1,000 Ways To Advertise Your Business for Free

Once you launch your small business and create a website, you’ll need to spread the word to potential customers. While there are several ways to do this – including blogging, email marketing, and SEO – online advertising is one of the most effective methods. Though advertising is often considered expensive, it’s actually quite feasible for companies on a budget. In fact, plenty of platforms let you advertise at zero cost, including online directories, social platforms and more.

You can still advertise your business even if you have no room for advertising in your expense budget. We are about to show you 1,000 ways to advertise your business for free on the internet. These platforms are a vital resource for small business owners or people just starting their businesses, as money can be tight when you’re just starting out and small businesses have a limited budget to spend on marketing.

Keep in mind that some of the listing we suggest are more effective for some types of businesses than for others, but with 1,000 ways to choose from, you are sure to find several that will help give your business a healthy advertising boost. With the objective of helping you grow your business in mind and  to save you the legwork, we’ve compiled a list of 1,000 great free advertising sites and tips to promote your website. Some require no more than a quick URL submission, while others necessitate a more thoughtful, strategic approach. Let’s jump into it.

1. Start With Google My Business: Google My Business offers free local advertising. Google My Business is an actual listing that appears in Google search results and in Google Maps. Your location, phone number, website, hours and directions are listed. Savvy businesses add additional content. Google says: “Businesses that add photos to their Business Profiles receive 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps, and 35% more clicks through to their websites ….”
2. Start Responding Reviews: Once you have claimed your business profiles, you can respond to online reviews. This is not only polite, it’s essential… and it’s effectively free advertising. When you respond appropriately to reviews, you demonstrate to current and potential customers that you are fully engaged in the process of taking care of your customers.
3. Get on Bing Places: Bing Places for Business is the Bing version of Google’s local business offering. Set up a profile and verify your company. Or you can import your Google My Business verified listing into Bing. How’s that for easy?
4. Sign up for MapQuest: You might remember MapQuest. Well, MapQuest has partnered with Yext in order to facilitate locating your business, business address and phone number. It is also worth noting that MapQuest’s mobile app still shows up with Google Maps, so it is still a great way to help people find you.
5. Join Citysearch: Restaurants, bars, hotels, spas and several other types of businesses can benefit from Citysearch. Citysearch partners with such platforms as Urbanspoon, Expedia and MerchantCircle. Listings are accessed through the Citysearch mobile app. Businesses that are preferred by users are listed in “best of” lists which fall under 20 categories.
6. Join Manta: Dedicated to the interests of small business, you can hardly find a better directory that manta for getting your name out there. This site gets millions of unique visitors every month and this listing platform has one of the most comprehensive databases with geographic-specific, individual businesses, and industry segments listings.
7. Sign up for YellowBot: You get a basic listing similar to those archaic Yellow Pages with YellowBot, but it also includes customer reviews and some additional options for those who upgrade to a premium package. YellowBot has quick sign-up and sign-in connected to Google, Facebook, Windows Live, Twitter and Yahoo, making it easy and convenient.
8. Interact with industry experts on Twitter: Twitter isn’t for everyone, but it does carry a whole array of benefits. It’s a great platform for engaging with industry experts and customers, as it’s a place where anyone can talk to anyone. Respond to customer feedback, retweet the best user-generated content, and offer genuine input to industry discussions.
9. Participate in Forums: Nearly every industry has 2 or more prominent online forums where business owners, customers, and experts can ask questions, give advice, buy and sell goods, post how-to threads, and inevitably argue vehemently with each other about unrelated political topics. If you are courteous and have real insight and advice to give, posting on relevant internet forums (or “message boards,” if you’re old-school) can be an effective way to drum up interest in your business and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
10. Answer Questions: Along the same lines as #5, you can approach industry-related blogs, news articles, Quora questions, etc. as free ways to get your business seen by more people. If you regularly respond to online questions, blog posts, news stories, etc. relating to your business and include a link or info about your business in your profile, search engines will start to see your business as a valuable resource that needs to rank higher in search results. For this approach to be effective it needs to be consistent and regular, and you need to provide quality responses that others consider valuable (and which they then engage with and share/upvote). You can’t just post one random answer on Quora and expect the referral traffic to flood in. So dedicate some time to this task regularly to see the best results.
11. Write a Blog: If you have solid writing skills, know someone who does, or believe you have created an interesting “niche” in the market that people might find compelling, consider starting a blog. It can be easy to get caught up in the ego of being a “published author” of a blog, but it’s more useful to look at your blog as an advertising and SEO-boosting tool, rather than the digital equivalent of the great American novel.
12. Share Your Blog: Once you have posted your blog, your task is not over yet. Start sharing your blog post on all your social media channels including Facebook, Linkedin, Mix, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google My Business, to mention a few.
13. Write articles for other blogs: If you have writing chops, you might consider writing content for an online industry publication, guest posts for blogs you find relevant, articles for your local news outlets’ op/ed pages, etc. This kind of content almost always includes valuable backlinks to your company website or business pages, and increases the SEO value of your business. The more “valid” the sites that link to your content, the higher you rank in search engines and the more free advertising benefit you receive.
14. Develop a robust social media presence: You may notice that in addition to the standard website (which your business should also have—see #4 above), almost every notable company today has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or LinkedIn account. This is not by accident. Many customers eschew review sites and choose to post feedback and commentary about your business via social media instead.
15. Create an Instagram: A popular contender among social media platforms, Instagram has an ever-increasing user base. If your business would benefit from a visual presence, then make sure you are dedicating time to building a strong Instagram account. Remember that it’s a visual platform, so carefully curated content that looks amazing is key.
16. Participate: To establish your reputation in the Instagram community, you want to follow influencers and other brands (even direct competitors) and join the conversations they’re starting and interact with the content they are producing. You must spend engagement to make engagement!
17. Repost Local Content: You can strengthen your businesses’ reputation on Instagram and your local community by routinely reposting content published by your local followers, other businesses in your area, and any local celebrities. Not only will that individual feel great that their own content is being featured by your business, but other followers will take notice. They may mention your “shout out” on their Instagram page, which will help you reach their followers and even more people in your local community. Win, win!
18. Maintain a Consistent Brand: Joining Instagram with your business means creating another extension of your brand. While Instagram is a unique platform that can (and should be) used to achieve different objectives from other touch points, even your other social media accounts, there should be a sense of consistency across all platforms, especially in terms of the tone and personality set by your brand.
19. Avoid Blanket Posting: While the tone and persona behind your posts need to remain consistent across different channels, too much similarity can be damaging. You have to carefully navigate the space between remaining consistent and posting unique content that doesn’t feel blanketed across all channels. Blanket posting is using the exact same message and content across different social media platforms. The danger of blanket posting is that customers that follow you across multiple social media channels are going to see this exact same message multiple times. Thus, it stops being engaging and starts being disruptive. Remember, every channel is different and should be treated as such.
20. Demonstrate Your Local Lifestyle: Your business’ local lifestyle can best be described as the life a customer leads after they’ve purchased your products. Because Instagram is such a visual social media platform, it is the perfect channel to demonstrate what your brand’s local lifestyle looks like. By incorporating pictures of your products in action, you allow customers to envision living that lifestyle, which thereby strengthens your overall brand value and encourages those customers to make a purchase. When creating images or videos that demonstrate the local lifestyle offered by your products, you should always aim to incorporate popular landmarks in your town. Not only are these places recognizable and familiar, but they will help complete the customer’s vision of your products in their life, especially if you use landmarks that they frequently visit.
21. Go with the Trends: Holidays are almost always a trending topic and businesses have long taken advantage of these days to engage customers with holiday-themed messages, but there are other topics whose popularity you can leverage when creating compelling Instagram content.
22. Focus on Localized Hashtags: Speaking of hashtags, there a lot of parallels between hashtags and SEO keywords. To optimize the local reach of your Instagram page, you need to focus on localized hashtags.
23. Include a Link in Your Bio: This may seem obvious, but it is an absolute necessity on Instagram. Your business page’s bio is the only space on Instagram that can include a link, so you must capitalize on it. Without this link, followers won’t be able to convert by visiting your website, buying your products, and engaging with your brand elsewhere.
24. Create Professional, Creative Content: This may go without saying, yet there’s a lot of business pages on Instagram that routinely post images and videos that are lower quality, blurry, or badly composed. If you want to gain a serious edge on Instagram, consider investing in a higher quality camera than your smartphone. You may even decide to invest in a professional photographer to help you create compelling pictures.
25. Geotag Your Posts: This is another strategy that, while seeming obvious, a lot of local businesses forget to do it. If you want Instagram followers to discover and visit your local business, you need to tell them (and Instagram) where to find your business.
26. Optimize Your Online Listings: High-quality images of your location, staff, or products can act as free advertising when you add them to your online business profiles. Think about those results that stand out to you when you conduct mobile searches. They almost always will have eye-catching photos added. One benefit to most review sites is they allow customers to upload photos for you, and some of them can be quite good. However, If you’re not a shutterbug and your customers aren’t uploading any good images, it would be a good time to employ a talented friend or teenage niece who is going through her “photography” phase. Ask for clear, high-resolution pics optimized for online thumbnail display.
27. Take advantage of local chambers of commerce: Almost every reasonably sized community has a local chamber of commerce and/or small business development center. These resources can provide free listings and promotional material for local businesses, as well as valuable marketing tips and assistance from successful businesspeople in your area.
28. Join Your Local Chamber of Commerce: When you join a chamber, you can network with other member businesses. By networking, you get to know others in your community, develop partnerships, and support other businesses. If your business is ever in need, you’ll have a community of business owners to turn to for help
29. Ask Each Chamber of Commerce Member to Recommend You: By asking chamber of commerce members to recommend you and your business, it increases your trust in the community.
30. Capture email data: Ensure that you have a method of capturing email data from website visitors. Integrate an email sign up option onto your site and begin building a database of customer data.
31. Send email newsletters: Hopefully you have a method to gather your customers’ email addresses. If you don’t, start right now. Email may not have the sexy sheen of the newer tools afforded by social media, but it is still the most cost-effective marketing tool in the small businessperson’s toolbox, with a huge 42:1 ROI. Sending a weekly or monthly email to your list is a good way to promote sales and stay top of mind. Plus, despite what you might think, the majority of customers actually want promotional emails from businesses they like.
32. Create a marketing strategy: Your goals might sound something like: recruit top-producing agents, establish awareness for the brand, generate leads, gain favorable listings and so forth. Beyond your goals, you will have to define your niche, purpose, competitive advantage and overall specialty. It will involve looking at the competition and determining what you can offer to differentiate your brokerage.
33. Start a YouTube channel: This might seem silly, but you’d be surprised how effective and how far-reaching a YouTube video can be, even if you don’t think your business is interesting enough. For example, some simple how-to videos by professional plumbers, lawn-care specialists, or appliance repair technicians earn multiple millions of views, and often show up as the number-one results in related search engine queries.
34. Establish a professional brand: If you rely on subpar branding, your business will lack a solid foundation. A professional brand is one that works well in every application, is consistent and, most importantly, is effective. A credible, trustworthy brand will help recruit top producers and generate leads. During this part, you will establish your businesses personality both visually and in writing.
35. Hold a workshop or class: Even if you don’t consider yourself the expert in your field, host an expert, or just someone you know who is informative and fascinating. You’ll be awesome by association. One advantage of this tip is it brings people who otherwise might not visit your physical store to your location, and obviously you get the word out about your business. To extend the benefits even further, arrange with any “experts” to get free mentions/marketing/promotion of your business on their social media channels as well.
36. Host a webinar: Similarly to a class or a workshop, you can host a webinar to reach people who can’t or don’t want to attend an in-store event. There are several free webinar websites, and most of the popular pay-to-use sites like join.me and GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar will give you a free trial period during which you can host your webinar.
37. Partner with local businesses and promote each other: Small businesses who stick together and help each other get the word out can get huge value. You don’t need to spend any money… just find something you have that other businesses want, and trade in kind. You can co-host events, workshops, or webinars and, should you decide to spend some advertising money, split the costs and double the exposure.
38. Celebrate ‘weird’ holidays: Just as an example, National Doughnut Day can be used to hype nearly any business with a physical location… whether you normally sell donuts or not. Everybody loves donuts, and offering a free pastry with purchase or even a visit can bring lots of new faces through your door. Extra-super bonus points for offering a gluten-free option. Pair these promotions with your posts on social media and email sends for extra buzz. This technique can work for any holiday—just be creative with what treats or prizes you want to hand out to potential customers. Now, we understand that treats and prizes aren’t technically free, but if you make or sell food or goods, you can use inventory and write it off as a promotional expense. If you don’t make or sell anything you can use as a prize, consider offering your services for free to winners.
39. Create a functional website: Technological tools are going to play a critical role in attracting top-producing agents to your firm, as well as generating buyer leads. Your website provides a high level of functionality and a tool for several years to come. A site with an IDX feed and proper lead management is a wise investment for startup brokerages.
40. Create a Facebook Business Page: Creating a Facebook page for you business is the first step to promoting your business. Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the United States. It has more than two billion monthly users.
41. Join Facebook Groups: Facebook groups are where like-minded people come together to share interests in certain things. Much like other internet forums, people use Facebook groups to learn, express opinions, or network.
42. Stream From Your Page on Facebook Live: Facebook Live is an underused feature of Facebook, but a great way to promote your business to current and future fans.
43. Use Facebook Messenger Chatbots: Facebook Messenger chatbots are one of the best ways to promote your business because they are easy, quick, and efficient.
44. Post to Facebook Stories: The “stories” feature began on Snapchat and has moved from social platform to social platform. Now, Facebook has its own “stories” feature, where you can keep your followers, fans, and friends updated with photos, videos, and text from your day. Facebook Stories is a great method to promote your business. When you post a story, all of your friends, fans, and followers are notified, and it is present at the top of their Facebook News Feed.
45. Take Advantage of Facebook Messenger Stories: Facebook Messenger Stories are the same as the previous two Facebook Story features, but can be posted directly from a Messenger window. This makes it easy to promote your business while being engaged on Messenger. Since Messenger is by default optimized for mobile, this feature makes it easy to promote your business on the go. Facebook Messenger Stories are the same as the previous two Facebook Story features, but can be posted directly from a Messenger window. This makes it easy to promote your business while being engaged on Messenger. Since Messenger is by default optimized for mobile, this feature makes it easy to promote your business on the go.
46. Create Facebook Events: Facebook events are great for promoting your business because they are created through a specific Facebook page. For example, use your Facebook business page to create a Facebook event for webinars, company events, and more.
47. Create a Linkedin Business Page: More than 30 million companies use LinkedIn for business. Not just because it’s the preeminent social network for recruiting and hiring top talent. With more than 690 million members, more and more brands are using LinkedIn marketing to network, connect, and sell.
48. Post actionable content: With more than two-thirds of LinkedIn’s users considering themselves “news junkies,” you’ll be hard-pressed to find an audience that is as ready and willing to consume your content. You’ll want to incorporate LinkedIn into your daily posting habits. Multiple, spread out posts every day will help you reach and engage with your audience.
49. Use the Matched Audiences feature: You can utilize LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences tool to retarget the visitors that are already in your sales funnel. Matched Audiences is Microsoft’s recent addition that helps optimize LinkedIn as an advertising platform. It allows you to retarget website visitors, upload your existing accounts, or even add email contacts to target with LinkedIn ads. I can’t even describe how good a tool this is for retargeting.
50. Search for individuals: LinkedIn is very aware of this fact, and it’s why they allow you to search for individuals with laser-like accuracy. Simply click on the search bar and select the drop-down on the left as People. From there, you can hone your results by location, mutual connections, and even the company they’re currently working at.
51. Leverage Linkedin groups: LinkedIn Groups are a way you can connect and interact with like-minded professionals in your industry. It’s a place where you can go to create conversations about what’s happening in your world with the people who will appreciate it most. And these groups have come a long way from being a confused jumble in the search results of LinkedIn.
52. Create a Pinterest Business Page: Pinterest is an underrated social platform, especially for businesses. Known as the home to all things aesthetic, such as fashion, interior decorating, and beauty, it is also a great place to promote your business. Pinterest also features educational materials to help you learn how to best utilize the platform to market and promote your business and business. Take a look at the most popular Pinterest categories and then decide how you can use those for your business. Then, create pins that promote your business page content.
53. Always Think About Keywords: Pinterest is a search engine. A lot of users type in keywords to pull the content they’re looking for. Pinterest also puts relevant content in front of people, as well as suggesting other phrases that a user might have interest in. The results are only going to be as good as the keywords used to title and describe the Pins. So, it’s our job to be as relevant and niched-down as possible when titling and writing descriptions for Pins. You will probably use similar keywords to the title of the post you share, but it doesn’t hurt to hop over to Pinterest first and perform a search yourself. See if any other keywords pop up that are relevant. You can add these to your description.
54. Keep Fresh Content Flowing Through Your Boards: Fresh Pins and consistency are half the game when it comes to mastering Pinterest. They want you to upload more content and will reward you for doing so. If you use Tailwind, it literally couldn’t be any easier or faster. You can load up dozens of Pins per day for weeks in advance, and just set it and forget it. If you don’t have a lot of content of your own yet, it’s better to share other people’s content than nothing at all. The more you build out your boards with relevant content, the stronger the keyword signals and relevancy those Pins will have in the search results.
55. Invest in High-Quality Images: It’s no secret that Pinterest is a visual platform. You can think about Pinterest as being very similar to a Google image search, with the added benefit of being able to add text to your images to increase the click-through rate. Therefore, it’s a no brainer that the quality of your images affects your click-through rate. Beyond that, you’re representing your brand when posting content on Pinterest. You should always put out the most professional-looking and polished Pins you can.
    • Make your pin is vertical with a 2:3 aspect ratio
    • Take into account 80% of users are accessing the platform on their mobiles
    • Create tasteful and recognizable branding
    • Ensure your pin has a strong product focus
    • Highlight your brand benefits on the pin
    • Align your pin to ‘moments’ i.e. seasonal or life events
    • Use text overlay
    • Include a clear Call To Action
    • Consider using testimonials for your product pins
    • Add a human touch i.e. feature someone within the pin image or video
56. Re-Pin/Save: Think of saving, or re-pinning, a pin as a retweet. When you save a pin, you find the post one of your own boards. This is sometimes referred to as repining. In order to do this, you’ll want to hit the red save button on a pin itself.
57. Spend Some Time Replying To/Posting Comments: Another tactic that many marketers ignore is engaging with comments on Pins. Pin activity is a factor in determining where a Pin gets ranked, and comments are one of the strongest signals that people are engaging with a Pin. There’s a human element to this, too. People leaving comments want brands to hear them and often want a response. Spending some time engaging with your community will increase your followers, brand loyalty, and other metrics that contribute to growing your brand on Pinterest.
58. Claim Your Website and Other Social Profiles: Doing so enables you to get access to your website analytics so you can take a detailed look at which Pins are working, the demographics of the users consuming your content, and many more helpful statistics.
59. Optimize Your Boards with Keyword-Rich Descriptions: This is one of the things I most commonly see Pinterest users not doing correctly. Using keywords for your board titles and descriptions is almost as important as it is for your Pins. Boards are searchable, although people aren’t searching for boards very often. More importantly than that, Pinterest’s algorithm looks at the keywords used on boards to help determine the content that’s on the boards and rank it.
60. Create Multiple Pins for the Same Article: Most people make a header image for a post and just pin that. That’s all well and good, but if you miss the mark on the keywords or your Pin gets buried, you’re missing out on valuable traffic. I always recommend creating more than one Pin per article. Creating extra Pins doesn’t take the same time as creating the first. You just need to change the background picture or change the text a little. By creating more than one Pin, you can test different keywords and descriptions and use different hashtags to reach a much wider audience.
61. Keep an eye on performance: Most teams create reports on a weekly or monthly basis in order to analyze the performance of their marketing campaigns. Pulling this data together manually into spreadsheets can take upwards of 20 hours. The best way to do this is to automate it with a tool like Improvado.
62. Start your own groups: If you can’t find a community that’s for your industry, or if you want to provide a curated window for your audience to communicate about what you’re doing, this is a good option for you. Group ownership helps you stand out as a leader in your industry.
63. Use InMail: With InMail activated, you can directly contact anyone on LinkedIn. That means the individuals you’ve found and the relationships you’ve built in groups can be leveraged in a more personal format. And it’s incredibly effective, too.
64. Pin to Pinterest Group Boards: Pinning content to Pinterest Group Boards will increase your reach, drive traffic to your site, promote your business, and help you rank higher on Pinterest. Pinterest Group Boards are exactly as they sound — multiple Pinterest users pin to the same boards and it becomes a collaborative effort.
65. Try Out Tailwind Tribes: Tailwind is a scheduling and analytics tool for Pinterest, but it’s also a great method to promote your business page. Tailwind Tribes is a feature of Tailwind that allows groups of like-minded content creators to come together to share each others’ content. What better way to promote your business than to have other respected content creators helping your expand your reach?
66. Search Engine Optimization: Optimizing your website for the search engines is entirely free if you know what you’re doing. Though it takes time and expertise to improve your SEO effectively, the process is free, and you are working to drive free traffic back to your site.
67. Put up Videos on YouTube: YouTube provides a free way to distribute creative promotional videos, but in order to succeed you must put up content that people want to view and are relevant to your business—a simple ad will not work. A Flickr profile can also help by giving you one place to compile all the photos for your business, and allows you to link back to your website.
68. SEO your company website: Search engine optimization cannot be underestimated in the world of constant Googling. Pick up a book or head over to an online how-to-guide on SEO and make sure your site is primed for performance on search engines.
69. Press releases: Every time your business does something newsworthy, don’t hesitate to shoot off a press release—maybe folks will pick up on it. They’re a powerful media tool to use to help generate publicity, and having free distribution of them is a bonus.
70. Join a relevant online community and contribute: Every niche has communities online that you can get involved in. But just signing up for a forum and posting every once in a while about your business isn’t beneficial for anyone, and will likely just annoy people. Actively contribute and build a rapport with the community, while keeping your business out of it. Passively promote your business by putting a link in your signature or mentioning it only when the context is appropriate.
71. Use a contrarian approach: Make a statement of a universally accepted concept, then go against conventional wisdom by contradicting the statement. For example, a market trader starts by contradicting the commonly held advice of buying low and selling high. He says: “It’s wrong. Why? Because buying low typically entails a stock that’s going in the opposite direction—down—from the most desired direction—up.” This is a provocative opening that engages the audience right away.
72. Ask a series of rhetorical questions: A common way to engage the audience at the start is to ask a rhetorical question. Better still, start with a series of rhetorical questions. A good example of this tactic is Simon Sinek’s TED presentation. He starts with: “How do you explain when things don’t go as we assumed? Or better, how do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example, why is Apple so innovative? … Why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement?” A series of rhetorical questions stimulate the audience’s mind as they ponder the answers.
73. Deliver a compelling sound bite: Use a catchy phrase or sound bite that has pungency and watch how the audience perks up. Innovation expert Jeremy Gutshe opens his talk with: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is a sign that is on Ford’s strategy War Room. And the lesson from it is not how good your PowerPoint slide deck is, what it really boils down to at the end of the day is how ready and willing your organization is to embrace change, try new things and focus in when you find an opportunity.” To be effective, the sound bite needs to be brief, interesting and compelling.
74. Make a startling assertion: A surefire way to gain people’s attention is by starting with a startling or amazing fact. Take the time to research startling statistics that illustrate the seriousness of what you’re going to talk about. For example, a presentation about conservancy can start with: “Every second, a slice of rainforest the size of a football field is mowed down. That’s over 31 million football fields of rainforest each year.”
75. Use the word imagine: The word imagine invites the audience to create a mental image of something. Ever since John Lennon’s famous song, it has become a powerful word with emotional appeal. A particularly skillful use of the word occurs in Jane Chen’s TED talk. She speaks about a low-cost incubator that can save many lives in underdeveloped countries. Chen opens by saying: “Please close your eyes and open your hands. Now imagine what you could place in your hands, an apple, maybe your wallet. Now open your eyes. What about a life?” As she says this, she displays a slide with an Anne Geddes’ image of a tiny baby held in an adult’s hands. There is power in asking the audience to conjure up their imagination, to play along. This tactic can easily be adapted to any topic where you want the audience to imagine a positive outcome, or a vision of a better tomorrow. It can be used, as well, to ask them to imagine being in someone else’s shoes.
76. Arouse curiosity. You can start with a statement that is designed to arouse curiosity and make the audience look up and listen to you attentively. Bestselling author Dan Pink does this masterfully in one of his talks. He says: “I need to make a confession, at the outset. A little over 20 years ago, I did something that I regret. Something that I am not particularly proud of, something that in many ways I wished no one would ever know, but that here I feel kind of obliged to reveal. In the late 1980s, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I went to law school.” Curiosity here leads to some self-deprecating humor, which makes it even more effective.
77. Quote a foreign proverb. There is a wealth of fresh material to be culled from foreign proverbs. Chances are your listeners have never heard them so they have novelty appeal. Here are some examples: “Our last garment is made without pockets” (Italy); “You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind” (Ireland); “The nail that sticks up will be hammered down” (Japan), and “Paper can’t wrap up a fire” (China). Here is a site for foreign proverbs.
78. Take them through a “what if” scenario. A compelling way to start your presentation is with a “what if” scenario. For example, asking “What if you were debt-free?” at the start of a money management presentation might grab your listeners’ attention as it asks them to look forward to a positive future. It can intensify their desire for your product or service. Using a “what if” scenario as an opening gambit is easily adaptable to almost any presentation.
79. Tell them a story. Stories are one of the most powerful ways to start a presentation. Nothing will compel listeners to lean in more than a well-told story. Science tells us that our brains are hardwired for storytelling. But the story needs to be brief, with just the right amount of detail to bring it to life. It must be authentic and must have a “message,” or lesson, to support your viewpoint. Above all, it must be kind. As Benjamin Disraeli said: “Never tell an unkind story.”
80. Learn to ask for referrals: A satisfied customer is often glad to refer you to their friends. Help them remember to do so by asking for referrals, and leaving them extra business cards or fliers that they can give to their friends and family who need your services. If someone gives you a lead, follow up on it right away.
81. Develop and Execute Content Marketing Strategy: Content marketing is the new trend that is helping many offline businesses to establish their presence on the Internet. We all like to hear great stories. If you can deliver good stories to your target audience, you can attract a lot of new customers.
82. Use Cross-Promotion Techniques: If you have established connections with the right people, you can cross-promote your products on their website/social media platforms and give them the same opportunity. Cross-promotion is a great way to promote your business online. However, cross-promotion doesn’t work for every business model out there.
83. Use Cold Emailing Technique:  It is a trickier one. You need to send personalized emails to your prospect to gain business opportunities. If you are good with sales, you will do good with cold emailing. It is one of my favorite ways to promote a business online.
84. Get on TikTok: Only select users can currently add a link to their TikTok bio, but chances are this will be rolled out more widely in the coming months. And for the time being, all users can add links to their Instagram and YouTube profiles from their TikTok profile.