EP. 7: 3 ways to grow your audience quickly, without using Ads
What’s this episode about?
Yes, it might be unusual for an Ads strategist to be talking about way to grow your audience WITHOUT using Ads!
But I firmly believe that to get the most from Ads, you need a strong foundation to start from, and that includes having tried and tested organic strategies to grow your audience.
Episode key takeaways:
Key social media strategies that you can use that don't involve Reels (or competitions!)
Service based businesses: how to build trust with large groups to bring them in to your world and help them buy from you.
Ecom businesses: creating ways to use other peoples audiences to grow whilst adding value.
KEY LINKS:
Come say hello over on Instagram: The Social Pod
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Still not 100% sure if you are ready to run Ads? Book a 15min Gameplan call where we’ll take a look at these 5 core elements and I can help you see if there are gaps and we can make a plan to fill them before you start running Ads!
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two.
Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort. A quick warning, before we start, I can get a little bit sweary, so just be careful of any little ears listening along.
Sophie: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of growing pains.
This week, we're going to be talking about bringing people into your world without using ads. Now, this might be a little bit of an unusual episode for a Facebook [00:01:00] and Instagram as strategists to do. But if you listen back to episode one, you would have heard me talk about the funnel and how you move people from the top of your funnel. So never having heard about you through, to purchasing from you. Now, if you haven't listened to the episode, definitely give a lesson, but like a quick level overview was that you need to be bringing new people into your world, finding out about your business.
Like all the time consistently, otherwise you're not going to be able to move them down through your funnel, into your warm audience. Getting them onto your website, getting them, adding to cart and then buying from you. So we need to bring new people into our world all the time. Okay. We're happy with that.
Then I said in episode five which was all about what you need to have in place before you start ads. That you really shouldn't be doing ads until you have a proven product or service. So, what I find is a lot of our new businesses, they launch, they have some success with their product or service, and then they reached this like sticky period where they're not getting sales.[00:02:00]
And they start to panic, but they're not reaching enough people. And they think, I know I'm going to do, I'm going to use ads, but actually they're not ready to use ads. And they don't have the funds to be able to invest in ads because they're not getting consistent sales and it's this chicken and egg scenario where it's like, I don't have the money to do ads, but I really need more people seeing my products so I can sell more. Anyway, we go around in cycles.
And one thing I always advise people to do is really look at their marketing plan. And this is something that I'm going to be talking about more often. Because I sometimes think that we can see people who are really successful by just using Instagram and think that that is all we need to do. I just need to post on Instagram. And that is my marketing strategy. And actually for most businesses, we need to be a lot more strategic than that. And we need to be thinking across different platforms.
I'm not saying you need to be on every social media platform. What I'm saying is you need to be looking at your customer journey. And what different things can you use to bring them into your world? So, yes, of course you do need some social media. Probably [00:03:00] not everyone, but probably you really do need an email list. If you haven't started your email list or if you've got a list and you don't email them.
I am going to do an episode on this, but you really need to get on your priority list. You need your website to be set up properly so when someone's landed on their website, they're more likely to buy from you. And then once those things were in place, you've got strategies on social media, email and your website. At that point, you start to amplify it with ads. Now my next episode, that will be coming out next week is going to be how you amplify your organic stuff. So your social, your email and your website.
With ads, but I really want to dig in a bit more into how you can start bringing new people into your world. Using organic strategies. Before we start talking about ads. Okay, so let's get into it. Now. I want to make this episode really practical. I'm going to talk about three core ways you can use to grow your audience without using ads.
Now. But if a confession, I don't use ads in my business at the moment. [00:04:00] And the reason I don't use add to my business was because up until this point, I've worked mainly one-to-one with clients. I've used these organic marketing strategies. I'm going to talk about today. They've worked really well for me. And I'm word of mouth as well. So I haven't needed to use ads and I'm always a massive advocate for only using ads. When you need to use them, you don't need to use them if for example, for me, I only need one new client, probably every couple of months.
So then I don't need to use ads. So instead I've used organic strategies and they worked really well for me. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. So here we go. Now I want to set you a little challenge. I want you to commit to at least one of these three strategies. I want you to commit to doing it over the next 30 days, at least once, if not, two to three times. Okay. We will make more sense when I talk about strategies.
Now, if you're going to do it, if you're going to commit to it and you really want to increase the amount of people that are organically finding or business. DME. Tell me you're all in. I'm going to cheerlead you on. I'm going to make sure you commit to it. I'm going [00:05:00] to hold you accountable. And for the first three people who actually go ahead and implement one of these.
I'm going to send you something as a congratulations present because we, we all need cheerleaders in our lives. We need people who are pushing us along and keeping us accountable and getting us to try things that we don't want to do. Now. I'm not going to say you don't going to want to do these, but they might push you outside of your comfort zone.
And you might think like, oh yeah, I could do that. And then go in and not do them. So really want to try and keep you accountable on this. Okay. So the first one, another first one is for service-based businesses or econ businesses. And we're going to talk about collaboration specifically on social media. Now I'm going to primarily talk about Instagram because it's where I focused all of my attention.
And that partly to be honest is a strategy. Making sure you go all in on one platform, don't try and spread yourself too thin. Don't try and do all the platforms all the time. Focus yourself on one. Now use collaborations. I am not talking about competitions. And I know there's [00:06:00] a temptation when you talk about collaboration, like, okay. Yeah. I'll find a few other people and we'll put together a competition and we'll all get loads of followers. Hurrah now.
Yes, they might be your ideal followers, but I would argue that a lot of people will enter a competition and follow you. Now they'll either unfollow you or they won't be your ideal client or people who are entering a competition aren't necessarily in the right place. To buy from you. We want people in our warm audience stuff, people that are following us on social media to be ready to move on to the next step, to be open, to being nurtured by us, to be interested in what we offer people who follow you because of a competition I'm not necessarily interested in what you offer.
And it can be really dangerous to grow your following in that way, because you're likely to get less engagement. You can use, you know, say you use your social media audience as an an audience for your ads. They're not going to do as well, because it's not full of people who are genuinely interested in what you do.
You're better off having less people in your audience, but more interested. So when I talk [00:07:00] about collaboration, I'm not talking about competitions. What I'm talking about is I'm going live with someone else. Who is what you really want to be looking for? Are people who have similar clients to you so you might both have products that focus on parents in the first year after having a baby. You might both have products that focus on
Educational toys. It might be that you both have products that are for pregnant women.
Whatever your niche is. You'll definitely find other people that have the same audience as you. You don't necessarily want to do a direct competitors, but I would argue that that, you know, there's always room for everyone. So I wouldn't worry too much about like the competitor issue, but definitely someone who kind of compliments what you do would work really well.
And you also really in an ideal world, you want them to be at least at a similar level of followers and engagement at you. Don't get too hung up on it, but if you've got like, say. A few thousand followers and they've got a hundred followers. Is that going to be beneficial to you? If you've got 2000 followers and they've got.
[00:08:00] 5,000 followers. That's fine. That's great. Like roughly there or thereabouts don't get too stressed by it, but I would say, make sure you're looking at like roughly equal kind of benefit for both of you. Now I did a series of lives from October to December last year. And I grew my following massively from that
so I did think I did 12 lives. Six of them, I did say low, like this kind of upstate and six of them. I did as collaborations with other people on Instagram. And. It worked really well. Some of my best performing posts are from those periods I set up to promote the episode. I set up a post and then I added that person as a collaborator. So it went on their feed as well.
Pretty much, all of them shared that they were going to be doing the live on their Instagram and on their stories. And then obviously we did the live, which is notified to their followers and my followers. And afterwards the live was posted on their feet and my feet. So it's a huge amount of opportunity to get in front of their audience, their audience already trust them. And if they're recommending you, then you're going to play for that [00:09:00] audience as well. So I got a lot of followers from that and I got a lot of engagement.
Really really well. So lives are brilliant for that. Also, you could collaborate on like real or something, you know, like where you pass the product and it kind of goes along. It takes a little bit of organizing, but you could definitely do that. To be honest, I do quite a lot of reels.
And I get hardly any followers from it. I get much more followers when I collaborate with other people in a similar area. So that's on your list. Okay. Collaborate with someone else on social in an ideal world, set this up as like a weekly thing or a monthly thing where you try this chat to someone else on Instagram and you could make educational, you could make it a conversation.
You could make it themed. Do whatever you want, but just bring other people into your world and use that audience. And you're using each other's audience where they are, but you need to use other people to grow. Okay, the next one is primarily for service-based businesses. And this is to use a taster session or a workshop.
Now people buy from people they want to get to know [00:10:00] you. And the best way to do that is to get people, to listen to you over a long period of time. Now an alternative to this would be like a podcast, because again, you're getting in someone's ear for quite a long period of time. Relatively now about full cost takes quite a long time to set up. I'm not going to lie. Having just been through it. I would say I'm much quicker.
Version is to do a taster session. So if you offer some kind of service, some kind of calls, some kind of ongoing support. I do kind of group taste a session you you don't have to give away all of your course content. You could just focus on a particular, like particular, specific pain point.
You could talk through like the outline of your program, you could help people see what the benefits are of working with you. There's loads of really great benefits, making sure that you, you hook people in with something that they really want to know that they're going to get a benefit from like a small win.
A bit like a lead magnet. You know, when you're doing like an email lead magnet. You want people to think? Oh yeah. I want the answer to that question. Taster session doesn't have to be super long. Like it could be half an [00:11:00] hour. So in an ideal world, you would set a date. We need to promote it on your social media and via email. You'd probably put it on event bright as well. I know that you can get people who just find you through Eventbrite because it's got such strong SEO.
And also put it on your website. So put it everywhere. Make sure you talk about it day in, day out, make sure there's always something on your stories about it. Make sure you're promoting it in posts. And then run it through zoom or you can have people on there. You can make sure everyone's muted. You don't have to have everyone have their cameras on or you can make it an interactive session. Depends kind of what you're in.
And just run a taster for for people who are interested in the topic that you're talking about. And then at the end, promote your services, make sure you tell people where they can find you on social media, your website, you get them to sign up to email list by signing up to the. Workshop the so many options that you can do from that.
Invite them to a call. It depends how you convert your clients, but that's what I'd be thinking about. How can you set up some kind of way for people to experience like a small snippet of [00:12:00] what it's like to work with you as a service-based business? Okay. The third one is, and this is primarily for econ this time.
Is using PR now. Now I'm going to pull on some advice. I've had some brilliant guests so far. Catherine in episode four, talked about the fact that people are still buying, but they might be focusing on occasions rather than impulse buys. Now I think that is as really stuck with me. I know that I pass me, you know, there's.
I say the costs are going up. I'm like nervous about like the cost of living and people are really kind of making much more considered purchases at the moment. But they are still spending. So how can you get people who are ready to buy your products or at least in front of people to give you a better chance?
Now I would say there are a couple of ways you can do this using PR. And by PR I don't necessarily mean the press, but you can use the press. So go onto Twitter and look at hashtag journey request, have a look through. You know, [00:13:00] magazines that you think your your ideal clients are going to be looking at, do they do father's day gift guides? Are they talking about what's going on over summer for kids? Like whatever your product or service is like, do they do any kind of features that you could get in now?
I mean, especially the long lead press, you'd need to think about it now. And pep up, who is on episode six teachers PR I'd have loads more about this sort of stuff. So if you want to get a bit more into the press side Looking at like entering awards. And kind of doing more press stuff, then definitely lifts into the episode.
What I think there's definitely that element that you can look at. But what I want to talk a bit more about today is how you could be a bit more proactive yourself. So here's a few ideas. Set up a gift guide. Okay. If there's something coming up, whether it's like a specific thing, like a father's day or the Queen's Jubilee, or even if it's not a set day, but something like a baby shower gift guide or.
A gift guide for new moms, right. A gift guide for baby's first birthday, something like that. Something that people will [00:14:00] still be buying for. Even when times are tight. So think about who else in your, who else would compliment your product or service. So you're obviously going to be forefront in it.
How can you set up a gift guide with a load of other businesses, product or service based? That would be in that guide. And then you can literally set up a, you could set up a single page website and you could do it via email, like on a bit of a blog post. You could do it in any way you want, like you could do a PDF in Canva. So just think about it. Doesn't have to be super complicated.
But setting up your own gift guide, you can then get all of the people that are in the gift guide to promote that to their audiences. You can promote it to your own audience and you can use loads of social media, tagging everybody in it, like getting it shared. you can get loads of emails for people signing up to it. So that would be one, it will take a bit of time and effort, but give yourself like 30 days to do it.
Like give yourself a deadline and just get it done. And once it's there, it can be tweaked and updated, but it is there. That's it forever. [00:15:00] The next one would be if you think. No, that's just not, that's not for me. Get involved in popup shops or pop up. Events. So there's a Wunderlist one guy on the Maidment. I don't know if you've heard of it, but I am on the email list.
And it's, so it's the Wunderlist and they have all these different businesses that promote through them. It happens every couple of months. They have 27,000 people on that email list. And then all of the brands or businesses can then promote themselves through this directory. He normally have to give some kind of discount.
But that's a great way to get in front of more people. Similarly for service-based businesses, it's similar to a virtual summit where you would be one of the speakers and, you know, your details go out to thousands of people. I have done that. I've done a few virtual summits now and they've been really good fun, and I've got a lot of people on my email list and social media from doing that.
Get involved in other things that people are organizing. And finally you could just keep it super simple. Okay. You could get three or four other businesses together and you could [00:16:00] each do a blog post for each other and put it on each other's websites.
So, for example, if you do. Ah, baby weaning sets. You know, you could talk about three ways to get started with baby weaning and then promote yourself at the end. And then you could put it on the website of someone who then runs like baby classes or something, then loads of different ways you could do it. And there's loads of different. Options and I'm more than happy. If you want to DM me, we can brainstorm this kind of stuff. But just think about how you could get something on someone else's website.
If you focus on sustainability, are there any websites you could write about like sustainability of clothes or three ways you can be more sustainable. When you're buying clothes, things to consider that sort of thing, and then plug yourself at the end. So, those are kind of three ways. They, within the PR space that you could start.
Uh, Connecting with other people without necessarily using social media. Now the last I know I said three tips. I'm just going to do one more really quickly. This is a bonus tip because it's not one that you're going to nail in the next 30 days, but. It's a slow burn and this is working on your [00:17:00] SEO. Now it's not the sexiest of topics and it's one of the ones. Even I put it to the end of my to-do list. It's never a gen.
It's never immediate. But getting found by Google for people who are literally looking for what you offer. It's incredibly powerful. Now it takes time.
And it's not something that's going to happen overnight. Leanne from the content creator on Instagram. She's the content. Dr. Creator on Instagram. I'll put a link in my bio. She is fab. I'm hoping to get her on the podcast and she said some really great tips and I really, her email is incredible. So definitely join her email list if you're not on it already.
But yeah, if you're looking to kind of up your SEO game, She also specializes in Shopify as well. So if you're a product based business, that she has some brilliant tips on that as well. So those are my three plus one bonus tip. So the first one is collaborate on social media, not competition, but like real collaboration lives, reels, posts, all that good stuff.
The second, if you were service business, think about, could you run a taster session [00:18:00] or a workshop or give, somehow give people an experience of working with you before. They actually sign up. Three, if you're primarily econ. Once it does work with service-based businesses as well. Using
pR strategies to focus on occasions when people might buy. So gift guides getting involved in pop-up shops. All blogs, we'll ping with other people in your niche. And then the bonus tip is working on your SEO. So.
Next Monday, I'm going to release the next episode, which is going to talk about how you can then amplify all this amazing work using ads. So it reaches even more people. And it's one of my favorite techniques to use because it doesn't cost huge amounts. You can run quite low level ads and just really increase your reach, make it less peaks and troughs, and much more consistent about how much your content is reaching people.
Make sure you're following me over on Instagram, which I'm at the underscore social underscore pod. And I'm actually also on ticktock now as well. So if you were on Tik TOK com and give me a follow because I'm [00:19:00] very new there and it would be lovely to see some familiar faces, I'm at the social pod over there. I also send that weekly email, . Which is packed full of Facebook ads and Instagram tips and advice. I also share like what's working for my clients at the moment and that's beyond ads as well. That's really looking at broader marketing strategies and making sure that you are doing what's right for your business at the right time.
So I love sending that email out every week. And the link is in the bio to sign up for that. Thanks again for listening and I will speak to you next week.
Thank you so much for joining me this week before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes, right when they're released. And if you ever enjoyed these podcast episodes, I'd really love to ask you to leave a review in apple podcasts reviews are one of the major ways that apple ranks their podcasts, and it only takes a few seconds, but really does make a massive difference to new people.
Finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of growing pains, see you next time.
