How to Indirectly Advertise Your Business | EP 793

How to Indirectly Advertise Your Business

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 Tim Strifler: Hey everyone welcome to another episode of WP The Podcast, i’m Tim Strifler my co-host David Blackmon is uh traveling on vacation, he’s had a conference uh for RVers air streamers and so uh yeah he was supposed to be back just can’t couldn’t quite get our schedules to to line up and so um i’m recording some more episodes solo. So today we are discussing how to indirectly advertise your business uh and specifically your web design business. Right, and the premise for this is the fact that people love to buy but they hate being sold to something i i’ve been saying for years on the podcast and talked about a lot. Um and it’s true. Right, people have money and they see something they like they love to buy it but they don’t like being sold to no one likes being sold to you. You see someone like a car salesman right and they’re like being pushy, it just you just put down that barrier right um same thing like with with ads. If we see an ad that we like it doesn’t really bother us so much but we’re seeing a lot of ads and stuff you just don’t care about whatever it’s just like ah gosh stop. Um and so i want to discuss some methods that you can indirectly advertise your business without being pushy, without being annoying without being in your face. And the idea about this episode came up um from actually my mobile car wash guy. Right, so we have a car wash guy, he comes to the house and he washes our car he has a a big van with like a tank of water and a compressor or a water um my gosh what is the name of it uh water when it shoots, high powered water out of whatever. Anyways um yeah so he has a big van with all of his equipment and stuff, and then on the side of the van he has his name and his logo and his phone number. Right, now this is something that is super super common with any professional in the like home contractor type of business, so any type of roofer landscaper or painter anything like that they’re going to have their business name and their phone number their logo on the side of their truck. Right, and this is something that i’d seen ever since you know i was a little kid and never really thought about it um and kind of figured that you know, yeah people do that but like how effective is that really until i actually started uh we’ve been going through a huge remodel at my house and had a lot of different professionals over and i noticed that whenever we had someone over a lot of times a neighbor would come and um you know write down the the name of the contractor or they’d say hey i noticed you had this person here, you know this painter i saw their truck like are they good and then i’d be like yeah they’re awesome like go hire them. And so i was like wow that actually is effective. And then back to the the car wash guy. We had a car wash guy our mobile car wash guy here, and a friend of mine who lives a few a few doors down and um the our car wash guy said, yeah your neighbor uh Doug saw our truck and so he’s um we’re gonna go wash two of his cars once we’re done with yours. I was like that’s awesome like i love that and it occurred to me that yes they saw the ad but it’s more than that. Right because yes you you could you could see you know a painter in a truck um at a red light you know when you’re just driving somewhere even if you need a painter chances are you’re not going to just call but if that same painter is out in front of your neighbor’s house who you know or you’re at least acquaintances, and you know they hire good people, well now that’s way more attractive. Right, and so that painter is able to advertise their business by being in front of the the project that they’re working on without being pushy and without like feeling like you’re you’re being sold to and so i was like what is the equivalent to that for web designers. Right, obviously as a web designer you’re not going to put your name logo and phone number on the side of your car, and hope to get any business from it you could do that it’s not going to be effective. And so uh it’s just you know, obviously that’s a different thing. So what is the equivalent to that right what are the principles you can extract from that which is you know getting in front of people without being pushy and getting also simultaneously almost like a referral or like a testimonial. Right because you’re in front of that neighbor’s house and you know that neighbor and so therefore you trust them because your neighbor hired them, right what is the equivalent to that? Now i don’t know the exact answer but hopefully you can extract some of those principles and start applying them in your own ways. So a couple ideas that just come to mind off the top of my head and this is something that is already done but it’s kind of the same principles is when you see someone that is in a facebook group or on a forum or something and answering someone’s question and just being really helpful. Right you’re in a Facebook group, someone asks a question and you just answer the question with with not seeking anything in return. And someone might click on your profile, see your business and then say “hey i want to hire this person”, right? You weren’t commenting saying and if you want more you know call me and you know you can pay me to do some work for you. Right, you’re just out there being helpful but by doing that you’re building trust people are going to trust you because they can see that you they you know what you’re talking about because you’re answering these questions thoughtfully and they don’t feel like they’re being sold to because they’re not trying to sell anything. But if they happen to click through your profile now they can see that you know you have a business and they can hire you if they want. Right and and so that’s just one one example similar type of thing um creating a free blog posts or free videos where you’re showing your expertise. So you’re building that trust and then you’re able to get in front of people and indirectly advertise your business because if they google something and you have an article or youtube video that solves their problem. Well now they’re on your site or on your youtube channel and now they’re like oh what does this person do what products does this person have whatever. So you know, it’s it’s ways to indirectly advertise your business without being pushy without people feeling like you’re selling to them or you’re trying to promote something. So those are a few online examples you know as a web designer you can uh you know do some co-marketing efforts with with some of your clients that you’ve done work for have them promote that they just had a website done by you and that they love it okay, people are automatically gonna trust you a little more if they’re following your client. And so yeah you can potentially get work from that. So there’s a lot of things like that that you can do to think outside the box to indirectly advertise your business without selling to people without being salesy without annoying them without spamming them. And so yeah look to your your local contractor and how they indirectly advertise to all the neighbors of the projects that they’re working on. So that is it for this episode, tomorrow we are discussing this is random but we’re discussing how and why you should declare email bankruptcy. So i did this recently so tune in for that until then take care bye-bye.