Smart ways to grow without more ad spend
Five things that bring in work, cost nothing but time, and most small businesses never quite get round to.
Most small businesses have the same instinct when work goes quiet.
Spend more on ads. Reach more strangers. Compete for attention against companies with budgets you can't match.
The cheapest customer you'll ever win is one who already knows you.
Someone who bought before, or nearly did, or was recommended by a friend. They need no convincing about whether you're real, which is the expensive part of every advert ever written.
Almost every small business spends nothing here and everything on strangers.
You're probably three messages away from work you never advertised for.
Five things, in order of how quickly they pay.
Go back to past customers. Everyone who bought in the last two years. Not a newsletter — a short personal message with a specific reason to be in touch. This is the fastest work in this list, usually landing within days.
Ask for referrals properly. "If you know anyone who needs X, I'd appreciate the introduction" is a sentence most people never say out loud. Ask the customers who were happiest, and be specific about who you want.
Answer your customers' questions in public. The five things people ask before buying, written up plainly on a page. It works twice — it saves you repeating yourself, and it's what people find when they search.
Follow up on the ones who went quiet. Every business has quotes that were never answered. Silence usually means busy, not no. Three touches, spaced over a fortnight, with something useful in each.
Be findable and be clear. If a stranger lands on your page, can they tell in five seconds what you do, who for, and how to ask? Most can't. That's a free fix and it improves everything else on this list.
How to actually run it rather than reading it and moving on.
● One list, one hour, this weekend. Past customers, near-misses, and people who went quiet. Rebuilding that list is most of the work.
● Personal beats polished. A short message that mentions their actual situation outperforms a designed campaign by a distance.
● Give it a reason. "Just checking in" gets ignored. A new service, a seasonal reminder, a genuine piece of advice does not.
● Do it monthly, not once. The businesses that never go quiet are the ones doing this every month rather than only when things get thin.
One caution: don't add people to a mailing list because they bought something once. Ask first. A single unwanted message costs more goodwill than the enquiry is worth.
Build the list this weekend and send five messages on Monday. That's the whole exercise, and it usually pays within the week.
❯❯❯❯ And if you'd like a reason to be in their inbox every week rather than every quarter, here's the way
The work you're looking for is usually closer than the advert you were about to buy.
— AI Business Builder
