The only way for the publication to know about your product is if you send your product to their office.
6. Offer a sample of your product at local events or if it’s a product of value, consider donating the product as a giveaway for a raffle.
Once the cogs of free publicity occur, word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to get free publicity for your product. Ensure you deliver excellent customer service when people purchase your product because that will help build more publicity to your product which hopefully converts to more sales.