5 Ways to Promote Your Business Without Directly Promoting Your Business

 

5 Ways to Promote Your Business Without Directly Promoting Your Business

Instead of shamelessly self-promoting, try doing this.

Illustration: Getty Images

As our social-media feeds and inboxes get busier and busier, our attention span decreases accordingly. None of us have time to spend following a company or a person who talks about himself all day long. It’s just not interesting.

However, since our feeds are so busy, that’s exactly why companies need to know how to rise above the noise. And yet, the old-school method of self-promotion simply doesn’t work anymore.

Here are five ways to promote your company without directly promoting your company.

1. Interview the movers and shakers of your space.

Interviews are the most underrated type of content. In my career, I’ve interviewed over a thousand people, and not a single person that I’ve asked to interview has said no. Why? Because people like to be onstage. Everyone has a mom they want to send the interview to.

So why are interviews so powerful? Well, when you interview people in your space, you accomplish three critical things.

The first thing you get is a relationship with that person, and if you already had one, then this strengthens it. The second thing is targeted traffic that you will get as soon as that person shares the interview, and have no doubt, they will share it. The third thing? Your brand gets elevated by association.

Every company should conduct weekly interviews on its blog or podcast.

2. Create consistent lists of thought leaders in your vertical.

We’ve all seen the lists of people on the Internet. Top 20 this and top 50 this. But did you ever stop to think about who created that list and why?

Imagine you’re an AI company and you create monthly lists of the top CEOs, VCs, or journalists in your space. Every one of those people will now go into that list, which means you just got on their radar, and then they will go share it, which means you get all that traffic.

Just imagine how much traffic the top 20 investors in your space can drive your way when sharing that list. But even better than the quantity of that traffic is the quality.

3. Feature industry personalities on your social media.

Ever since COVID started and my meetings were reduced to a minimum, I’ve been doing daily social-media features of the people in my network. Every day I switch between a man and a woman. I’ve done over 600 such features.

Let there be no mistake, I did this because I wanted to let my network know about some remarkable people, but these features also achieve something else.

Imagine if your LinkedIn feed has 650 superstars, and those 650 people have two things in common. The first? They are superstars, and the post explains why. The second? In all 650 posts, the person is standing next to one person, and that person is you. Well, what does that say about you?

4. Document your meetings with a picture and a nice post. 

I know this isn’t every person’s cup of tea, but taking a nice photo every time you meet someone and sharing it on social media with some kind words about that person can be a fantastic way to visualize your network and increase your exposure, because that person will most likely share your post, thereby increasing its visibility.

5. Be as helpful as you can to as many people as you can.

It might sound naive, but when you focus on helping others get a business win, you end up winning too.

Whether it’s introductions to your network, help with storytelling, feedback on a marketing strategy or anything else, when you focus your time and resources on the value, and not on monetization, the recipient of that value has no expectations, so all you can do is exceed expectations, which in turn creates delight. Delight can be monetized.

If you focus in every meeting on how to help the person you’re sitting with, you’ll establish a reputation for being indispensable, you’ll strengthen relationships, and you’ll have a huge bank of favors to call upon down the road.

The bottom line is: Differentiate yourself from everyone else by not talking about yourself, and when you pave the road for others to reach success, you join them on that road.

The Bottom / Bottom Line

Make it easy for your customers to become advocates.  It’s not that hard in today’s environment.  All that needs to happen is to help the customer not feel invisible, make the feel appreciated and include lots of eye contact and a smile.  Your customers will become your marketing department because we all love to share our good customer service stories.

We here to help you grow your customer service culture.  Give us a call, let’s get started.

BY HILLEL FULD AND CARL PHILLIPS

 
 

Business Evaluation Services, PO Box 507, Arroyo Grande, CA 93421, 888-300-8292

Our mailing address is:
Carl@mysteryshopperservices

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