Startup CPG Study Hall: How Do I Grow E-Commerce Sales Without Meta Ads?

Looking for suggestions on how to boost website traffic and direct to consumer (DTC) sales, but want to stay away from paid advertising via Meta? 

Our community seems to be aligned on this specifically: strength. To build and grow, you need to first focus on strengthening your brand presence and your community. 

Here are five other strategies to consider:

1) Get to Know Your Existing Customers

You should have data that shows you who’s buying your products, and how often they’re buying them. Find out who your most frequent and best customers are – your evangelists – and reward them for their support. You can do this by offering them to become an affiliate/ambassador and set them up with unique discount codes or links that will incentivize them to share about your brand.

Homework: Are you asking your customers to leave reviews/send in a testimonial? If you’re not, you should! Furthermore, you can consider offering an incentive, like a one-time discount, in return for a review.

2) Leverage Influencers’ Social Networks

Similar to offering an affiliate or ambassador program to your customers, you can do the same thing with influencers. Identify influencers in your niche and invite them to become an affiliate or ambassador – this tends to be more common with micro-influencers. Alternatively, you could work with influencers who are represented by agencies, typically, and draw up contracts for deliverables.

In the same vein, think about thought leaders that could pair well with your brand. Invite them to your events, host them on your podcasts, and feature them on your socials and website.

3) Grow Your Organic Followers and Engagement

Interact with your following! Say hello when someone follows you. Introduce yourself and potentially offer a discount code and a link to your website.

Don’t let notifications go unnoticed – if someone is sharing content and tagging your brand, interact with it! This will help boost your engagement and show that you are real people behind real brands.

Keep an eye on social media trends – if there’s trending content, think about ways your brand can authentically participate without compromising your brand’s voice.

Identify industry-adjacent partners that you could collaborate with in several ways: social media giveaways, handshake posts, etc.

Remember that you don’t have to do it all, and you don’t have to be everywhere, especially when you’re starting out. The key is to find a strategy that is consistent, scalable, and affordable. If you have a limited budget, focus on 1-2 marketing channels.

Homework: Test and iterate on these channels over a three-month period to see which ones yield the best results instead of spreading yourself and your brand thin.

4) Do-it-Yourself PR

If you have newsworthy content, share it! You could hire a PR professional to write your releases for you, or you can use Startup CPG’s free resources to guide you through writing your press releases and publishing it to our newswire! Share across your socials to amplify the impact.

Additionally, you could co-host in-person events with partners to leverage each other’s networks and offset costs.

5) Optimize Your Website

Leverage content on your website and hone in on SEM and SEO to help your site rank higher in online searches. This is a longer-term strategy to rein in more web traffic.

Thank you to our community members who helped make this article possible: Rama Ginde, Jason Isaacs, Haley Keller, Sean O’Neill, Kristen Scalise, Kim Biddle, and Matthias Strafinger.

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