3 Ways to Increase your brand awareness without ads
There’s not one person to tell you, “don’t invest in ads,” and they are right! right? Wrong! Ads are great, but social media and paid ads are just a part of marketing strategy and not THE marketing strategy. Here we will tell you 3 ways to increase your brand awareness without investing any money in ads.
Especially when your budget is tight, and you need to allocate media budgets, or when you are just getting started, when using one of the 3 ways to increase your brand awareness without burning a fortune on ads way is crucial for getting results and driving revenue online.
First thing first — Keep your budget tight and know how much you are willing to spend.
Are you already spending on online advertising? Great! Write your spending so you will have a benchmark to compare to later. Not advertising just yet? No worries, I’ll get to calculate your advertising budget in a different post, but keep in mind that you need to include an advertising cost in each of your selling goods (product, service, whatever you are selling).
Now that you have something in mind, focus on this — If I earn x on my product/service, how much am I willing to give up to spread the word to potential prospects? Not how much you are ready to pay extra on FB or Google ads.
Let’s take a short example to make this crucial point clear:
If I charge $5 for a bag of my delicious coffee beans, and the cost to produce it is $1, am I willing to cut my revenue by an additional $1-$2 to boost more sales? I will make $2–3 dollars instead of $4, but potentially will sell more units.
The idea is to create a system that puts a permanent number (as much as possible) on your advertising spend instead of changing media costs on ads. (Have you noticed that all networks’ disclaimer of “actual media spend may be higher”? This suppose to cover the fact that the estimation for $100 was 3 prospects when you got one, or the fact that you just been charged $115 instead of $100)
The meaning of this is — if you didn’t sell anything, you didn’t pay for advertising. You can run this unlimited more significantly since your Rev will always be higher than you spent on advertising it.
If you survived until now, you well deserve to know the 3 Ways to Increase your brand awareness without burning a fortune on ads, and here they are:
- Gift cards/payout for relevant reviews:
Word of mouth works. Works better than any other media out there. The problem is to scale it.
After asking your close friends to recommend your products/services, you will need to scale your efforts to get better results and income.
Gift cards or payouts are a great way to substitute your ad budget for something that works.
- Give everyone willing to rank your google business page a free bag of coffee (it costs only $1, remember?)
- Give a gift card for every tracked recommendation (Yes, people would love a gift card even if it is only $1 or $2 worth)
- Give an actual payout in the form of “Get x free, or Y% discount on your next order if you refer a friend.”
The bottom line is to create incentives and drive to action from your current prospect. If your Rev margin is higher, you can offer a much more appealing offer. I can’t think of anyone who will say no to a $25 gift card.
What if you don’t have any prospects just yet? Coming in next, stay tight.
2. Partners program that sells:
Heard about affiliates before? So it’s the same game, only much more effective.
You need to think and find a relevant partner operating in your field of business and offer her a cut (the same $1. only now we call it 20%, or Rev-Share 20–80 to make it more appealing).
An effective partner can boost your sales incredibly!
Let’s pick coffee again — If I offer a local grocery shop, Cakery, or maybe even an online farmer’s market to sell my coffee for 20% revenue, that’s a great deal right there!
Suppose her business is online — perfect! No stock. Just send it whenever there’s an order.
Suppose her business is a brick-and-mortar shop. In that case, You will need to invest a bit on “lost stock” that will sit there, but be wise and try to limit it for a limited pilot period before getting into any obligations.
*There are many great partners/affiliate “regular” programs. You can use them as well as resellers.
3. Niche influencers:
This is obvious, right? So why aren’t you doing it?
A little research, and you will find your tier 2 influencers. Why tier 2? Because if someone knows she/he is an influencer, they will charge you for that. Still, find community leaders, group contributors, or other shy leaders. You can offer them a free product for their comments or reviews.
Typically you can find them on Facebook groups, Reddit comments, professional forums (yeah, that’s still a thing). Don’t be seduced to track the first Instagrammer/vlogger/tik-toker you see. Remember, you need to drive revenue and not spend a fortune on advertising. Keep your game on a lower level of humble yet practical people until you grow to tier one.
That’s it! Sounds easy, right? No way, now it’s time to put in some hard work!
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