(Friendly Advice for Non-Tech Business Owners)

In 2025, it's clear that Facebook's recent changes have made it more difficult for you to reach your customers for free. Before, businesses could easily connect with their customers without any cost. While it's still possible, it's not as easy as it once was. Facebook increasingly encourages businesses to pay for advertising to reach their audience.

Also, it got better and more complex, so now it might feel tricky, but it's still a good tool for local shops wanting to connect with their customers. Let's walk through some changes and how you can make it work for your business—no fancy tech skills needed.

Why Your Shop Needs Facebook (Even Now)

Every local business should keep its Facebook page updated. Think of it like your digital shop window - people expect to find you there. If they look, they should find you; if Facebook sees that they want to find you, it will push you.

What if your potential customers look for you and find your competitors?

What your Facebook page shows is:

You're open and active

Customers check Facebook before visiting

Answering questions quickly

Facebook likes that as do your customers and potential customers.

• A thumbs-up emoji
• All you need is a short, friendly message
• Answers to any questions, if you do not know the answer, tell them you are investigating. -Talk like a local.

Sharing what's new

Could you take a picture of what is new or your weekly special? If, for example, you have a lotto, there is no reason why you cannot post something new once a week. Someone won big in the shop; there is a good draw, your opening times, etc.

Free Tactics That Work

Post When People Are Browsing

If you share when folks are looking, Facebook shows your posts to more people.

11 AM-1 PM

Perfect for lunch break shoppers
Please don't post after 6 PM - your post gets lost overnight.

Videos Get Seen More

You don't need fancy equipment. Try these easy ideas:

• Film a 20-second video of new stock arrivals
• Record staff explaining a product's features
• Share customer testimonials on camera (This is excellent stuff in retail)
• Top products. Why not set up a free product showcase? People like to buy stuff that their peers are buying.
• Go to your page's "Shop" tab
• Snap photos of your top 5 products
• Add simple descriptions

Events

St Valentine's Day, do you sell cards, toys for pets, perfume? Snap a few of them and put them up. Cards inside and out as many people really care about the words.

Save Time With These Simple Tricks

Batch Your Posts

Pick a quiet morning to:

1. Write 3-4 post captions
2. Take photos of your products
3. Schedule them using Facebook's free tool

Check What's Working

Visit your Dashboard weekly to see what your readers like and want to see:

• Which posts got the most comments
• When your followers are online
• How many people clicked your photos

Your No-Stress Action Plan

Here is a step-by-step plan to try.

-Ask your customers to give you likes on Facebook.

Now, you can go to your top-selling report and pick your top five selling items by quantity. Take pictures of them. I discussed how to do this here.

• Add these top five products to your Facebook Shop
• Make a few Facebook posts showing these items.

Conclusion

Consistency matters more than perfection. If you wait for perfection, you will do nothing. You can always make it better later. Start small.

A single sapling becomes a forest through daily growth, not instantaneous majesty.

Facebook requires more effort than before, but it's still worth it.

Have you ever considered telling potential customers that your product is the worst? It sounds crazy, right?

**But maybe embracing your flaws could be the key to making sales**

The sign out front boldly proclaims, "Come in and try the worst coffee one woman on TripAdvisor had in her life!" It is a risky move but one that will turn heads. Maybe this counterintuitive approach to marketing is just the weapon you need to stand out from the crowd.

Unconventional marketing strategies:

1. It grabs attention: This stops people in their tracks in a sea of "Best coffee in town!" signs.
2. It's memorable: Customers are far more likely to remember and talk about this unique approach.
3. It shows confidence: Only a business that believes in its product would dare to poke fun at itself.

Stand out from competitors

This strategy taps into several powerful marketing principles:

• Authenticity: Customers crave genuine interactions with businesses.
• Humour: A good laugh creates a positive association with your brand.
• Curiosity: People will want to see if the coffee is that bad (spoiler: it's probably not).

If you are going to do this, I suggest that you. 

1. Embrace it with humour: Turn it into a catchy slogan or marketing campaign.
2. Be genuine: This only works if you're confident in your product or service.
3. Offer a refund if not satisfied: You need to reduce the risk.
4. Use your POS data: Analyse sales trends to see if your honesty campaign drives results. If not, I will pull it out immediately.

POS system for marketing

A robust point-of-sale system is crucial for tracking the success of your customer engagement strategies. Here's how it can help:

Conclusion

It's hard for a business to stand out, but being the worst at something might set you apart in a crowded market. It's a bold strategy.

Remember, at the end of the day, it's all about providing value to your customers. A good laugh might get them in the door, but your quality products or services will keep them coming back.

As a small business owner, it's insightful to analyze why the NO campaign overcame the YES campaign's advantages. The fact is that the recent public vote on whether to bring back The Voice, a proposed Indigenous advisory body, had a clear result - the NO campaign won with over 60% of the vote. Given the YES campaign's more significant resources, such as money and public profile, this outcome surprised many. In my area, for example, a heavily Asian migrant area, there was almost nothing from the NO campaign. All the local politicians campaigned for YES and yet NO won easily. 

There are essential marketing and messaging takeaways we can apply to promote our businesses effectively:

The NO Campaign Had a Simple, Consistent Message

The NO campaign focused on a clear message that the proposed Voice was divisive and unfair.

NO Campaign Phrase: "Same Rights for All"

See how they emphasised this notion of "unfairness." It is both simple and effective to Australians.

Key Takeaway:

Keep your messaging clear, consistent and repetitive. Find your message and stick to it.

The YES Campaign Had a More Complex Message

In contrast, the YES campaign had a more nuanced message about empowering Indigenous peoples and moving toward reconciliation.

YES Campaign Tagline: "A First Nations Voice Protected by The Constitution"

This is much more abstract, and the terms like "constitutional enshrinement", "Indigenous empowerment", and “reconciliation.” whose finer points would lose many of the audience's attention.

Key Takeaway:

Simplify your messaging as much as possible. Simple messages are more memorable and persuasive.

The NO Campaign Used Fear Messaging Effectively

The NO campaign emphasized fears about the Voice leading to separate Indigenous laws and inequality. Fear is a powerful motivator, particularly when it is not answered.

Key Takeaway:

Address customers' potential fears head-on. Promote how your product or service alleviates worries.

The YES Campaign Couldn't Provide Complete Answers

When questioned, the YES campaign couldn't fully answer how the Voice would work. Voters were told details would be decided later. What will your customers think of your product if you do not supply clear answers before purchase?

Key Takeaway:

Have all the details, including logistics, worked out before promoting a product? Customers need concrete information.

The YES Campaign painted its opponents as racist. 

The Yes proponents cast those who campaigned for No as racists, bastards, or ignorant. Often, they accused them of being dishonest, lying to the Australian people, and spreading misinformation—people who wanted to maintain the status quo of inequality and injustice.

Key Takeaway:

Well, we all knew people who intended to vote NO, who were no such thing. Your advertising has to be believable. Before I voted, I talked with the woman handing out the YES leaflets and the guy handing out NO leaflets at the polling office. Both struck me as good people.

Conclusions

Learning from the failed YES campaign, small business owners can craft more effective promotions. Simple, consistent, fear-alleviating messaging and believable is critical.

What lessons do you see from this historic vote? 

Update: I got requests, to provide a list of sources used for this blog post. However the majority of the information presented here is based on my personal observations and analysis. However, I recommend consulting the report linked here for those interested in further exploring the topic. One interesting finding from the report is that individuals who were more familiar with and understood the proposal were less likely to vote in favor of it. Conversely, those who had a poor understanding of the issue were more likely to vote for it.

Video advertising like this is excellent for engaging with your customers. It provides value other mediums can't. it is an ideal attention-grabbing combination for showing your products so driving sales in your shop. It does not cost much. Many of my clients have done it for no cost.

How to advertise my products in a video?

The package we recommended was Proshow. Now it is no longer available, which is the reason for this post. But there are lots of free alternatives here. 

Whatever you select,

1) Make sure it allows you to enter captions with your products, you require up to 6 words a line and no more than 6 lines a page.

2) Make sure it can do different fonts.

3) Blank slides which you can enter in your shop information. This is critical.

4) I don't recommend that you worry about sound in a store because it will drive you insane hearing the same music repeatedly.

Overall, I doubt you will find these packages difficult to learn if you keep them simple. Also, I've found it worth learning because I use it for personal purposes on occasion.

You then need about fifteen (15) good images to display. Use a smartphone that takes good photos. Put black cardboard on a desk. Put the products, one at a time, on the cardboard and take many shots of each. Now select the best fifteen.

If you are unsure which items to select, the Top N Stock sales, I talked about yesterday should help.

We will need an old TV or a spare monitor plus a computer which many of us have. That will also solve one common problem of what to do with this old equipment. Place the TV on the wall, which from where people are standing can see it. You're now ready to go.

It's a good idea to display it near the checkout, where consumers are likely to be waiting. This would be an efficient way to promote and move your products, especially if they are conveniently located nearby.

After that, you may alter the video to make it more relevant as the situation changes.

Note: If you want and are unsure of making a video. Email me 15 good photographs and some text, and if you are a client of ours, I will do it for free.

As always please let me know your results if you do this!

With Windows 7 going, the question many are asking now is what they can do with their old computers?  

What do you do with them and no-one wants them!

What we used to use them a lot was as backup data storage units. Now almost all these and have been replaced by cloud backups which work better and cheaper — my costing of what in a point-of-sale environment, computer costs see here.

Well here is a use that they can be used for is advertising. 

Have you noticed that printed signs and posters are now rapidly being replaced by computer screens? 

The software for creating a digital signage system used to require expensive specialist software, now there are many software slideshow software available that can do it or if you wish many photographers will make you a professional one at very reasonable prices.

I think it is better to learn to make it yourself and they are now not hard to make, besides being a lot of fun it is advantageous to create one. It is one of those things that is not hard, but you need to spend a few hours to do it as there is much to learn.

What a slideshow software does it take many still photos, which any smart camera now can take and entertainingly displays them one after another one after another in a video.

You will need to be about 5 to 20 minutes, and I would recommend about 5 minutes as each still photo is displayed in retail for about 5 to 6 seconds. Each picture has a gap of about 1 to 2 seconds. This is all very approximate as I find that often each photo demands a different amount of display time. If you are trying to present an intricate image, you may need much more, if you are trying to say, "We have tons of greeting cards," then you may want less time for each image. So as such, you need about 45 photos. Many you can get from the supplier, but I doubt its worth the hassle. Walkthrough the shop after it has a clean. Carry around a black sheet of paper to put products on it and go with your modern smartphone taking high-quality photos, the higher the quality, the better. As you will probably be rejecting about 75% of the images, you take, you need about 160, which should take you about 30 minutes of your photoshoot — trying to take each photo in some reasonable order. It makes it easier later. Otherwise, you will need to sort to get them into some logical order. Now put these images on your computer, and go through and delete the ones you do not want. Be ruthless as you can always go back and get some more. This is one significant advantage an amateur photographer has over a professional photographer; the amateur can go back and get more photos if required.

I do not recommend adding sound in point of sale environments, as it will drive you crazy hearing it repeatedly the same tune although I do admit that it does work and attract people. 

Take your video, mount it on the old computer which is somewhere in the shop, and let it play on the old monitor or better still an old digital TV and run your slider show which will advertise your products and services. 

You will not be sorry with the results.