The art of promotion: providing product to Bloggers

From traveling to conventions and events to paying employees and suppliers, money can be tight and PR/marketing often falls off the bottom of the to-do list for businesses. Advertising can cost a fortune and traditional PR takes time and patience. But have you considered the new--and less costly--alternative of promoting your company with the help of bloggers? Whether your business is in the food, wine and spirits, fashion, or sporting goods industry, there is a blog out there that has hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of readers...readers anxiously waiting to hear about what’s new.

With thousands of blogs in the interactive world and hundreds in categories that your company would fall into, interacting with bloggers is marketing tool that is underutilized--especially by many small business owners. Many bloggers host giveaways, in which they promote a good/service in exchange for the product, which they will provide to one of their readers. After a review of the product on their blog, many bloggers will ask their readers to enter by commenting on the particular brands Facebook page, tweeting to the company and spreading the word about the contest and giveaway for extra entries. The result of those mentions/interactions with your social networking profile? According Adweek, “Facebook users who like a brand's page on the social networking site use its products regularly or occasionally and, after following the brand on Facebook, more than a third want to buy this brand's product more.” So, as those tweets and posts about your product add up, so does your army of brand ambassadors. The cost to you? Your product to give away.

With all that said, how do you find the right blogger? You probably already know the best ones in your industry. (If you’re lost in the blogosphere, your public relations agency can be determine which to target, whom to contact, and facilitate the giveaway).

From Dick’s Cottons sunglasses on the blog Sarafit.comSarafit.com to Pop Chips on A Knack for Nutrition, bloggers are making it easy for companies to get their names out there. According to Bizammo.com, a leading resource for small business owners, there are three major steps that are important to recognize when offering up a product to a blogger. First off, “think outside the box.” This may seem obvious to you--you wouldn’t create the same exact product as a competitor, right? Don’t decide to just give something away because you have tons of product left in stock, just sitting in a warehouse. Think about it. You want to find your target market, so find a blog that gets attention and traffic from readership that is similar to those who buy your product or service. Then, find something that your business produces that these readers would need, or desperately want. Second, make sure whatever you provide to the blogger is easy to find and purchase. “The whole reason the item is free is so that as many people as possible benefit from it and learn about your company – if the customers can’t find the product, you may as well be charging for it.” Lastly, give it time. In Public Relations and marketing there are no immediate results--but there is value in raising awareness and engaging potential future customers. As long as your product is useful and is being promoted through different mediums, attention will follow.