Producers, artisans: promote your direct sales without selling online

Your direct sales strategy is working. The farm shop, the roadside self-service, the Saturday stall: regulars keep coming back, the quality speaks for itself. The real obstacle lies elsewhere: too many people, twenty minutes from your farm, don't even know you exist.

And when people talk to you about online visibility, they almost always suggest the same thing: opening a shop, managing orders, keeping inventory up to date, organizing pickups. For some, it's an excellent idea. For others, perhaps you, it's precisely what you don't want: your sales channel already exists, you just need people who know about it.

Good news: these are two different things. You can be visible where people are looking for local products, without selling anything online. Here's how.

The essentials in 30 seconds : A Swiss producer or artisan can promote their direct sales (farm shop, self-service, market) without opening an online store, thanks to Mimelis local advertising: a card bearing their name, logo, colors, and a link to their website or producer page, displayed on local pages consulted by people searching for regional products. The Mimelis network covers all Swiss cities, all 26 cantons, and over 650 product categories, with more than 4,500 listed producers and artisans. A fixed monthly fee per placement, with no sales commission, no commitment, and no obligation to sell on the platform.

Your future clients are already looking for you, literally

Every day, people in your region type in searches like "alpine cheese from the canton of Fribourg," "local honey from Lausanne," and "local products from Valais." Others ask the same question to an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Perplexity): "where can I buy vegetables directly from a producer near Morges?"

These searches increasingly lead to local pages: pages organized by product category, city, and canton, listing direct sales in a given region. In Switzerland, this network is built by Mimelis, the direct sales marketplace that covers all Swiss cities, the 26 cantons, and more than 650 product categories. Its pages are designed to be found on Google and cited by AI assistants. More than 4,500 producers and artisans are already listed: there's a good chance your neighbors down the valley are among them.

In other words: the audience you're interested in—people in your area actively searching for products like yours, willing to travel or order directly—is already gathered on these pages. The only question is whether your name is there.

Your place in the market, without manning the stall

Before going any further, a clarification to avoid any misunderstanding. Mimelis offers two distinct things:

1. Selling on Mimelis : opening a shop on the platform, where customers reserve your products online and pick them up from you (or have them delivered). It's a sales channel.
2. Local advertising : a sponsored space on local pages, where your brand appears with a link to your chosen destination. It's visibility: nothing is sold or booked through your card.

The two are independent: one can be done without the other, or both. This article is about the second one.

This is exactly what Mimelis local advertising offers: on these local pages, a sponsored space highlights regional brands. Yours appears there as a map, with your name, logo, colors, and a link that leads wherever you want: your website, your producer page, or simply the page that lists your opening hours and address.

Think of it like a place in the market, but without the stall to run:

• No online store to manage. No orders to process, no inventory to synchronize, no collection slots to organize. Your sales process remains exactly the same. Only the number of people who know about it changes.
• No commission. You don't sell anything via the card, so there's nothing to collect. The cost is a fixed monthly amount per location, known in advance, with no commitment, adjustable or cancellable at any time.
• No randomness. Unlike auction-based advertising (Google Ads and the like), you reserve your placements: you know before you pay which pages your brand will appear on. Predictable budget, predictable visibility.

What happens next, at your place

Clicking on your map takes you where you've decided to go, and each destination produces a different result:

• On your website or producer page : visitors can find your opening hours, address, and story. Your farm shop or self-service store gains visitors who didn't know you the day before.
• To your own e-shop , if you have one: you get local acquisition traffic directly on your products, measurable in your statistics (add UTM parameters to your link and you will know precisely what each location brings you).
• If you open a Mimelis store , visitors can reserve your products online and pick them up from you. Visibility becomes order, within a well-established process.

In all three cases, you transform a search (“Fribourg alpine cheese”) into something tangible: a visit, a basket, a reservation.

Choose your terrain: your products, your region

You compose your cover like you compose a stall, choosing what best represents you:

• By category : cheeses, honey, wines, vegetables, meat, crafts. Appear in the product categories that people explore when they search for what you do.
• By city : be visible to the inhabitants of your locality and neighboring municipalities, those who can actually visit the store or self-service area.
• By canton : cover your entire region at once, useful if your customers come from far away (specialties, PDOs, products worth the detour).

For each location, there are two levels: standard (compact card with a marker, name, and link) or enhanced visibility (your logo in a large, prominent position). The classic combination: enhanced visibility for your main category and city, standard visibility for the rest of the area.

Getting started: Create your brand (name, logo, color, link) in minutes, choose your locations, and your map is online after a brief verification. Everything is then managed from your dashboard. Full details are on the local advertising page .

And if one day you want to go further

Visibility first, the rest only if you want it. If one day you want customers to be able to reserve your products online for pickup, that's where Mimelis' other offering comes in: selling on Mimelis , with a shop that opens in just a few clicks. Your sponsored card can then be linked there, and the visibility you've built up translates seamlessly into orders. But these are two separate decisions: sponsoring today doesn't obligate you to sell tomorrow.

Many very good reasons to sponsor do not involve any online sales: filling the farm shop, promoting self-service, announcing your presence at the market, attracting customers from the neighboring town.

You have the quality. Visibility, that's up to you.

Your product doesn't need marketing to convince. It needs people to know it exists. People looking for local products in your region are already gathered in the same place: take your place there, without changing your sales methods.

Discover local advertising in Mimelis and reserve your spots

Are you looking to sell your products online, with reservation and collection at your home? That's another offer: selling on Mimelis .