how do I market my online business for free? facebook ads isn't

>>1902223
Rent a botnet to send out spam

>>1902227
legally,

>>1902223

Any reason you can't bootstrap by marketing directly initially? (i.e old school; direct approaches, scoping out potential clients, networking and so on)

>>1902279
as in walking into stores?
Would I need to invest much in marketing material? I don't want to send more money down the drain

whore yourself out on upwork

>>1902284

Kinda.

I'm in a similar boat to you, vaguely related industry and I'm trying to get a small company/consultancy going.

I'm lucky enough I live in a city so there's a lot of networking events and stuff, but even so - I really need to get my balls out there and make a few introductions.

I'd hazard a guess that some decent online advertising may be good, but should really be a supplement to going out there and grabbing your initial clients directly. From there let word-of-mouth spread.

It could be as simple as looking at local companies, their websites and offering them feedback. I offer free 1 hour consultations for instance, and 9/10 it's possible to find a problem and introduce a solution in that hour.

>>1902223
are you targeting your ads right. you do web design, does your ad suck?

Side projects. Unsplsh and debuggex were (at least initially) side projects to drive traffic to a parent project.

>>1902223

Word of mouth via Nextdoor and Facebook.

That's how I get a lot of my business.

But then again I'm a contractor.

I will literally pay someone to go on their FB and write me a post "hey anon is great at ________, this is his phone number"

>>1902223
Why does it need to be for free?

>>1902279
This if you're selling a physical good or a service.

>>1902284
> I don't want to send more money down the drain
That's always a risk when you run your own business. Live and learn.

>>1902223
>Free

Offer satisfied customers credit towards future purchases by dropping a review on your site. Have a good filtering process so only your most satisfied customers are reminded to leave reviews. You'll have better testimonials and ratings this way.