NYCs most successful entrepreneurs reveal their stealth marketing tactics

The best marketing is free — according to some of New York’s most innovative entrepreneurs.It’s all about “word of mouth… and people telling their friends,” said Lauren Berlingeri, the co-founder and CEO of the buzzy wellness brand Higher Dose.Here, she and others share how they’ve avoided spending big — or anything at all — on traditional online, print and TV advertising in favor of organic promotion from loyal customers and celebrities.Doing so has made for businesses that are both sustainable and successful.

Have a look.These days, Higher Dose is known for at-home wellness technology, such as its popular red-light face masks and sauna blankets.But, when the company launched in 2016, it was a chainlet of in-persona spas and saunas across the city that took off thanks to social media.

(It pivoted to at-home devices with the pandemic.)“We joke that we never needed to do any marketing because everyone would come in and take a sexy sauna selfie,” Berlingeri told NY Next “And [we] just went viral … [fans just knew that they felt amazing afterwards and it wiped away all their sin from the night before.” Handily, some of the sauna’s early adopters were big names with large followings.“We had Bella Hadid [post a picture] showing she’s getting ready with us before the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, We had Katy Perry on her plane with a red light face mask,” Berlingeri added.

“And honestly, the list goes on when it comes to celebrities.That’s always my favorite slide when it comes to our investor deck — we’ve never paid any of these celebrities and they’ve all endorsed us and love us.” In hindsight, Berlingeri believes the fact that she and her co-founder Katie Kaps didn’t have a ton of money to spend on marketing early on may have been a good thing since it forced them to build a following rather than trying to buy one.“We didn’t have the money to pay a celebrity a ton of money to promote our products, which i...