We know start-ups face cash issues. Most of them don’t have adequate resources for maintaining operations. All this, however, should never be a problem when marketing is concerned in today’s time. Because the advancements in technology have made it possible for every business or start-up to think big with marketing. Plus, there are low-budget marketing strategies as well which start-ups can leverage to their advantage and gain a foothold in the market. Budget is no longer a problem for advertising and small businesses should understand that well. They can benefit from the changes to the marketing landscape and stay afloat in the industry.
Here are low-budget business marketing strategies for start-ups –
1. Referrals
Marketing needn’t require money in all cases. There are ways you can use and market your business even without investing heavily. You can benefit from the power of referrals and help expand the reach and visibility of your business easily. If you manage to convince customers to do marketing for your start-up, it will help drive the conversion four times better than conventional marketing does. You can set a reward-based referral program and then let customers help in marketing your business to the world in a cost-effective manner. Referrals can ensure great results for your business in true sense.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is another low-cost marketing strategy which start-ups can leverage to their advantage and gain desired results easily. In this form of marketing, the focus is always on creating quality, engaging content to inform, enrich and entertain the target audience easily. You can run a blog, update content, give information about any aspect of the business and this will help increase visibility. You can pepper the blog or articles with videos, infographics and images to catch more attention. Podcast can also be used for content marketing purpose. With content marketing, you can build brand without investing much.
3. SEO
SEO tops the list for low-cost marketing strategies. It is a very powerful way to market your business in the online world and enhance visibility. With SEO, your business’ ranking considerably improves in search engines and your products or services start appearing in searches more frequently. It’s easy to optimize different elements of the website and business and gain amazing results with visibility. Search engine optimization must be a part of marketing mix if you want a cost-effective tool to advertise your business. That’s why brands big and small alike invest in optimization.
4. Social Media Marketing
Start-ups can benefit from social media platforms and achieve incredible results with marketing. There are a variety of social channels each with unique demography and userbase. In fact, there are social networks with millions of users which you can benefit from and give your business a great exposure in cost-effective manner. More importantly, platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc. also offer the benefit of paid marketing to get measurable results and reach to the target audience easily. Paid ads can be run to gain traffic and visibility in the quickest manner possible.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is not dead. Brands are using it smartly and achieving great marketing results in a cost-effective manner. More so, it can still deliver four-time ROI provided done in the right manner. You can use the power of emails and reach to the target audience in an extremely low-cost manner. You just have to curate a list of emails in an organic manner and then send emails to the audience in a timely and systematic manner. Start-ups should look to benefit from email marketing more as it does not involve much investment.
7. PPC Ads
Start-ups can benefit from pay per click ads and gain great marketing results in a cost-effective manner. Some brands think that PPC is a costly way to market, but they are wrong because it gives flexibility with budget. A business can choose its budget, can decide how much to spend, in which market to spend, when to stop or when to spend etc. More so, PPC gives the choice of running ads by targeting keywords of choice. You can decide how much you want to spend for an ad and then gain measurable results in the process.
8. Networking and Partnership
A lot of event agencies leverage the power of networking and partnership to grow their base and achieve marketing goals easily. Seeking partnership in the industry means you can look to benefit from established networks and share resources and technologies for mutual benefits of parties. You can look to partner with agencies keen on serving customers with quality even if it comes through a joint effort. The power of a network is something you can leverage and grow the visibility and base of the business. This is how start-ups can grow in the market and find a foothold even when the budget is low.
