Congratulations on carving out and implementing your business idea.
The time is ripe for you to scale and grow your business.
Looking to expand your customer base.
You have decided on a do-it-yourself approach to advertising.
That’s fantastic!
Here are 7 ways for you to grow your business from scratch without spending money on ads
- Know your Dream Buyer
- Develop a Godfather offer
- Build a Phone list of customers from Day 1
- Exhaust your Facebook Personal profile for leads
- Leverage your WhatsApp and Facebook groups
- Create a WhatsApp Broadcast list
- Set up your shop in a high foot traffic area
- Bonus growth strategy #1: Provide your current customers with a Premium offer
- Bonus growth strategy #2: Print media advertising
- Bonus growth strategy #3: Post videos on Facebook & Instagram
Keep reading
1. Know your Dream Buyer
Knowing your target audience is really the single most important thing when it comes to setting up a business.
The best way to do this is to know where you can locate your audience in the cheapest possible way.
To locate your dream buyers in volume, you need to be able to identify them.
I know you are thinking.
But Ben, everyone who wants to buy is my target audience.
This is an extremely costly idea.
Not everyone is your audience.
To identify your dream buyer you can ask these 5 basic questions
- How old is your target group?
- Where do they live?
- Are they mostly men or women?
- How do you promote your products to those individuals?
- Where do they get their information? Social media or News?
Great! Now that we know who your dream buyer is.
We can think about how we locate them.
Are they on social media or can we find them at Shopping Mall?
Let’s look at some of the strategies to build your target audience.
2. Develop a Godfather offer
Does your business have an offer?
That is an enticing offer to attract new clients.
For your business to grow. You would need to have an offer.
Not just an offer. A Godfather offer.
An irresistible offer. “An offer people cannot refuse”
How do you develop such an offer?
Here is a list of some of the best offers for your products and services
- Cash Discounts
- Discount vouchers
- Contests and Giveaways
- Free 30 minutes consultation
- Free Quote
- Free 40 minutes Assessment
- Flash Sales
- Discount Sales
Practical examples of good offers are
- “Guaranteed Google rankings in 90 days or we work for free!”
- “A fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed
- “Your pizza will be delivered in 30 minutes… or it’s FREE!”
Here are also 4 questions you can ask yourself to derive your offer
- Why should a customer listen to you? – Is it a unique service, market, product, “whole experience is unique”, or price?
- Why should a customer do business with you instead of anybody and everybody else?
- What can your product do for a customer that no other product can do?
- What can you guarantee a customer that nobody else can guarantee?
I would highly recommend you carve out an enticing offer for your business.
It would be your single biggest driving force in your business.
Its the secret to attracting endless amounts of clients and customers for your products and services
3. Build a Phone list of customers from Day 1
As a small business, your most important business asset is not a great product or service, but your customer phone list.
You should be aggressively focused on capturing leads on your phone.
Every single person who is slightly interested in your products and services should be on your phone.
For instance, a client of mine gets an average of 5-10 calls a day from new and existing clients inquiring about his Kente products.
How did he achieve this?
He decided when he started his business 10 years ago to build a customer phone list.
He is now enjoying the value of word-of-mouth advertising and is constantly being contacted by leads.
4. Leverage your WhatsApp and Facebook groups
Another effective way to increase your leads is to send your offers and promotions to your WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
The key here is to send only offers and promotions.
Not simply displaying all your products or services.
Remember, you don’t want to spam your WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
Keep them to only your enticing offer and promotions.
5. Exhaust your Facebook personal profile for leads
What about using your Facebook profile to generate leads?
Facebook allows you to grow your personal profile up to 5000 friends.
This is a gold mine for you to generate leads.
I know you may be thinking you want to keep your personal profile personal.
I get it.
But using Facebook profile stories can drive a lot of traffic to your business.
Another important tool to drive native traffic is the reels on Facebook and Instagram.
There is a lot of organic reach and viewership with reels on Facebook and Instagram.
Take the opportunity and build leads.
6. Create a WhatsApp Broadcast list
You have now accumulated a good list of customers.
What do you do with it?
We have now built a valuable business asset.
We have clients we can follow up on.
How do we follow up with these clients?
The easiest way is to create a WhatsApp Broadcast list.
You now have the option to market to your group whenever you have something to offer.
Promotions are not the only form of messages for you to send.
Messages should be a mixer of valuable content (⅔) and promotion (⅓).
7. Set up your shop in a high foot traffic area
If you are selling a product, a great idea would be to set up shop in a place with high foot traffic.
A client of mine selling health products has her office inside a High-end salon for middle-class women.
That’s a solid idea. She is located where her clients are coming and going.
While a client is waiting to get her nails done.
She is offering free samples and trials of her products.
It pays to be in a high foot traffic area especially when you can engage your target audience.
8. Bonus growth strategy #1: Provide your current customers with a Premium offer
You have now acquired some new leads and improved your sales.
There is room for you to make some more money.
The key is to sell a premium offer to your existing customers.
The truth is your customers will spend their money somewhere if you don’t have a premium offer.
The most convenient time to make a sale is when a customer has bought something.
It is a golden opportunity that should not be missed.
Always call up your existing customers and promote your premium offers
9. Bonus growth strategy #2: Print media advertising
Flyers are a great way to quickly get the word out about your product or services for a local business.
For instance, you have set up a new laundromat in your locality.
Your next step is to create and print flyers for both offline and online distribution.
Most importantly, visit all the high foot traffic areas in your locality and distribute them.
For example, marketplaces, Banks, commercial areas, schools, restaurants, fuel stations, churches, etc.
10. Bonus growth strategy #3:Post videos on Facebook & Instagram
With social media marketing, your most effective medium for advertising is videos.
Video performs better than any form of communication medium online.
Posting your videos on Facebook reels, stories, Instagram reels, IGTV, etc are all solid ways to improve and build your brand awareness online.
You can use your iPhone to shoot the videos.
The most important thing about the video is whether it is providing value.
Wrapping up
Starting and growing a business is hard.
There is no doubt about that.
The truth is you don’t have to go through the struggles all by yourself.
As outlined above, these are ways you can employ to have an effective do-it-yourself advertising campaign starting at $0.
Which of the ways are you going to start with?
Leave a comment and let me know
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