These No-Cost PR and Marketing Strategies Lead to Millions of Extra Dollars for Entrepreneurs and Businesses

You can have the best products and services in your industry. You can have a fantastic website. You can have the experience and knowledge that your customers need. You can have all the elements necessary to grow a business, but it will only happen with good marketing and PR utilized.

Your marketing plan and efforts separate your brand and business from those that won't make it. You can't generate revenue if no one sees what you offer, and PR and marketing are how you create awareness.

You've been exposed to good PR and marketing, which is why you've purchased products and services. You see it every day from big brands and companies. They spend billions on PR and content marketing for a reason.

PR and marketing can be expensive. You can pay for ads and hire professionals. But there are also ways to market your business for free, and these strategies can be highly-effective if implemented. You can now use these PR and marketing strategies to grow your customer base and increase sales.

1. Get interviewed on podcasts regularly and leverage audio PR.

According to Podcast Insights, 44 percent of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast. On average, 73 million people in the United States listen to podcasts every month. The numbers are even more staggering when you factor in global listenership. Podcast PR creates a great PR and marketing opportunity for entrepreneurs.

You can pitch a podcast, get interviewed on that show, and market your business to new potential customers. Podcast listeners are great because they're engaged. They are likelier to subscribe to your email list when you're on a show, follow you on social media, and seriously consider buying your products and services.

There is plenty of podcasts you can pitch, but many entrepreneurs get it wrong when they pitch. They send pitches that lead with who they are and what they do. No one cares. Instead, lead your pitch with the specific value and takeaways you can bring to that podcaster's audience. Show podcasters how you'll educate their listeners on your topic.

You'll get to promote your business at the show's end after you've added value. That's how marketing should work, anyhow. You can find shows looking for guests using free services such as Radio Guest List. You can also find shows on iTunes that match your topic and start pitching. Again, lead with what's in it for the podcaster.

2. Consistently leverage large audiences that offer accelerated brand growth.

If your online audience or potential customer base offline is small enough, go where there already is an established audience. The idea is to take your expertise and train someone else's large audience. That entrepreneur would be willing to agree to this kind of arrangement because of the value their audience would be getting.

You can train in large Facebook groups. You can do joint webinars. You can create content for significant media publications with millions of monthly visitors. You can pitch to get featured in large publications using a hashtag on Twitter, such as #journorequest, or pitch editors directly to get columns and contributor accounts.

There are many ways to leverage an already established audience and create a win-win scenario. Use this strategy. It's free and can quickly expose you to millions of people.

3. Go deeper with your PR and content marketing strategies.

More entrepreneurs need to harness the power of solid content marketing. Good audio, video, and written content can be leveraged and repurposed.

While it can take some work on the front end, content marketing will pay dividends to your business by helping potential customers to know, like, and trust you. It starts the buying process in their mind.

Good content gets shared in many places, which creates word-of-mouth marketing for you. That's a warmer way to market. Take your time. You can give away a lot in your free content, and customers will still buy to get handholding and the next steps. Creating good content is free and will market your business far and wide when distributed on social media, through media exposure, and to your email list.

If this is going to be a year of explosive growth for your business, you will need to step up your marketing and PR efforts. You can use these three free strategies, and many more, to bring new eyeballs to you and your business.

Get clear on what you offer and who it's for. You can then find great target consumers and show them why they should pay attention to you. Use PR and marketing because it works.