5: 5 Ways to Get Traffic Without Paying for Ads

Hello and welcome to the Product Growth Lab podcast hosted by Andrew George and Melissa Pickle. This is the podcast for creative product-based business owners who want to grow their businesses without overwhelm or massive investment. Each episode we explore actionable strategies, real-life stories, and insights from business owners and experts who know what it takes to succeed, whether you're just starting out or looking to scale. We're here to help you grow your business on your own terms. Subscribe and join us each week as we dive into practical advice and inspiring stories to fuel your growth journey. This is the Product Growth Lab. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. Today we are talking about how you can drive organic traffic to your shop. That's traffic that you don't need to spend money on ads for. It's all completely free. It just takes time.

You buy this traffic with time instead of with money.

Yeah. And honestly, we all know why traffic is important. We get to reach brand new audiences, bring in more sales, and we can do it Even if we don't have a ton of money to invest right now, which is perfect for small and growing businesses.

Without traffic, you really don't have a business. So let's get into how to do it.

Yeah, if you're looking for practical ways to increase traffic without spending a cent on ads, keep listening because we've got you covered with 5 strategies. So the first one we want to discuss today is using social media. I'm sure we already know this was going to come up, but we couldn't film this episode without mentioning it. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook. There's a whole ton of social media platforms out there.

This feels like the one that we shouldn't have to talk about that much, cuz in reality, who doesn't use social media, at least on your personal side? But putting social media out for your business is slightly different, and we see it all the time with our, uh, students that sometimes they'll put out either they don't know what to put out, so they don't put out any social media. I fall into the, I don't put out social media cuz I hate it. Or they're putting out stuff that is not relevant to driving sales. So when we look at content that you wanna put on social media, yes, you wanna talk about your products. You want to, if you're a maker, share the life cycle of building out a product. That's really cool stuff to be sharing on your business. Behind the scenes stuff is great to be sharing. Sales announcements and teasers. And no matter what, biggest thing, getting people on your list and and on your website. If you're not telling them to, hey, sign up for my email list for whatever reason you want them to sign up, or whatever they get out of it, I should say, we know why you want them to sign up, but for whatever they get out of it, be it a discount sheet, checklist, or whatever it is that you're using as a lead magnet. So you want to be constantly telling people, go sign up for my email list, or telling them, hey, go check out this website, go to this specific item on my website, those kinds of things. And if you're not doing that on social media, you're probably not, using social media well for your business?

I think one thing to really notice is for most people, the social media sits at the top of your funnel. They're the, often they're unaware people if you're doing things that get organic reach, which tends to be short-form video is the big reach driver nowadays. They tend to be completely cold audience and your job is to warm them up and maybe get them on the email list. And once they're on the email list, that's probably where you do most of your selling. I'm not saying you should never sell on your social media. You can still mention your products, obviously. But a lot of the time it's a little bit around, more around kind of education, proving that you're a worthy business, showing that behind, if you're handmade, which a lot of people are, showing that you are actually handmade and not just one of those people who is ordering stuff from AliExpress and selling it as handmade.

Nate, if you do order stuff, I'm not gonna throw shade on people who order, who are resellers, no shade at all. But when you get that new stock in, that should be an excitement thing. If it's going to a warehouse, at least have a sample sent to you so that you can show people pulling it outta the box how awesome and amazing the thing is that you ordered.

Yeah. Show the quality. Use some things like reviews to social proof. There's a lot of weird stuff on social media. There's a lot of people begging and feeling like they owe sales. I see a lot of that lately. Like the, I'm gonna have to shut up shop cuz I think they're like, they post how all these likes and people like, oh yeah, check out cuz we feel sorry for you. It's like engagement. Kind of thing. So we won't avoid that, but it really is all about visibility and getting those first people in. And I think it's really important to think about.

You reminded me, I have a missed opportunity. Dang it. I almost died last month. Almost got hit by a car in our own driveway. I had the first reaction of, oh shit, we almost died. It's a hilarious video. I think looking back on it, other people were horrified. And then the next day it was the, how in the hell did this car do this? It jumped the loading dock to almost hit us. The day after that, I should have did, ran a "Hooray, we're still alive" sale. That would've been hilarious. Not on the begging side, but it would've been a great opportunity for a sale.

Using things like Storytelling, showing that you're like a real person with real lived experiences. All of these things really work well at that initial stage when you're getting people in, you're really focused on visibility and really trying to show that you're someone that I can trust, someone that is worth buying from, because there's a whole lot of people out there who are not worth buying from. So you need to stand out against that because it's often not the best person who makes more sales, it's the one who can shout the loudest. Yes, yes. I think we've all noticed that.

And I want to add one more. When you're looking at social media, you have two tiers of traffic. Like Andrew's saying, it's a funnel just like any other sales process. You have your unawares, But your unawares are going to become your awares on social media. And something that I have noticed, we're going to talk about email later on, but when I send out emails to my list, I get some sales. When I then take that email and also post it to social media for my fans, I get a lot more sales.

Our top tips are choose the right platform for you, one where your people are going to be, which you need to know your people well enough to figure that out, and one where you're going to make consistent content. If you're not going to post, it's pointless. And if you are on Instagram, but you don't like video, even though Reels are the thing that's going to get you the most traction there, most likely, if it's not something you want to do, it's pointless. So figuring out a balance between it's what my people want to see, it's what's going to work well on the platform, and it's where my people are hanging out, and finding the intersection there. Have the, those charts that overlap with the Venn diagram things. Event, a triple one, and try and post as consistently as possible. That always works really well. And I know if you go in the like business section on Instagram, it's where I am the most, it gives you like all these goals and things for consistency. So you can, there's that gamification there, you need to act it out.

If you actually do the things, engagement, sorry, if you actually do the things that it tells you to do in that section, it does work. Wow, they gave me advice that actually works. I feel like that's rare on social platform.

Yeah, take some of the stuff they say with a pinch of salt, but things aren't as fancy as some of the what's-his-face that does the Instagram stuff. Some of the stuff he says is—

Adam Mosseri.

Be careful there. Yeah, don't always trust what they say compared to what they do. But the third thing to focus on is not posting ghosting. Make sure to engage with your audience if they Leave a comment on yourself, reply to your comments, look like you actually want to engage. If they message you, reply to messages. I never understand the point of those people who have social media profiles and are like, DMs are not checked, do not send me a message. That's the sales side there. Okay, you maybe want the work life balance, but personal Facebook, again, don't want people messaging you there for the most part. I don't really care. My Facebook is just for business these days. But you have an Instagram business account and you're like, Do not send me a DM. I don't understand that. People are like asking to send you some money. Check the DMs. But with a little creativity and consistency, social media can drive a bunch of traffic to your store. There's honestly a ton more to that, but sorry, keeping this podcast nice and sharp. That's what we're going to focus on today.

Traffic option number 2 here, strategy number 2, is collaborations and cross-promotions. So this only works if you like people. I'm gonna put that caveat ahead of time. If you don't like talking to other people, number one, you might have a tough time in business. Number two, this method might not be for you. But what we're talking about here is teaming up with other businesses. So we've talked before on this, um, podcast about like knowing what lifestyle your customer has. That was part of our, um, target market episode. And if you know what lifestyle your customer has, you're gonna know, have an idea of what other brands they shop. But do them partner with those people. You guys can create massive amounts of traffic by things like running a giveaway, doing cross-promotions, like you give an offer to their audience, they give an offer to your audience kind of thing. Co-hosting things. Technically what Andrew and I do right now is a collab. But yeah, anything where you can co-host live sessions, you can create joint blog content, YouTube videos, like wherever you are posting your content, you can share and interview other people. All of that is collaboration. And the best thing about bringing someone else in is you have brought in now their audience, and then hopefully they bring you to their audience.

Yeah, and I would tell you this, and I know for me personally, the places I've gotten the most traction in business are from doing those collab things. Team up with Melissa to do everything we do. I have run summits where you get a bunch of people together and do a big kind of virtual conference type thing. All those things have given me the most growth. So I'm a big believer in clubs. We've done giant— we also done a giant giveaway with so many people. Wait, but we've done a lot there and it doesn't need to be like something really big and giveaway. Doing things like Instagram Lives. I had Julie from, is it like Flora Skincare or something? I know she interviews people live on her Instagram and sells skincare products. Has embraced that collaboration and uses that to get people in. If you have a blog, you can do giant blog posts. YouTube channel, you can do that. TikTok Lives, TikTok, the stitchy thing. I'm not good at TikTok.

Stitchy things is like the most least commitment level collab you can do. And you don't necessarily need permission for that.

Yeah, you don't have to do it at the same time. You could collaborate with someone. On a video they posted 3 years ago, if you want to. Uh, but there, there's so many different ways and you take advantage of each other's audience. And it doesn't mean that they have to have a bigger audience than you, unless you, for some reason, somehow have the exact same audience, which is very unlikely. You're all, there's always going to be people in each other's audience. So you don't, you can both have a tiny amount of followers, but you get to share those followers amongst you.

And hey, that's pretty good.

In my experience, it's the people who are similar size to you that you get the best results out of. Yeah. And it's, it's an easier ask.

Some of the people who have blown up huge email lists also have a lot of garbage that comes along with those lists, whereas smaller people have more curated lists. Sometimes. This is not a hard, fast rule. So when you do a collab with a smaller person, you might get people who are used to talking to small people or listening to small audience.

Yeah. Small audiences are more curated and more engaged.

Yes, thank you.

When you're first starting out an account, your posts aren't going viral, you aren't being seen by a ton of random people. It's people who actually tend to know you and just who want to see your stuff, and they engage more because of that. So you have a really good small audience. As you start to grow, you tend to get a lot of people who Just to see your vital and like this one thing that you posted once, click follow, and then never really pay attention. Less people tend to comment, your reach goes all weird on Instagram as you grow, and I'm sure on other platforms too. So sometimes there is a ton of advantages to when you're small. So the next thing you want to focus on is blogging and SEO. This is such a really amazing organic traffic option. But people tend to not like it because it's a slow game. It will take a while to get going, but eventually it snowballs and can bring you traffic for a really long time. It's that things on Instagram will be there, they'll show up, and then they'll die. I have to constantly post again and again, whereas a blog post, you posted 10 years ago can still be getting traffic if it's ranking on Google. Think of things like recipes are the most obvious thing people think of.

Yes.

Some of those have millions of views and were posted about as long ago as the internet has existed, but it's a good recipe that people keep going to. But it's also a little bit more challenging. Any social media platform, you just throw out some content really quickly and see what sticks. Uh, SEO takes a little bit more effort. You need to do some keyword research for a, for a title, for it to actually have any effect. There is the sort of technical side when it comes to things like the speed of your website. There's on-page SEO, off-page SEO, which we won't go all into. And there's like keyword tools. So it can be a bit challenging. It's a lot of effort upfront that pays off over time. I mean, it doesn't have to be super difficult. You can get started if you can find some sort of way of researching keywords. And the main thing with SEO is that you are creating content that is really tailored to your audience. More so, like, social media, you can just throw up whatever. But when it comes to creating content that will rank on Google, it needs to be something that people are searching for. And it forces you to do some of that research. And it forces you to create content that people actually want. So there's a massive benefit there. Whereas you can just make some assumptions when it comes to Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and put out content that isn't really tailored to your audience. But if you're creating really good SEO content, it will. And if you don't want to pay for a keyword tool, there's things like Answer the Public that show you what people search for. There's a ton of different ways to do some research. So get started now, keep it simple, and it's something you can invest more time and research into in the future. It might take some time, but it's a really sustainable way to get free traffic over the long run. A few years ago when I was initially on Etsy and trying to get my Shopify store launched, I really dug into SEO. Got the homepage, the category pages, the product pages. I didn't even start a blog yet. I just really focused on those main pages getting really SEO researched. And within a month or two, I had replaced the Etsy traffic with organic traffic from Google. And I think that's when people talk about marketplaces, they're like, how do I get the traffic? And a lot of them focus on social media, which people struggle with so much, and reach and all this stuff that social media gives you.

It's so algorithmic. Social media is moody.

Yeah. Whereas SEO does take time to build. It's rarely overnight, but it is, it's not unrealistic. So I've done it to say that you can replace the traffic. If you're on somewhere like Etsy or Amazon, you can replace that traffic. It just might take a lot of effort, but everything does. Etsy is an SEO thing too. You have to do keyword research. So if you have some experience there, it does carry over in parts too. The next thing I'd focus on is having really engaging email marketing and newsletters. And like you said, how is this a traffic thing? It is mainly for getting traffic to your site. It's from an existing base of people you've got, but we actually have to do some effort to get them out of Gmail and get them over to your website. With emails, you can directly reach your audience and you can bring them to where you want to go. Even if you have them on social media, as we spoke before, getting them over to your website can be a real challenge.

They don't want you to take people off of them.

Yeah, trying to get them to go to your bio is always difficult. You always have things like ManyChat that are trying to make that easier, but there's still a bit of effort and challenge in there. Things like email, where it's a click of a button, it's a little bit more control on you. You are going to have a much easier time getting people to go to your website.

The inbox provider doesn't care that the person left the inbox provider, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. They don't want you leaving that platform, so they're not gonna showcase the, the messages as much. Email, it either got delivered or it didn't get delivered, or it got delivered to someone else, but you have a higher chance.

Whether or not the email gets in the inbox, is it in spam, is it in promotions and all that kind of stuff. One of the things that Google and Yahoo and whatever else focus on is your click-through rate. They want you to get clicks to prove to them that you are a legitimate email sender, whereas Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, really just want their people to stay on their platform. And that's why like TikTok has TikTok Shop and stuff. They're like really focused on you don't want people to do anything off of TikTok. Whereas email, they want you, they don't want you to leave, but they don't really care too much. They want people to be clicking links so that they can tell whether the content in the inbox is legit.

Are you valid or are you a scammy spammer?

Yeah.

So great way you can still use your emails to get more people on your email list or to your website. Because when you send out emails that are— you send a good sale email out or content email out, you always tell people, share this, have a friend who would also be interested in and share this email with them, forward it to them, invite them along on this journey.

I have that in the footer of everyone in my, in every one of my emails is, "Someone's on Casual Design Debt," but I also have in the footer of all my emails, "Did someone send this to you? Click here to sign up," and that gets them on my list. There's a button to do that. And it also tells the person who initially got it, "Oh, hey, it looks like a ton of people must be sharing this because Andrew's gone to the effort of including this link for people, so he must be doing some decent content that people share because he's gone to the effort of doing this. And you can do incentives and things there, but even just having that link is a really great way to encourage people to forward your emails and get more people onto your list and increase your traffic. Yes. And there, and then there's a ton of ways to make sure that your email marketing gets across. The main thing to focus on is just creating really good content in your emails. I'm making sure that people want to click. And honestly, writing really great emails helps with that. Oh, and imagery is another big thing. If you have a really good product and you stick a photo of it in an email, people will probably click over to buy it. That is really dubbing down email to a level that slightly scares me, but at the very basics, good words or good photos help people to click. There it is. Time war today.

The email, email for dummies. You need good words and good photos.

So email list is like the, one of the few things in your business that you truly own, especially when it comes to traffic. Nurture them and you, as long as you keep sending emails consistently, you should consistently be getting clicks through to your website, which should help to consistently get you sales. And it's organic. There's no ad cost. It's a much more fixed cost. Ad costs, they're all over the place.

All over the place.

Whereas email, if your list size stays the same, which we'd hope to grow, the price stays the same. And our last way to get traffic without spending a ton of money on ads is to build and engage with an online community. Melissa probably knows a little bit more about online community when it comes to a product-based business because she has one and I never have.

I was laughing, Andrew and I were talking before we started recording and I said, dad, online communities, that feels like a subset of social media. 'Cause it is. Before when Andrew talked about the funnel side of social media, like all your cold audience and the people who have no idea who you are, then the people who have seen your stuff and maybe have seen it a couple of times, then the people who actually like your page, like your content, then liked your page and all that stuff. You can invite them over into a community, and now you don't own these people, but they, they've raised their hand in a kind of low dedication way to say, I'm interested. Like they liked your page, maybe. An email list might be at big level sign up depending on the social media platform, but a community, this is where like you have a lot more direct conversation with people. So if you have a private community, which I do, the Metals and Pieces Fan Clan, that I don't utilize as much as I should, definitely get back on that. But I would host challenges and VIP parties and all kinds of really cool event things in there to get people hyped up. I would have those people vote on stuff that I was sending to celebrities and they ate it up. It was so much fun for people in the community to be a participant in your business, more so than just a customer. So like with communities, the whole thought is like, how do you kind of— social media is I am showcasing the journey. A community is more like they're invited to take action in the journey in more ways than just sales. You get a direct line, a pulsing beat on your buyers, what they want. It's an easier way to pull, to ask questions, to interview. Andrew, we talked about collabs before. You can collab with your customers, with your online communities as well, and get interviews with that. And that's more that lifestyle approach before. Any questions, Andrew? I feel like I just like, don't—

Yeah. And it doesn't necessarily just have to be a Facebook group. Having comment sections on things like YouTube. I see a ton of communities kind of building there. YouTube's a big one, comment sections under video. And I used to watch someone who did lives pretty much every day for hours. And the comment section, the livestream comment section, there's a whole community there. People knew each other, the people on the livestream knew commenters who were there every day. They started to build a community around that. Yeah. And there's a ton of those type of places that you can do stuff.

Facebook groups, Discord, Circle. Some sales platforms now have community sections. If you're running a blog, the comment section on your blog is a community. Like I just said, YouTube comments. If there is a place to have comments, that is a kind of community. Now the cool thing with a Discord, a Facebook, a Circle, a school, I would count on this even though I do my best to absolutely stay off of that platform. Any of these places, it's like a roundup of your, if not top customers, top engaged fans, whether they give you money or not. And sometimes they're giving you time. You don't know who they're recommending you to, so they could be bringing you lots of other customers. Community, another great thing with community I'm going to say on this one is it's a fantastic kind of melting pot to build an affiliate network for your products. But yeah, communities are really fantastic.

People in your community can become advocates for you. Someone asks a question, some people answer it, and if someone comes to say something bad about you, people come to your defense. Even, and I've noticed that in YouTube comments, I get some nasty comments on my YouTube, but there's one video that has a whole ton of comments and people watch it and it gets enough traffic that if anyone says anything bad, people will reply and defeat them in the comments. And like, they all like, Ignore trolls. I never have time to look through all the comments on there, but when I do, it's, oh, people have fought for me. I don't even need to focus on these. You build a community, people come to your defense.

I even had one, this just happened literally yesterday. So I am running, I do paid traffic, so I have ads going and I had someone on my ad tag me asking if it was me, cuz the page, the offer was a little different. The page view was a little different. She's like, this doesn't look like your website. Are you Melissa? Are you being scammed? No, Shirley, that's me. That's all me. Separate sales platform for my website, but it's still me. And then she bought me. She was like, okay, I wanted to make sure no one was scamming you. That's so sweet. That's so wonderful. But that's the power of community right there.

Another great way to get more traffic. Those people, they become engaged with the community, they become advocates for your brand, and they're much more likely to go ahead and visit your website and make purchases, which is what we ultimately want.

It's a much higher quality of traffic.

You're really warming them up, as they say. When people come into your world, they're cold and you warm them up, and that's when they're more likely to make a purchase. Today we covered 5 ways to drive traffic without spending money on ads. We covered social media, collaboration, blogging, email, and community. Let us know which of these you've tried and how well they work for you.

If there is one of these that you want us to really go deep on, or a couple, let us know that too, and we can do episodes specifically on some of these.

And if you want to know what to do with those people, running a flash sale is a really great way to get some sales from them. And we have put together a free flash sale in a snap guide that lets you create a flash sale that will get you more sales this weekend. Just go ahead and visit theproductgrowthlab.com/flash. Thanks for tuning in to the Product Growth Lab podcast. We hope you found today's episode insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed the show, leave a review. Helps us reach more creative entrepreneurs just like you. Stay connected and keep experimenting. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to join our community for more resources, tips, and support. Until next time, keep growing and creating. This is Thought Girls Lab signing off.