There’s no such thing as a free lunch – or free marketing

April 2007

Public relations and natural search engine optimization are touted as "free" marketing. But are they? As the saying goes, nothing in life is free. The same goes for marketing. But there is a way to get positive exposure and prospects to your business that is as close to free as one can get. Before we get to that, let’s examine those free PR and SEO myths.

PR: Publicity isn’t free
Actually, it is true: Public relations can be free. PR done right, however, cannot. If you write a press release and it goes nowhere, what good does it do? You can post it on your website for free, but it’s not likely that a reporter will stumble across your press release and suddenly decide to write a story featuring your business. To get favorable publicity, you need to stay in touch with the media, reporters, and publishers.

Furthermore, do-it-yourself-ers risk their press release containing errors, omissions, poorly worded sentences or poor structure – sure ways to get tossed into the old "filing cabinet," or deleted from the preview screen. Public relations is an investment in time and requires know-how. PR firms get big bucks to ensure their clients get covered by target media for a reason. It’s not easy, and if you’re not careful, it can hurt you.

In the end, what percentage of your target audience will your website press release be able to reach? To get results, you have to cast the net much wider.

SEO: Another acronym, another myth
That’s where search engine optimization, another “free” marketing technique, comes in. Online marketers know the importance of getting top rankings in search engines. But too many of them think that sprinkling a few key words in their web page’s content is going to yield first-page ranking and tons of free traffic.

The search engines’ criteria are constantly evolving. Just as PR people influence coverage in the media, search engine optimizers influence results in search engines by using techniques that allow a website to fit (i.e., be optimized) within ever-changing search engine ranking criteria. In this way SEO does what PR professionals do: get good placement in third-party sources. Like PR, effective SEO, whether done in-house or outsourced, is far from free.

Closest to free: lists
A trend in marketing right now is lists, directories, yellow pages, many of which offer free listings. In this case, the marketing is actually free, and can drive business because buyers are searching specifically for your product when they see your company. Unlike search engines, driven by automated systems that lack a navigable structure, web directories are put together by human reviewers. An online directory organizes websites by subject, the way humans search. Search engines look at directories and place a high value on them because they are human edited.

As a result, being listed in the right directories also gets your company picked up in all the right major search engine keyword searches. Putting your website link onto many free business directories can increase your site's PR (page rank), and thus increase the search engine placement.

Because the directory serves the buyer’s market specifically, searching is narrowed and targeted. The categories found in a directory cover only the specific products and services the buyer seeks, so results are much more relevant. In fact, the directory often ends up being where buyers choose a short-list of vendors.

The key to getting more from your listing is to post it where your potential customers are. Make sure the directory ranks well and is SEO friendly, which means that it is optimized for each category. This will increase the value of your posted link.

The real strength in directory placement comes when done in volume. Hitting all the major industry publications means you’ve covered all your bases. You’re leading a higher volume of qualified customers to your business when they're researching, locating, and making purchasing decisions online.

The number of publications covering an industry varies according to the market, but can range anywhere from 5 to 25. So there is a time commitment involved here as well, in trying to cover all the publications, and updating your company information as it changes. There are tons of free places to list yourself on the web. But getting listed in the right directories, and in right categories that get the most number of targeted eyeballs, is the goal for the BtoB marketer.

To ensure a listing is seen by the widest possible audience, a company wants to be on that coveted home page of the directory. There is usually a cost associated with prime placement, but the price for being a Featured Listing is typically in the hundreds, versus thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars for effective PR or SEO.

In the quest for both web exposure and better search engine rankings, you could not find an easier method. Free website directory submissions are a great way to increase your exposure to prospects. So go ahead, take advantage of those marketing strategies that are perceived to be free. Just remember, time is not free. It’s valuable.