Indeed, social media is the hottest way to promote businesses online. But, it’s NOT the only way an entrepreneur can market in 2024. Know about the 10 perfect ways entrepreneurs can use to market without social media!

Getting a business off the ground requires one to consider the pros and cons of every available marketing medium. And that’s one reason why we decided to create a guide for entrepreneurs that find social media quite cumbersome. This guide focuses on helping entrepreneurs break the shackles of social media and learn about different ways they can promote their brands, products, and services. But, before we do that, it’s crucial that we take into account the various benefits social media brings to the table.

What does social media bring to the table for entrepreneurs?

Social media is, by far, one of the biggest advantages an entrepreneur can have today. This is mostly because this powerful medium is essentially free to use. Here are a few benefits worth considering regardless of where you are in your entrepreneurial journey.

• Let’s you stay up-to-date with the latest trends
• Helps keep a close eye on competitors
• Let’s the world know your brands exist
• Best way to gain free feedback!
• Helps develop connections with mentors and advisors
• Entrepreneurs can find top talent
• Allows one to generate more business

The list goes on and on. Social media is definitely a game-changer for entrepreneurs that struggled with constraints like low marketing budgets and small business networks. But, using social media, especially creating content for it, can be quite a challenge for some entrepreneurs. Let’s discuss the potential barriers to using social media.

What are the potential barriers to using social media?

While there are tons of benefits to social media marketing, entrepreneurs need to acquaint themselves with the potential barriers too! Here are the ways some entrepreneurs feel out of place when using social media, especially to market their brands, products, and services.

• Budget
• Online reputation
• Time and effort
• Lack of training

Don’t sweat it. This guide will help you address your entrepreneurship-related problems and provide you with several marketing mediums as alternatives to social media. But, can entrepreneurs, in this day and age, be successful without using social media?

Check out our article on Are Entrepreneurs Born Or Made.

Can entrepreneurs be successful without social media?

One word: Yes.

An article on Forbes even suggests entrepreneurs NOT to be on social media! It’s a double-edged sword that, although marketed as the new magical solution to creating million-dollar businesses, is a harmful medium for entrepreneurs. We all are humans and we tend to make mistakes due to sudden flashes of emotions and feelings. Social media is quite harsh on entrepreneurs because making mistakes on them can lead to a substantial negative possibility!

Marketing and growing a business without social media is quite practical and doesn’t require one to be tech-savvy. Getting a business off the ground doesn’t just need effective marketing. Entrepreneurs realize that planning and research are more important than marketing. Let’s dive deeper and learn about several ways entrepreneurs can build businesses without having to establish a social media presence. 

How to market effectively without social media?

1. Attend trade shows

This is the most practical way to generate traction for your business. Seasoned entrepreneurs know how crucial it is for them to meet other industry-specific personnel and grow their professional networks. Trade shows give them this opportunity by bringing people in a particular industry together under one roof.

Entrepreneurs can introduce themselves and their business ideas to the attendees and get a chance to witness the newest trends in a particular niche. Document the learnings in every trade show to figure out how to pivot marketing strategy and gain a massive competitive edge. Don’t have a booth at a trade show? Don’t worry — just be an attendee and you’ll be on the right track.

2. Use email marketing

Email is not obsolete. It’s an old yet powerful marketing channel that can help you generate more than $64 billion in revenue! Email is the most fundamental way you can market your brand online. Marketing campaigns involving emails aren’t skill-intensive and can be managed quite easily.

Email marketing campaigns are quite straightforward — all you need is an email marketing software and the application is quite self-explanatory. Most email marketing platforms are designed for intuitive usage too!

However, you will need to build a reliable email list to make email marketing work. Email lists comprise people that you think are likely to do business with you. Use the email list to send brand-related updates, offers, discounts, reminders, and other benefits. We recommend sending an email every couple of weeks. It is very important to not overdo email marketing. 

3. Influencer marketing

You don’t necessarily have to do things yourself on and off social media. There are several influencers in every niche and we suggest partnering with them to generate revenue for your business.

Entrepreneurs that hate social media and always look their way around developing content should seek influencer marketing in which they can make influencers, ideally with a large following, create content and drive traffic to their site.

Influencer marketing works not just on social media. You may even connect with influential bloggers in your niche and make them write about your business. The content for your influencer marketing campaigns should strive to make readers interested in your products and services. 

4. Referral incentives

Another highly effective and profitable marketing tactic you can use (without social media) is word-of-mouth. It’s the oldest and still the most relevant marketing strategy that can get any new business going in no time. But, how can you make people start talking about your business? Entrepreneurs should always come up with certain referral and incentive schemes that attract new customers.

Deliver a perfect customer experience AND the incentive to get them talking. It’s not going to be easy. People aren’t going out of their way just to discuss your company. So, you’ll have to give them a reason — a ‘why.’ We highly recommend entrepreneurs create a referral program to legitimize the marketing strategy. Make sure the more customers refer your business to others, the more incentives they get.

5. Power of business cards

Fancy going old school? Well, regardless of what you prefer, you should always invest in business cards. What are business cards? These are professionally printed marketing collaterals that have information about your business.

They are quite relevant today since these are tangible and increase the entrepreneur’s recall value. Handing out something physical from your personal wallet will always make people think about your business. Make sure you design a highly professional and creative business card that stands out. It should reflect your brand’s personality.

6. Posters and flyers

Another old marketing tactic worth mentioning in the post is physically sending out flyers and posters. You can make posters and flyers to draw people’s attention to your business. Since people don’t have much time or attention span, you would want to create a copy that is easy to read and scannable.

Get the most important information first and gain people’s attention. However, all that will go to waste if you don’t nail the poster placement. Find a place in your area that will attract the most number of eyeballs. Shortlist such places and start passing flyers there. You may even share the flyers in public places, coffee shops, bars, colleges, and more.

7. Event sponsorships

We love event sponsorships. This is because they are so simple yet profitable. Even sponsorships work wonders for entrepreneurs that are fishing for brand awareness. We advise you to sponsor events or create your own. Event sponsorships give brands an excellent opportunity to showcase their products.

How? Most events involve programs where certain gift items and prizes are given away to attendees and winners of event-centric competitions.

You can make the best of this opportunity and let event managers use your products as giveaways. Entrepreneurs should be looking to nail product placement when investing in event sponsorships. Make sure the brand logo, website, and brochure is included for effective event sponsorship.

8. Search engine marketing

You are ditching social media. But, that doesn’t mean you should ditch the entire internet, right? Well, one of the most credible ways to capture leads online is through search engine marketing. You can use search engines to capture active intent and highly qualified traffic to your website.

Marketing on search engines can be both paid and organic. What is paid search engine marketing? In this, you will be bidding on certain keywords that are related to your products and services, in order to rank your website on top.

What is organic search engine marketing? Well, this is what we call Search Engine Optimization. In this, the focus is on developing and designing a search engine-compliant website. Entrepreneurs will have to optimize the website design and content using target keywords — ensuring the website ranks organically on search engines for the keywords.

9. Mobile app promotion

Does your brand have a mobile application? It should because most modern-day consumers use smartphones to search for their favorite brands online. Having a mobile application will give your audience a dedicated online space where they can look for your products and services. The mobile application will help you develop effective promotion beyond social media platforms.

Make sure you create authentically engaging branded content and push it through your mobile application. Mobile apps work wonders when it comes to building stronger business-customer relationships. It helps entrepreneurs add value to their audiences’ lives, generate massive engagement, and offer superior customer service. Not just that, mobile apps come with push notifications which often result in increased revenue.

10. Sponsored ads

Lastly, we have sponsored ads that have significantly leveled the playing field between established brands and small businesses. What are sponsored ads? Entrepreneurs can use the internet to place ads on retailer and marketplace websites. Put simply, you can approach third-party website owners and pay them to place your ads on their websites.

It is a quickly growing online marketing medium that can be highly efficient and produce massive profits for your brand. Running sponsored ads on retail websites not only drives massive traffic and transactions but also helps entrepreneurs consolidate critical target audience and channel intelligence.

Check out our article on What Must An Entrepreneur Do After Creating A Business Plan.

Final remarks!

There you have it. We have shared some of the most effective and profitable marketing strategies worth employing if you don’t want to use social media. Indeed, social media has massive benefits for entrepreneurs. But you don’t necessarily have to use them to render your business successful. We highly recommend using most of the marketing tactics mentioned above for your business venture. Did you find this post helpful? Let us know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to check out other informative posts on the blog!