Free Advertising VS Free Publicity

This blog will demonstrate how anyone can create a massive publicity / advertising campaign using free publicity tools and techniques. Further information and free articles can be found at the Free Publicity Focus Group website at www.freepublicitygroup.com.

Here is a question:

Would you rather:
a. spend $200 on an ad that no one has any interest in reading OR
b. spend $0 on an ad that EVERYONE wants to read?

The answer is very obvious. But, believe it or not, many people just cannot see the sense in using option B.

Everyone is selling something - might be a product, a service or perhaps just your knowledge. Regardless of what you are selling you only have so many tools with which to work. I have said this before and I will say it again:

Free Publicity = Free Advertising

assuming the publicity is positive. You can easily create any amount of publicity for no out of pocket cost. You must of course pay for advertising. This is why learning to think like a publicist, rather than trying to advertise your product or service will pay off in ways and amounts you simply cannot imagine.

You must understand something and understand it fully - People are TIRED of advertising messages. People, as a rule, find them intrusive. They skip over them or fast forward through them or hurl them in the trash or simply ignore them. The old days (and the old ways) simply do not work anymore.

However, people still love a great story. They love to read about others. They are heads over heels in love with free information.

This is bad news for advertising professionals, but great news for publicists.

Free Publicity = Free Advertising

However, free publicity, COMBINED with creative advertising, will blast you, your company and your product into the stratosphere of marketing success. If you are advertising exclusively, you are concentrating only upon the smaller side of the equation.

I am now going to say two words:

Britney Spears
You saw a picture in your head when I said those words, did you not?

Britney would have to pay 100 million dollars a DAY to buy the same publicity she gets every day for free. Granted it is negative publicity. But I would venture to say that 90% of people on the planet recognize her name. This is why famous people hire publicists. To get famous. (Of course I would not want to be Britney's publicist). Now I will say two more words:

Ella Stipowicz

See. No picture. You have no idea what Ella might look like. Or even if Ella really exists. Ella has no publicist.

When I was very young, fresh out of high school, I joined a rock and roll band. We drew huge crowds, but were not really that good. We drew the crowds because of the band's name. When we played a gig, the club owner was forced to publicize our name on the sign outside the club. The sign looked like this

Saturday Night - Free Beer

This was a publicity stunt and this worked great until the club owners tired of explaining to their huge crowds of new customers that there was no free beer. Eventually we were literally forced to change the name of the band and so we did. Now the signs said:

Saturday Night - Naked Girls

Again, huge crowds. Still not very good musically.

Free Publicity = Free Advertising

On the Free Publicity Focus Group website I make the statement that anyone, anywhere can create a marketing campaign to rival any corporation in America for little or no money by learning how to create free publicity. Anyone can do this. You can do this.

I have worked with some of the top corporations in America in their marketing divisions. I have worked with some of the highest level marketing consultants in the US. I have sat across the desk from thousands of business owners whose goal was to get their message out there. I have never been complacent. To this day I still sit and wade through 40 newsletters a day, looking for some new idea, a fresh technique, some cutting edge piece of creativity. Frankly, I am appalled at what I see and what people will fall for.

Not only do I read about these things - I actually test them personally. If a technique works, I incorporate it into my stable of strategies. If it does not work, it is simply tossed.

So, from this point on, think of this blog and my website, Free Publicity Focus Group, as personal resources to gain training to become a publicist. Learning how to create publicity is what I intend to teach here in this new and improved blog and on the website. So here is lesson One, from Book One, Chapter One, first line of the first paragraph in the book entitiled 'Publicity 101'.

'Advertising pulls money out of your wallet and does not work well anymore. Publicity pulls ideas out of your head and works very well'.

Now - where do you think YOUR efforts should be concentrated?

More at http://www.freepublicitygroup.com