How do you get a word about your products or services without ads?

Ads are an effective medium to get the word out about your products. In fact, I would say that in the long run, they’re necessary. But, there are ways to promote products without ads. Let’s explore those.

There are many offline and online ways to promote products without ads. Since its the digital era, I would focus more on the latter, since there’s no sign of it slowing down.  As I am not aware of the exact products you deal with, my suggestions will be kind of general. For a long list of specific suggestions, please feel free to share more details of your business and products in a comment.

A common tip that would apply to most of my suggestions is to have a website for your products and brand. Making a site does not have to be complicated. If you don’t need many features, then you can get it for free even. Of course, I can help you with that too.

Most people get that a website is important, though, so let’s go a little deeper. Here are four ways to promote products without ads:

#1 Have engaging, high-quality content on your website. More than anything, content gets attention. As long as it’s good, more content means more publicity and ultimately more sales.

#2 Have a strong presence on social media websites. By creating engaging posts with CTAs, you will likely get traffic to your website as your profiles grow, which is obviously going to help you get sales and a fan-base.

#3 By being active in offline and online areas. You can host/sponsor events to promote businesses or relevant groups. By taking part in online discussions through forums, social pages, interest groups, etc. you can do online promotions without really ‘advertising’. It’s just creating attention and making things happen, with the knowledge that your business is what sponsored or participated in it.

#4 Press and media coverage of your products and business. They say that if something is free, then you are the product. With press, it’s true. Offer yourself up as an interesting figure, worthy of a news article, interviews, etc. Do something relevant members of the press would care about, and inform them directly.

That should give you some more ideas to promote your products without ads, so with that done, I would like to proceed with a caveat:  advertising is mandatory for any serious business. You can hustle your way up before you’re willing to spend on ads, and that’s totally fine, but for later on in your journey, I have a few suggestions to advertise effectively.

As far as I have experienced, usually, people are reluctant to advertise their products due to the expenses involved. Many people do not make their money back on literal ad-to-action sales, that’s true. The reality is that business is all about creating a system that turns small costs into big payments over time. Yes, ads are hard to break even on. That is why sales funnels are so important. If you lose about $500 per month on ads, but you’re capturing the leads and growing a fanbase of people and marketing $50 or higher products to them regularly, you are going to make serious money the further you take that path.

It’s also possible that you might have some reluctance toward advertising because you see it as shady. This is a common problem with beginners, and it comes from mainly a scarcity mindset and shyness. You have to use some kind of wide broadcasting method to get the word out, and promotion entirely on your own is, while doable, pretty rough as you try to scale up and make a living.

Whatever be the case, advertisements are inevitable, they are just a part of our society, neither good nor evil. With digital methods, ads have now become less expensive per ad, but the more expensive per campaign, like with Facebook ads. So, I would suggest you go with digital modes of advertising, study them, and only start using them seriously, for an extended campaign, when you have a business model where it makes sense to lose a little money on the ads. Don’t feel bad about it, most businesses do this. What matters is how you monetize afterward, getting repeat sales, upsells, etc.

Basically, for an entrepreneur to succeed quickly, advertising is eventually going to be a must. On a related note, that might give you a different angle to this concept, can you imagine a world without advertising? The idea might help expand your ideas about how ads really work and what they can do for your business. If you would like to see what I mean, check out my article: Welcome to a World Without Advertising. It discusses the importance of ads in a different manner. With a little bit of creativity, anyone can draw innovative concepts to advertise any product. You can also explore the Knowledge Base section of my website for the common questions and expert answers relating to advertising and marketing. That gets into the meat and potatoes of making ads work better.

To sum up, advertising is a straightforward and necessary approach for the promotion of products, but still, there are some other effective ways to do that before you are ready.

Please feel free to reply if you have any questions.

Good Luck!

Thanks,

Cleo