7 Ways To Market Your Side Hustle Online That Don't Involve Facebook
Welp, if you happen to be a small business owner, it is definitely time to start thinking about other ways to reach new customers online besides Facebook and Instagram.
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The beginning of October was a wake-up call, when millions of people were affected by the Facebook outage — which also took down Instagram and WhatsApp. Though on Twitter the memes were flowing, the business owners and hustlers who use Facebook and Instagram as their main marketing channels were hurting. In fact, many business owners saw a huge drop in sales because of the outage.
Luckily for us, Facebook is not the only way to reach potential customers! Here are seven more things to try:
1. Video is a really popular form of content, so you’ll want to be on TikTok and YouTube.
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Each of these juggernauts have more than a billion monthly active users around the globe (TikTok has already reached 1 billion monthly active users, and Youtube has 2 billion). Though making video content can be a lot of work, the huge amount of reach of these platforms justifies sharpening these skills.
YouTube itself is easy to use once you figure out how to find the right keywords to add to your videos. Plus, free tools like TubeBuddy and VIDIQ provide free Google Chrome extensions that give you intel on what keywords your competition and the influencers in your industry are using for their videos. If you have a budget for it, advertising on YouTube is also a great option because of how granular you can get with your ad targeting.
Where TikTok is concerned, making content is fun once you learn how to follow trends and make them relatable to your specific industry. TikTok also offers ads, but with a required minimum spending of $500.
2. PPC campaigns may not be new and flashy, but they definitely get the job done when you add them into your mix.
For context, PPC ads are those text blocks that look eerily similar to regular Google search results — except there's a convenient "ad" marker that shows the difference. Pay-Per-Click advertising has been around for years. And there are plenty of great resources, including Google’s Skillshop, that can help speed up the learning curve if you want to give them a try.
PPC ads are powerful because they give you the opportunity to target customers who may already have the intent to buy. Combining and testing keywords that you use for organic reach on YouTube with PPC ad campaigns can often lead to better results over time as well.
The notable cons with this marketing channel are that you’re working with limited space, as there are only so many words you can type in a Google Ad. Additionally, ad space is sold auction-style, so other people vying for the top spot can ramp up your spending if you aren’t monitoring it carefully.
3. Email marketing and newsletter partnerships are another great way to grab attention.
If you’re tight on cash, email marketing is another great alternative to Facebook. Newsletters and email drip campaigns have become a staple move for marketers and business owners who want to stay in touch with their subscribers. After all, pretty much everyone checks their email.
Tools like SubStack and Mailchimp can help when you’re starting off, but make sure you also lock in on a strategy for how you’re going to use email in your marketing. I’ve found it works better for me if I only use email marketing campaigns monthly, and only send them to people who’ve already paid for my products and services. I've found it easier to retain and upsell existing customers than it is to do cold outreach using this marketing channel.
If you are going to do cold outreach, my suggestion would be to partner with a newsletter instead of buying contact lists. Find a brand that has a huge newsletter following, and pitch a guest post to them. This tactic will work wonders, and it is definitely something you can milk at a low cost.
4. If you are playing the long-term game, SEO is a great and affordable tactic to try.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great alternative to Facebook marketing. Using SEO can help your small business website pop up when people search online for similar products or services. Yet it’s important to note that even the most effective SEO strategy can take months to make a notable impact, so have patience.
SEO is all about creating content that is engaging, informative, and (sometimes) entertaining. If your blog post, for example, can answer a specific question that your target audience has, and answers it better than your competition, you’ll start to "rank" (i.e., show up closer to the top of the page) in search engine results for the keyword and related keyword phrases in that post.
I could write a whole separate series on SEO, but, for now, the places to start your research include experts like Brian Dean (Backlinko) and Neil Patel (UberSuggest). SEO does take a long time to see the effects, but it's something you can do even when you don’t have a budget for advertising.
5. Public Relations, or PR, can help you get your business in front of more potential customers.
PR is a strategy that can seriously boost your business. Getting brand mentions on popular sites, magazines, and newsletters (as mentioned above) can contribute a great deal to your brand awareness.
And now, getting quoted on a blog post has never been easier to do. With free tools like Qwoted and HARO, you can get in contact with journalists who are actively seeking your expertise.
But if you plan on doing cold outreach without any tools, note that this makes your PR strategy more difficult. Here’s an amazing resource from SparkToro to get your cold outreach tactics done like a pro (don’t forget to mix this in with the use of the tools and tactics mentioned above).
6. Creating a community around your business can help you stay connected with customers and get plenty of feedback.
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Growing a community may not seem like a priority when you’re first starting off. But a community can help you refine your product or service because it gives you real-time and candid feedback from active customers and leads.
I used to think Facebook Groups was the best tool to use for building a community around a product or service. Nowadays, I think it is actually better to create communities using platforms like Reddit, Discord, and Slack. Depending on your customers, these websites and platforms may be used more often than Facebook Groups. Plus, they offer better customization features for you as an admin.
As an example, I really like what Co-CEO of Loop Insurance, John Henry, is doing with Discord as a marketing tactic and for community engagement.
7. Influencers can sometimes sell your business better than you can.
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Influencer partnerships (when priced fairly) can help not only with reaching new audiences, they can also help with converting people who know about you but who are on the fence. Microinfluencers (around 10K followers) and nano-influencers (around 5K) are good to start off with. The hardest parts of influencer marketing usually include identifying the right influencers, vetting them, and then convincing them to collaborate with you (sometimes paying them isn’t enough 😬).
You can use platforms like Cameo and Upfluence to speed up your search. But before you begin searching for influencers to work with, make sure you set up your own guidelines on who you will and won’t work with and why.
Bonus: Personal branding isn’t for everyone, but this tactic can work wonders!
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If your business or side hustle is service based, refining your brand can work wonders for adding credibility. Personal branding is all about telling your own story through video, audio, or writing and connecting it to your business.
Why are you the best person to run this business? How are you the leading expert in the industry? Why did you start this business in the first place? These are the kinds of questions you can answer to begin figuring out your personal branding strategy. If this appeals to you, I recommend checking out this great video made by the amazing Gary Vaynerchuk to help you get started.
Now here’s a question for you: What other marketing channels or apps would destroy your sales if they suffered an outage? How would you adapt to it? Let me know in the comments!
And for more stories about work and money, check out the rest of our personal finance posts.
