How to Gain Visibility Without Paid Ads

One of the biggest questions I’m asked in my line of work is, “How do I gain visibility for my business without spending a bunch of money on paid ads?”  It’s a great question and one that most certainly deserves a little bit of a deeper dive.  Being that this comes up so often, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to explore it and today, I want to share with you a few tried and true techniques that will help you to get more clients, increase your income and broaden your exposure without sinking your money into expensive advertising that has no guaranteed return on the investment.

Did you know that, in North America alone, the total money spent on advertising in the year 2020 came to about $249.8 billion?  Yes, I said billion!  That number is expected to increase to $282.8 billion by the end of this year, according to Statista.com.  That’s crazy!  How do we compete with that?  Particularly when we may not have thousands of dollars (let alone millions or billions) to sink into an advertising campaign?  The truth is, there are lot of ways to get the exposure that you are looking for without contributing to this figure.  Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t a time and place where hiring an agency or spending on ads is valuable, but you can still get in front of your audience without emptying your pockets.  There’s no possible way that I will be able to share every technique in one sitting, so we’re going to take a look at some of the simplest ones that will help you to achieve some quick wins.  Today, we’re going to focus specifically on leveraging social media. 

Like it or not, social media appears to be here to stay!  It is also one of the least expensive ways that you can reach a global audience.  That being said, if you haven’t created some sort of a social media presence, you could really be jeopardizing your own opportunities for growth.  It doesn’t matter whether you choose to use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or something else, as long as your prospective audience can find you online and verify that you are who you say you are, providing the service(s) or product(s) that you’ve gotten them excited about.  That means doing more than just setting up a personal profile.  It means providing details about the work that you do on that profile.  Think about how frustrating it can be when you meet somebody and they start to tell you about what they do and you feel all amped up about it.  Then, you go to Google their name and nothing comes up.  Don’t you feel a little bit gipped?  A lot of people don’t set up social media profiles because it intimidates them or they’re not sure where to start.  If that sounds like it might be you, I encourage you to go look up your competitors.  Check out what their profiles look like and what types of things they are posting about to keep their audience engaged.  Get some inspiration and then get your own profile up and running. 

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 The next consideration to take with social media is leaning into the group’s functions on the sites.  LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups and even Clubhouse are all great ways to stay connected with your audience.  A group will allow you to reach your intended audience all at once and also creates an open forum where questions can be asked and answered and your audience can connect with other like-minded individuals.  When creating your group, think about your audience.  Who is your ideal client?  Where else are they likely to be hanging out?  Could you join those groups, too?  For example, do you serve moms looking for nutrition tips for their picky eaters, CPAs and bookkeepers who serve small business owners, or something else?  Might these people be found in other groups that you can access (for example, a local moms page or an entrepreneur page)?  Once you have identified these things, however, you’ll need to use some caution.  Groups are not places where you should go to consistently spam your audience with advertisements and promotions for your own business.  In fact, that’s a great way to tick off the group administrators (if you’ve joined somebody else’s group) or cause your group members to leave.  Be sure to follow the rules set forth by the group administrators and only post these types of things on designated days.  In the interim, comment on other posts, answer questions if/when you can, offer support and be present.  This will encourage your audience to get curious about who you are and what you do which will, in turn, lead them back to your profile where they can get more information on you.  This can lead to all sorts of great connections, new referrals and potentially, new clients.  Just remember to be authentic and relatable in the way you’re engaging. 

Once you’ve gotten to the point where you feel like you’re engaging and exposed, you’ll likely find that you’ve gotten some great conversations started with other people.  Now, it’s time to take your relationship offline.  After all, social media, valuable as it may be, is also sort of a crapshoot.  The internet can go down at any time, right?  That’s why it is so important that you make a connection outside of the virtual world so that you can stay connected to them later down the line.  Once you’ve determined that they could be potential clients in the future, you can ask them for their number or email and add them onto your email list (with their permission, of course).  Maybe they’re not interested in being a client, but you notice that their audience and yours are similar (often called adjacent audiences).  Perhaps this is an opportunity for some collaboration.  Maybe they’re neither of these things, but you’ve built enough rapport between you that you can begin working as referral sources for one another.  Now, you are networking (and it didn’t cost you a dime). 

There are so many more ways to grow your business without investing a small fortune, but leveraging social media is a great first step.  You might be wondering, “How do I know this is even going to work for me?  Is it worth the energy?”.  To that I would ask you to look back at when you first started your business.  You didn’t know if it would work, but you tried it anyway because sometimes you have to take some steps in a direction in order to understand the outcome of that decision, right?  Using techniques that have been proven to work for countless of those before you is usually a good starting point.   

If you’re looking for a more personalized approach to expanding your business, don’t forget that you can always set up a private call with me to explore creative ideas and strategies that might work best for you and your business.  You might also benefit from grabbing my 22-page guide to visibility for only $17 at www.tracybeavers.com/visibility.  Your business is most certainly worth a $17 investment that could help you to change the way you’re looking at growing your small business.  However I can support you, I’m happy to do so!      

Check out the Referral Machine and learn free and low-cost ways to gain new clients with ease.

 Video Transcript

So people ask me, Tracy, how can I gain visibility for my business without paid ads? I get this question all the time in my comments, in my DMs, in my Facebook group and my paid programs. So I thought we would tackle this here too, because clearly this is a topic that is on your mind. In today's video, I'm going to share with you just a few strategies that I use and my coaching clients use to gain visibility, new clients and income without tossing their money away on expensive advertising. Welcome to today's training. My name is Tracy Beavers, and if you are new to my channel, I'm so glad to see you here, my friend. As a business and sales coach, I help you grow your business, and it doesn't matter if you're just starting out with an awesome idea and a dream, or if you're an established business having great success, whatever your need is. We work together to map out clear action steps for you to get from where you are right now to where you want to be and we get there faster because we have a roadmap and I keep you focused every step of the way. I've been in sales and marketing for over 15 years, and I've guided many businesses just like yours, using my unique roadmap approach and doing it step by step together. If you're new here, be sure to smash that subscribe button because I put out a brand new training every single week and be sure to check out the show notes below the video for more great resources. I've got some great free guides and blog content crafted just for you, the small business owner.

So let's dive in today's topic. We're going to talk about how we, as business owners, can gain visibility without having to pay for expensive advertising. And I'm talking about not just social media advertising and Google ads or YouTube ads, but even local TV, radio spots, Billboard, magazine ads and back in the day, newspaper ads, I think we still have newspapers around. So this topic was born out of my own frustration this summer, I ran paid ads on Facebook in June and September for the launch of my online course and my five day workshop and you guys, it was a dismal failure. Like, I still don't really understand what happened, and I had even hired somebody to assist me with the ads. I spent thousands of dollars trying to do this with zero return. Now, that's seriously frustrating. And now I'm not. Am I saying that there aren't people out there that are successfully using paid ads on social media? Absolutely not. That's not what I'm saying. There are many people that are seeing conversions with their ads, but my understanding is that in large part, it's people who have hired agencies to help them and they spend tens of thousands of dollars on their ads. And don't get me wrong, I am certain that my business will grow to a point where I have to take a look at running paid ads again.

But in the meantime, I want to share with you my strategy and all the ways you can get in front of your audience without tossing your money out the window because that's how I felt this summer. I felt like I literally should have just taken it and tossed it out the window. And I want you to comment in the chat, How are you currently finding new clients? What methods do you find work or what methods do you find to be a frustration or a struggle? Let's share some best practices with each other. So here are just a few ways that have worked for me and my coaching clients, so I know they will work for you and this is by no means a complete list. There's no way I could cover everything today, but just want to give you a few tips that you can implement so that you can get some quick wins with this. And remember, speaking of quick wins, this is not a get visibility overnight kind of strategy. Sales is all about building relationships and to build relationships. We have to make connections and to make those connections, we've got to be visible and we've got to engage with other people as a supportive and giving human being. So I want you to know that this takes time but following my strategies, you will gain visibility, which will lead to more clients, more income.

So first, I want to talk about a little bit about social media and despite how much it can frustrate us and how wonky those algorithms can be, it looks like it's here to stay and like it or not, it is the least expensive way to grow an audience on a global scale. A major pet peeve of mine, though, is when I find someone that interests me or someone I want to hire or something or someone I want to buy from and I go and I click on their social media profile and nothing is there. There's no information in their about section. It doesn't matter if you're using Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. When it, when someone clicks on your name and they will click on your name because like me, they want to know that you are a real human being with a legitimate business, and you're not just going to steal their money and scam them, right? So when I go to click on someone's personal profile, let's say in Facebook and I go to their about section and it says no work places to show my brain goes, hold on, red flag. Wait a minute, Do I have the right person? I thought they had a business, maybe they don't have a business, maybe they're not serious about their business. I mean, all those thoughts are going through my head, and I'm sure you've had that happen to you as well. You click on someone's personal profile and you want to know who they are and that there are legitimate human being, right? And you're like, Wait a minute, there's no information here. It's just weird, It's a disconnect. So we have to do better than this.

Here's what you can do today, if you don't know how to max out your personal profile, your business page information, your links and go to my profiles on social. Look at my Facebook personal profile, my business page, my Instagram, my LinkedIn and listen, I am by no means perfect, but I do feel like I've taken full advantage of this prime real estate to advertise who I am, what I do, and how you can connect or buy from me and I give you a call to action. Look at people who are your competitors, see what their profiles look like. Look at people that had businesses that are adjacent to yours where you have the same audience, but you do different things so you don't compete with each other. Get some ideas on how to max this out. It's going to make a huge difference in your conversions. One of the things that I do for my clients is I check their profiles and we make sure you are maxed out there. So going deeper into social media, let's talk about social media groups, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, even things like Clubhouse. I personally enjoy and use Facebook, Facebook groups for my visibility. I have a Facebook group for my business, but I also am in other Facebook groups. So if a Facebook group sounds great and something like that would really benefit your business, I can tell you how to build that and it's so much fun. But If, if that doesn't sound like it would be a good fit for your business model, then look at using other Facebook groups or groups on LinkedIn.

Think about who your ideal client is and where are they likely to be hanging out? Like, do you serve moms who are looking for nutrition tips for their kids? Or are you a CPA and a bookkeeper and you serve business owners? What local groups are there where people local to you are in Facebook? In a group supporting one another, local moms groups, local real estate groups. Here in our area, we have several of these and I'm in a few of them and everyone, all the members are all commenting and supporting one another. Now here's the thing. we have to be careful in groups. These are not places for us to spam one another with buy my stuff, buy my stuff. We cannot go into these groups wanting to spray our business information and our authors across them like a confetti gun, OK? This is a way to comment, like and support other people. And sometimes in the group, you'll find that there are days when the group owner will let you promote what you do, like a promo Wednesday or a paid offer Tuesday. Check the rules for the group and know what days you can post your offers and when and then do not violate those rules, but be sure and take advantage of them. Hang out in the group, check the vibe of the group, be kind and supportive, and help when you can, comment, cheer somebody on. This will lead people to see your name often. They will get curious about you, they will click on your name and then going back to what we just talked about when they click on your name, you have to have your profile maxed out so they can very clearly see exactly who you are, what you do and what you have to offer. If you're relational and connecting, genuinely, this is going to lead to connections and conversations that will lead to opportunities for your business.

You might find your next best referral source. You might find your next collaboration partner where you can share one another's audiences. You might find your next best client. It is sales 101. We're talking about engaging, being a human, being relational, building connections, and it will lead to benefiting you and your business If you're paying attention. This is something I help my clients with every day. Alright, so let's switch gears for a minute and let's talk about networking because I think a lot of people have forgotten the old school method of gaining visibility, the networking either in-person or virtually. So you've maxed out your social media information in your profiles and you're in groups and you're engaging in chats, you're probably having great conversations in the DMs by now. What do you do next? Well, if you've hung out with me for any length of time, you can probably guess my next strategy, Take the relationship offline. Yep, you guessed it, social media can go black and disappear at any time, so you've got to find a way to stay connected with people if that happens. When you're meeting people, think through who they are, what do they need? Who are they looking for? Could they be a client for you? Then connect on a deep enough level that you can ask them if you can stay connected by email and exchange emails with them? Put them on your email list and continue to nurture your relationship through your email campaigns. Don't have an email campaign? That's another training for another day. Maybe they aren't interested in being your client, and that's OK, if their audience of clients and your audience of clients are the same and talk about how you can collaborate and help each other. A great example of this would be a massage therapist collaborating with a yoga studio to do virtual trainings or live in-person event, you each invite your lists, you each can give visibility with each other's audiences. Another great example would be if you own a lawn service and you partner with a business that does gutter and siding installations.

Those are what we call adjacent audiences. Here's another example I just thought of, if you're a painter, you can partner with an interior design firm and again, these are things that I help my clients with in sessions all the time, and they are growing their businesses with my strategies. And finally, maybe they don't want to be your client, maybe their audience is completely different than yours and at that point, could you be referral sources for each other? Ask how you can help them grow their business and they will do the same for you. Networking 101, right? There are so many other ways I can share with you about how to gain visibility for your business so you get more clients get more sales without throwing money at expensive ads and hoping that you are reaching the people you want to reach and that your message will land with them.

I have just scratched the surface here with social media networking and talking about email messaging, making sure you're using the right marketing, messaging, messaging on your posts, on your emails, on anything you send through snail mail, free media spots, being a guest on podcast, having your own Facebook group or LinkedIn group or being in other people's groups, there are so many ways to gain visibility without paying for advertising. So you may be thinking, OK, Tracy, this sounds great. But before I spend a lot of time and energy on this, how do I know what's going to work? It's a great question. Let me ask you this, though. When you started your business, did you know it was going to work? I mean, you had an idea and you knew there was demand, but did you know if you were going to be successful and make money? None of us do. So we got to try some things. We got to throw some spaghetti at the wall.

Like, as I like to say, I help my clients figure out the best combination of methods for them. We plan out the strategy and we execute and then we monitor it and we lean into what's working and we let go of what's not and before they know it, they gain new clients. And if you want more creative ideas and strategy, I have developed guides to, guide for visibility just for you. These were born out of my frustration this summer with those paid ads, and these are the strategies that I've used to grow my business and my income. And you can grab my 22 page guide for only seventeen dollars at TracyBeavers.com/visibility. That's TracyBeavers.com/visibility, only seventeen dollars and you'll get these tips we went over today plus so many others. Go there now, check it out. Your business is absolutely worth a $70 investment. So it's time for me to highlight one of my awesome coaching clients. I absolutely love making a difference for you, and I love it more when you share with me the gains you've made. You can be featured too. Just let me know in the comments. Connect with me through my website. Let me know how my trainings have helped you so I can feature you and give you a shout out for you and your and your business gaining visibility right there. See what I did, I'm cracking myself up. Anyway, the highlight of the week goes out to my client, Lacey, who recently told me she saved Twenty four hundred dollars a year in her business because of the strategies and ideas I laid out for her in our sessions together. My heart could not be happier. Saving twenty four hundred dollars a year, that is outstanding. If you know anyone else that would benefit from these trainings, please hit that share button, give it a thumbs up, give it a like and send it to them. And don't forget, grab your guide for gaining visibility without paid ads so you can get more eyes on you. Gain new clients. Grow your income at TracyBeavers.com/visibility and until next time, I'm here for you and I am cheering you on, my friend.