Usually when an event is being held some type of advertising must be done. With just a little bit of effort you can utilize several different forms of free advertising for almost any type of event.
One of the most effective and far-reaching forms of free advertising is the online classified / bulletin board. The most well-known and widely used such web site is definitely craigslist.org. With listings from and for cities around the world, craigslist.org allows users to post free online advertisements for events in a specific area. No matter what type of event is being held, there’s a category for it on Craigslist.
A couple of months ago I placed a free ad in the ‘Events’ category of the ‘Community’ section of Craigslist advertising an exhibit of my paintings at a Hartford, Connecticut restaurant.
Many grocery stores have free community bulletin boards, where event posting is allowed and encouraged. These areas are often situated near the entrances and exits of the stores. Some large supermarkets even feature private function rooms for community events..
Free on-air advertising of your event is often available on AM radio stations and college radio stations, which are usually on the FM dial. Many local-oriented AM stations including news/talk radio outlets feature local community-focused shows, where free on-air advertising of events is permitted. Quite often, you write-in to the show with the information you want to be aired.
Here in the Hartford, Connecticut area there is an excellent longtime ‘tag sale’ show on a major local news/talk AM radio station on Sunday mornings. The show features a call-in format wherein callers can advertise items they have for sale or items they are seeking live on the air, free of charge. Callers can also advertise upcoming or current tag sales they are holding on the show.
If you’re unfamiliar with the formats of local radio stations in your area, try tuning into a multitude of AM and FM stations to see if you can find any with locally-themed formats. You can also look up radio stations in your area on the Internet to find any that feature local-oriented formats.
For quite a few years I played guitar and bass guitar in a Hartford, Connecticut rock band. We would often call disc jockeys on rock shows at various Hartford area college radio stations prior to upcoming live shows and would ask them if they would mention the show on the air.
More than 90% of the times we asked for free advertising the disc jockeys gave the band and the upcoming show a free plug.
Coffee shops, including national chain stores sometimes have community bulletin boards upon which the public can place ads for a wide variety of events. There is usually no charge for advertising on these bulletin boards.
Small community-based shopping newspapers which feature free classified ads are also good sources of free advertising for your event.
Of course, the best type of advertising is word-of-mouth. When one person recommends something else to another person it is often more effective than any other form of advertising. For me, that definitely seems to be true.
Sources :
Personal experience with utilizing free advertising for events
