How to advertise your business in a non-advertising way

Do you feel like you are constantly barking for attention online?

Buy my stuff

BUY MY STUFF

JUST BUY IT!

That sounds crazy as heck, right?

But that is what I see when I visit your social media page. I have some bad news to share with you. The desperation is turning off your prospective clients. If you need helping identifying your ideal client, here is a guide.

I see so many “Call to action” ad posts. It does not matter if your ad features only text, images or a combination of the two. You may inadvertently be repelling your potential customers through your ad campaign strategy.

Rethink how you advertise on social media platforms

I want to make it clear that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram amongst other places are social platforms. The purpose of these platforms is to facilitate the distribution of content. Through their like and share features, they promote and encourage their users to share content amongst themselves.

The problems begins when business owners like you and me mess it up with aggressive advertising. We pummel our prospects with ad copy after ad copy.

We think that prospects will eventually purchase from us with enough exposure to the advertisement.

Wrong.

Prospects have the ability to hide or unfollow your channel if they feel they get no value from your service.

Increase your chance of a sale through increased likability

Prospects choose to not purchase from you for a variety of reasons. For example, they may choose to purchase a product or service from your competitor. Or they may choose to find a different solution all together and decide to not make a purchasing decision. Either way, you want them to purchase from you and you alone.

Your job is to gain confidence, increase likability and showcase your product/service superiority. Remember a prospect purchases from you after they know, like and trust you. I wrote about this in an earlier article. You need to gain a prospect’s trust and confidence before they will even consider making a financial transaction with you.

Alternatives to “Call to Action” advertising

One way to increase your chance of sales is to promote your business in non-traditional manners. Instead of always posting “Special, Buy This!,” consider the following ideas:

Post emotional videos and images

Engage with your audience by sharing content that your ideal customer would love to see. As you look at your copy, ask yourself “how do I want my customer to react to this content?” Do I want them to laugh, cry or be angry? Do I want them feeling sentimental or nostaglic? What emotion do I want them to feel?

Emotions matter, a lot.

Emotions help drive a person to make a purchasing decision.

For example, have you noticed that PETA or some animal rights activists purposely show videos of animals being mistreated or abused on camera? You would justifiably feel anger if you were a staunch animal rights activist, correct?

Yes! They are using emotion to drive you to make a decision to support PETA so you can stop seeing videos of animal mistreatment. But sorry to break it to you, you will never see them stop posting those kind of videos…

Drive someone to make a decision through your content.

I want you to not just put out content for the sake of the putting out content. Understand the emotion you want your viewer to feel and then help guide them to make a decision. Do you want them to sign up, learn or watch more?

Whatever the decision, give them a next step after you figured out the kind of emotion you want to trigger from the viewer or reader.

Be active in your local business community

If you are a Business to Business provider, join a networking community and answer questions that are related to your industry.

Write articles (like this) on your subject matter expertise. Find local community organizations and volunteer your time to discuss an important business issue. Find ways to connect with others in the community (online or in person).

Support others in the business community

Business is not a land of mercenaries where we all look out for ourselves at the expense of others. If you want to grow and succeed in business, you must depend on working with others in the business community. Find allies in your business community that you can support.

You can support a fellow business owner in a variety of ways:

• Give them a helping hand in a community event.
• Join my online community and connect with other business owners.
• Recommend other businesses.
• Offer to review your business allies’ latest product or service.
• List their business in your own local business service directory.

You business can grow exponentially if you are known as a resourceful, knowledgeable and friendly person. That is the best kind of advertising a business could ever have.

Do you have a suggestion on advertising in non-tradition ways? I would love to read it! Please drop me a line in the comment section below.