Advertising is something you pay for. Publicity is something that you pray for.

Publicity over advertising

Getting into other people’s networks is one of the fastest and most effective ways to grow your audience. It is also an incredibly cost-effective way to gain publicity, build your company’s reputation and gain client trust.

By gaining publicity, you can also gain “social proof” where your clients are willing to speak highly of you to their networks. For example, if you manage a yoga studio, the most valuable sales tool is a client leaving your class and telling a friend, “I am so excited because I finally found a yoga studio where I fit in.” Their friend can see their glow and wants that same experience so they look you up and book your introductory class. Publicity is like magic, but far more rewarding and attainable and doesn’t cost you ANYTHING but taking care of people.

Beyond taking excellent care of your current customers, here are a few ways to infiltrate new audiences:

• Start a referral program to thank clients when they refer someone to you
• Ask clients for testimonials
• Collaborate with someone whose audience you want to get in front of
• Be active in your local community
• Be a podcast guest
• Be interviewed for a blog or newsletter
• Write a piece for the local newspaper or an industry magazine
• Feature other content creators on your channels

Organic marketing

Gaining publicity through reaching out to your personal network and the networks of those you know is organic marketing. You are getting your company’s name and mission out into the community at a relatively low cost. That is the key difference between organic and paid marketing. Organic marketing is anything you can do that expands your reach but doesn’t directly incur any costs to your business. Now, that does not make organic marketing free. You will pay through your time, efforts and even occasionally coffee or lunch with a prospective client. But you will also more often have a much higher ROI due to the personal nature of the relationship.

Content marketing

Creating additional content for your website will help further the value it provides. The Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for information on all things content marketing related, defines content marketing as a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

When we talk about content marketing, we are talking about:

• Webpages
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Books
• Art
• Webinars
• Templates
• Blogs
• Articles
• White papers
• Case studies

The buying cycle

Before we get into what content marketing is, it’s important to understand why content marketing is beneficial to your business.

To do this, we need to understand the four steps of the buying cycle:

1. Awareness. Your customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.
2. Research. Once aware of a solution, the customer often performs research to educate themselves. For example, a person looking for a car will look at what cars exist and which ones might fit their needs.
3. Consideration. As they become aware of their options, customers will begin to compare products to ensure they’re getting the best solution to fit their needs at the best price.
4. Buying. Finally, after some research and consideration, your customers make the decision to move forward with their purchase.

Content marketing is the perfect way to help people in the first two stages of the buying process by raising awareness of solutions and educating consumers about a product they may have never considered before. However, in order to be considered, your content first needs to appear when a customer searches for you! Learn more about the secrets to content marketing and SEO so your business can show up in the right places.

Download a copy of our free team marketing worksheets here. Want to learn even more? Check out our book and video course, Unify Your Marketing.