How to promote your business (without ads) in 2026 📈

Here's how I blew money on ads and proved my own strategy right 🏆. This episode is your proof that you can still get sales without ads. Even in 2026. Even with a small audience. Even if everyone else in your mastermind is spending thousands.

Sign up for free to get your step by step Instagram strategy for 2026 this January:

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Inside this one, I’m breaking down exactly what I learned from wasting money on Facebook and Instagram ads—and why I’m doubling down on what’s always worked: a powerful organic marketing strategy rooted in Instagram and relationship-driven tactics.

Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, this one will show you how to promote your business without paid ads, and grow your list, sales, and reach with smarter, more human-first marketing.

👀 If you want a marketing plan that works without making you feel like a sleazy salesman or a slave to tech—this is your blueprint.

You’ll learn:

• Why I stopped running paid ads (even after hiring an expert)
• The organic sales strategy I swear by (growth-nurture-sales)
• Real client proof that small audiences still convert (even at 51 followers)
• How to promote your business for free on Instagram
• The smart way to build an email list without spending $5+ per lead
• What SEO, blogs, and affiliate programs can actually do for you in 2026
• How to turn casual supporters into sales-driving referrals
• Free and low-lift ways to market your business that still work this year

This is real-world, emotionally smart, no-BS advice for small business owners who are ready to stop pouring money into things that don’t convert—and start actually growing your business with strategies that feel good.

✨Tap here to watch a FREE masterclass on “How To Get Clients From Instagram (without wasting hours glued to your phone)"

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/evergreen-webinar-registration/

Tap here to get your free Posts That Sell Template (This caption got us 10 sales calls in 3 hours)

https://parkdale-republic.lpages.co/10-sales-calls-new

🎉 Tap here to work with Jenna inside Magic Marketing Machine (or MMM+)!

https://www.magicmarketingmachine.com

Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Jenna Harding (00:00) not to be a dink, but I am not on team paid ads. And today I'm gonna tell you how to promote your business in 2026 without resorting to spending a million dollars on paid ads. try really hard not to be influenced by other people and what they think is right and to double down on what I think is right as a marketing expert and what has worked for me in the past and to keep replicating what has worked. I try really hard, but this year I joined a high level mastermind full of all these really accomplished entrepreneurs in all different kinds of businesses. When I got in there, I was honestly embarrassed about how little I had investigated paid ads and how little I was doing with paid ads because that's how everybody else was getting their business. Now, of course, my whole thing is teaching organic Instagram marketing. So in hindsight, it makes perfect sense that that is still the way that I get my clients, the best way I've found to get clients, the cheapest way to get clients. Like it's what I teach. So it makes sense that I'm good at it. But anyway, I thought, all right, let's go paid ads. I also listened to a podcast where Amy Porterfield, who I love, was talking to one of her clients who had a really high profit margin. And Amy was saying, that's great that you have a high profit margin, but all I'm seeing is a missed opportunity because that means you have money you could be investing in ads to scale this business up higher. Yeah, perfect. Great. That makes perfect sense. you know what I did? spent a ton of money on ads and you know what I found? My organic converts Jenna Warriner (01:41) Hi, it's Jenna. While editing this episode, unfortunately, I broke my mic. I'm at a cabin in the woods in Northern Ontario. I just wanna let you know that I know this sound quality stinks and it's gonna get way better, better than it's ever been as we get into 2026 episodes. promise. Thanks for being with me anyway. And I promise this episode is still chock full of business growth value. Jenna Harding (02:06) Actually, my ads barely converted at all and I hired someone who was really good at it. figured their know-how combined with my know-how would be, you know, unstoppable. I was really excited. I was like, perfect, this is going to be the thing. But ⁓ no, instead I lost a ton of money. Well, I mean, I won't call it lost. Like an investment is, if nothing else, learning tool. And hey, maybe I'll go back to ads at one point, but I'm just, this gave me so much more confidence in what I'm doing. I also found out how much these people in this mastermind are paying to grow their lists. And I grow my list for free on Instagram. And yes, you might be thinking, Jenna, you have a lot of followers. I know, but I didn't always. And this has still always been the driving force behind my business. we have a newer member in MMM. She just joined the. fall and she started a brand new account when she joined because she really wanted to fix her messaging and she has, let me get this right, I think she has 51 followers and she's booked five clients off of it, right? So like if you're doing volume, if you're selling something that's like only cost $50 and you need thousands and thousands of eyeballs, okay well firstly your profit margins on ads are gonna be really bad if you are selling a low ticket thing. Maybe that's not a good example. anyway, before I had pretty much a booked out roster and I had 5000 followers and I thought that was really high. So it doesn't matter if you only have a small number of followers or small relative to the next guy standing next to you still. I still will die on this hill. It's Instagram. It's organic Instagram. It's the freest way to get in front of people and the best social media platform for having click-throughs and people going to your site and people DMing you and having sales chats and the DMs. Like there's so many reasons why this is it. So the number one thing that I'm telling you as a way to grow your business in 2026 is organic Instagram content posting every day using my growth nurture sales strategy. There's free training below this episode. If you want to use that strategy step by step, you can come work with me in Magic Marketing Machine. I'll tell you how my clients are doing it, period, now. There are other ways, but because this is the hill I will die on, often link back to Instagram. for instance, email marketing. Email marketing is fantastic. We do a lot of email marketing and I do it pretty messy. Like I'm not the most perfect and strategic person using email out there, but it still converts. So anybody saying email is dead, email marketing as a whole is, you know, multi-billion dollar industry. you need to get people onto your email list from somewhere else, right? So typically that's gonna be social media, the biggest, freest way, ads, promoting a lead magnet to getting people onto your list so then you're paying people to get onto your list, like five bucks a head if you're lucky. Collaborations, like doing bundles with other people. There's grassroots ways. Like when I used to teach social media classes in Toronto, I would just have a piece of paper at the back of the room and it's like, pop your name and email on it if you want to get on my simple little things like that do the trick, just not volume. You can optimize your website for SEO and then have like a pop-up on your website when people get there that gets people onto your mailing list, but something needs to happen to get people onto your list. We have a big annual event called Freebie in a Weekend, where we do show you how to set all of that up, where you, not just to like promote myself again and again, but I will show you how to do this if you want, shows you how to set up all of the tech backend and make and launch and promote a freebie in a two-day live event with a ton of coach support. So that's an option. If that's something that's on your radar for 2026, email marketing. That's the way to grow your business in 2026. Next up. guest appearances, you're guesting on podcasts, you're guest teaching in other people's communities. Maybe you're doing a guest blog or doing an email swap with someone where they speak to your list and you speak to theirs, guesting in other people's worlds. And in that instance, when you're doing that, you probably don't want to send them directly to a sale because if that's somebody's first interaction with you, the chance of them immediately being ready to buy isn't quite as high. So then what do we do? We want to warm them up. So you give them away something for free like a lead magnet. You maybe sell them like a mini offer like a really low ticket easy entrance thing and then you warm them up through your email marketing. You send them to your Instagram and then they follow you and then they start seeing your content. So even if at the top of your funnel is guesting in other people's worlds and getting in front of other people's audiences who sell something different than you but have the same audience, you still need to funnel them somewhere like Instagram or email or freebie or both. touched on SEO for a second there. I just learned a bunch about SEO and bringing like organic traffic to your website and the value of blogs. I always thought that blogs were like, okay, as if somebody is going to subscribe to my blog and want to read it every day. Like that's, that's not going to happen. But then I learned that the goal of your blog isn't that people subscribe to it and read it every day. It's that it lives on your website chock full of keywords so that when people Google questions, problems, things they want, Google sends them to your blog and then your blog directly sends them to your services page. So it's a tool, not so much a content marketing. I suppose at the end of the day, it's still content marketing, but it's not so much like content you're creating to entertain. It's more a tool for optimizing the site. So if you were to type in... how to grow on Instagram 2026 into Google, you would find my blog that's called how to grow on Instagram 2026. And then as you're reading it, I would say what you really need to do is sign up for magic marketing machine. Cause we'll tell you how to grow your Instagram so that you can sell to your audience. And we'll also show you how to turn those followers into clients through our proven step by step process. You know I mean? so I thought that was fascinating and maybe you already knew that, but I definitely, I felt a little out of the loop for not putting those pieces together. But a blog will work, it's just gonna be slow, right? It takes a while for Google to even register your blog and then you're waiting for people to type in those keywords and then you're going to have to wait for like the conversion rates to start to show up. it's a more of a long term project. If you want to start one, like start it yesterday because it's not as immediate as something like email marketing or Instagram. But it does work and ChatGPT is now able to start recommending people. So if you have really good SEO on your website, if somebody asked ChatGPT how to grow on Instagram, they might be like, here's a blog I found that you might find useful. And then it takes them to the blog and then the blog takes them to your services page and then there you go. So this could get further and further, but my goodness, I'm not gonna stop tooting Instagram's horn because Instagram is also getting better SEO and now some of that is getting ranked on Google. So the same thing will happen with your content, which is new. It wasn't always like that. also if you're listening to this in December, 25, January, 2026, I am teaching an Instagram strategy session that is totally free and live to the public to tell you how to get clients from Instagram. That is coming up very soon this January and the link to save your seat is below this episode. Next up! referral programs and affiliate programs. If your business is right now getting most of your clients from referrals, that means you're pretty fantastic, doesn't it? That means you're, that sounded condescending. I didn't mean it that way. You're great. You're awesome. That's so good that your clients are so happy that they're willing to like promote you to people that matter to them and that they care about. That's fantastic. So how about we double down on it? Instead of just like kind of wishing blindly for referrals, things like Tell your clients you're open to referrals. Use email marketing and say, here's the type of clients I'm working with right now. If you know anyone, please pass my name along by forwarding them this email. You want to make it like super clear how they can promote you. can even create rewards. This month, everyone who sends me a referral is getting a free branded hoodie. if it's already working, why not double down on it? because the thing about referrals is they're inconsistent and you can't control when somebody's gonna like say your name in a room you're not in right but if you have a formalized referral program then you can run promotions and encourage people to send you those referrals at certain times so when you do have a slow season you can fill that gap Actually, if you want an action step, go onto your Instagram stories right now and tell your audience who your idle client is and how you help them and say, If that's you, click this link. If that's not you, thank you for being here and supporting me anyways. If you could send my most recent post to someone who does fit that description, I would be so, so thankful. Thank you so much. Often your friends and family, want to support you, but they don't really know how and they might not really understand who your ideal client is. So if you can tell them, this is who I help. Do you know anyone like that who might need my services? awesome, then you help them help you. Same goes for affiliate programs, Referral programs, affiliate programs. We launched a huge affiliate program this year. It's by invitation only or my clients, like my clients and alumni can join the affiliate program and get a commission when one of their friends buys Magic Marketing Machine. and when I was first setting up a big official affiliate program, I was encouraged to take it really seriously and make it next level. And I did. And I think that I could go back, I would have started it sooner and just made it less fancy and then made it fancier as I went. I really like taking like messy action towards something and then if it works, double down on it. And if it doesn't really work, then you didn't waste too much time, you know? been how to promote your business without ads in 2026. I hope you got at least one idea that you're ready to take action on a long list of ideas or a short list of ideas is no use at all if you don't actually take action. So maybe that's jumping into your Instagram story and being brave enough to pitch yourself in there. Maybe that's signing up for the free Instagram strategy session that I have below this episode, whatever it is for you, go take action. Let's make 2026 a big beautiful business year for you and I will see you next Monday. Jenna Warriner (13:04) Hi, my name is Becky Jennings and I'm a parenting coach. I'm gonna be real with you. I joined Magic Marketing Machine when I hit a plateau of followers and I didn't know how to gain any more traction. I feel like I kind of exhausted all of my creativity and I was trying to reinvent the wheel every single post. It wasn't working, it wasn't sustainable and I was getting very discouraged in my own business. So I joined Magic Marketing Machine with around 11,000 followers. I now sit today at over 100,000 followers because of Jenna and her teams. help and support. They dialed in my messaging. They helped me get so crystal clear and I created a repeatable system that I can easily follow with every single post. I know if I don't follow that system, the post is gonna fail. And when I follow the system, the post thrives. So it is an incredible program for any person who wants to grow and get clients from Instagram. The coolest thing, the followers are awesome. Yes, I'll say that. Having over 100,000 followers feels amazing, but what's happening on the backend is even cooler. I have so many direct message conversations happening every single day with people saying, do you have a camera in my house? How do you know this is happening? This is crazy. And on top of that, I was able to double my income from the year that I joined Magic Marketing Machine to this year. It's an incredible program. It is worth every single penny. You will not be disappointed. Her team is fantastic and it is worth every bit of it. I hope you join Magic Marketing Machine because it is life changing.