When it comes to running a successful business, the cost of advertising is the first hurdle to overcome. Postcard marketing, PPC, magazine, and newspaper advertising are all great ways to advertise your program, but they can all be very expensive. So what do you do when you don’t have money to advertise? You get creative.

Here are three advertising mediums that will bring you highly qualified leads for free.

1. Video marketing:

Video marketing is very effective when done correctly. The first thing you have to do is create a YouTube account. You will have your own channel that you can customize and make attractive. After setting up your account, you are now ready to make a video. Make your first videos more educational than entertaining. I know it sounds crazy, but if you provide valuable educational content, your potential customer won’t see you as a scammer trying to take my money. Once you’ve made a video, it’s time to upload it. Don’t go to YouTube and upload your video, instead go to Tubemogul.com and create a free account. Tube mogul allows you to upload your video to more than one content site (YouTube, Yahoo, etc.) at the same time. Add your URL to your video description and make sure it’s simple and accurate.

2. Social networks

Once you’ve uploaded your video, it’s time to share it. Remember that people are not on the Internet, people are the Internet and they love to share things with their friends if they find it useful. You have to start the process of making your video go viral by sharing it yourself. Create a Facebook and Twitter account and share your video links with your fan base or followers.

3. Blogging and article marketing

This is my absolute favorite, because not only is it very rewarding, but it’s a lot of fun. I suggest using WordPress.com or Blogger.com. I use Blogger because I like Google services, but WordPress is easier to use and makes it easier for a beginner to get their blog noticed by search engines. When setting up your blog, you absolutely must have the option to share your posts. You can get a free share button at Addthis.com. Then add valuable new content frequently. Now, once you start building your reader list, add a banner to your blog that links to your capture page. Add your banner to a place on your blog that will be noticed, but won’t affect the readability of your blog.

Once you start implementing these free traffic strategies consistently, you’ll have an endless stream of highly qualified free leads and who doesn’t want that?