You know me, I’m a BIG fan of free advertising and despise all advertising you need to pay for (even though sometimes it’s a necessary evil.) There is nothing more powerful than free advertising because when it pays off, you’ve really hit the marketing jackpot.
I just tried something last week where I got a 100% success rate on three separate attempts for free advertising, and you can do it too.
What I did was, searched online for VERY small newspapers and magazines that serve my community. I found three I’d never heard of before. The reason I wanted small ones is because the bigger publications are less likely to pick up your story. On the other hand, the little guys are practically begging for local “news” to fill their pages and share with their readers.
So here’s what I did. I sent three emails (one to each publication) explaining that my camp, Aloha Beach Camp, has decided to add new bus stops this summer to accommodate increasing demand from families in the newspapers’ market areas. And guess what? I got interviews with each publication! In fact one of them even asked me to email them some pictures which they will include in the story they’re doing about my camp in an upcoming issue.
Now the Los Angles Times (the biggest newspaper where I live) would find nothing worthwhile about a local summer camp with new transportation boundaries. But these little local papers, man, they eat this stuff up. It’s newsworthy to them. It makes them feel like they’re providing a service to their readers by highlighting local businesses with human interest stories and all that.
The easy thing was, writing and sending these three emails took me about 40 minutes. I HIGHLY suggest you find something “newsworthy” going on at your camp right now and sharing it with your (smaller) local media outlet. You will be pleasantly surprise how quickly someone decides to publish your story!
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