You run a startup and marketing budgets are hard to come by, here are some ideas that can be of help. A few techniques mentioned here will appeal to larger companies too.
Driving growth is challenging. These strategies may help ignite some ideas. Lets start:
1. SEO
Get backlinks from partners. Write a great testimonial for your vendors and request them to link back to your site. Generate content on the company blog. Invest time in writing quality content for your blog. Split the workload across various teams. Get a blog post every week from tech, product, marketing and the leaders. This creates well-rounded content for your blog and helps you rank on keywords that matter.
2. Webinars
Free webinars introduce your brand and product to a wider audience. Make the topic appealing to the audience and you will attract huge interest. Brainstorm topics, plan the webinar and spread the word using social media and your email lists.
3. Social Media
Commenting
Comment on Quora: A lot of consumers share their problems and needs here. It would be a great way to go and answer these queries. Quora answers have great SEO rankings and if you are struggling with SEO of your site it could be a rewarding way to go and provide solutions to your consumers.
Relevant topics on twitter: Reply to tweets by key influencers in your niche and get great reach if the influencer engages you in a conversation.
Top 10 blogs which are relevant to your company: Find the top 10 blogs that your target audience reads and which is relevant to your business. Comment on those blog posts
Tweeting
Twitter can produce high levels of referral traffic and great brand exposure. Follow relevant influencers, mention their followers in replies to spread the word.
Instagram and Facebook
Create share-worthy content on Instagram. Join Facebook groups relevant to your audience. Engage your TG there. Share your blogs on Facebook.
4. PR
Create high-quality PR stories which reporters would love to write about. Share a user insight, your backstory, unique user stories or a funding event. Keep reporters engaged throughout the year by giving them industry insights and forecasts. Help reporters out if there’s a newsworthy event in your industry
5. Referral
Create a robust referral program for your company. Think about not only incentivizing the referrer but also the referee. Take inspiration from companies like Dropbox and Airbnb for great referral programs. Create waitlists and use the referral program to move up the waitlist
6. Email List
Always keep building your email lists. Use tools to harvest addresses. Use email marketing to boost sales, generate leads, strengthen relationships, increase website traffic and build brand loyalty.
7. Talk to Customers
Founders and business heads should try and talk to at least 3-5 customers in a week. Understand the users better, address their problems and make them feel special. This will help drive word of mouth too.
Publish customer stories and solutions. Share it with the customers so that they can help spread the word.
8. Blog
Build a powerful content engine that talks to your target audience. Blogging and content creation is an integral part of marketing today. Leverage text, video, infographics and edgy content to engage your audience. Square got initial traction due to an edgy blog post by Jack Dorsey
Guest Blogging
When you post an article on another blog, you are instantly gaining that blog’s audience. Create a great article, appeal to the blog’s audience, and a whole new audience set will open up for your business. This is tough work and may not immediately yield results but over time this is gold
9. Get in Touch With Your Influencer Pals
Know any great influencer for your niche well? Leverage them to set the tone of the conversation and reach a huge audience. You can also find out mutually beneficial projects wherein the influencer can use your product and you can leverage his audience.
10. Generate WoM
Use your product differentiators to generate word of mouth on social media communication channels. Launch a new feature which is invite-only and get your users to bring in more users. Create a wow factor in your product and encourage users to share their experience.
11. Organize Meetups
Organise meets in various forms between your power users, influencers and target users. Be generous with sharing your insights and knowledge. Write about these meetups and tag the attendees to that they can spread the word too
12. Freebies That Don’t Cost Much
Everybody loves a freebie. Offer a free gift such as an eBook, report, free service, etc., to your visitors when they sign up for your mailing list, at the end of a webinar or meetup. There are many free things you can offer so be sure to make it a useful
13. Generate Stellar Testimonials
Request for testimonials from your power users. Share them on your website, blogs and social media. Tag the users and thank them publicly. Make the users feel loved. They will help spread the word since they love the product. Testimonials also serve as social proof for your website. Also, you can use them a part of your signup process to help increase conversions
14. Unified Employee Signatures to Promote the Company
Launched a new product or feature? Create an email signature for all employees so that any partner, existing customer or vendor gets to know about it
15. Networking
Cultivating valuable relationships and helping people out before you ask for anything in return is an invaluable and long-term strategy for low-cost marketing. Networking can be embodied in meetings, going to events and conferences, using LinkedIn and reconnecting with old friends and colleagues. This will help you market your business and find direct clients and strategic business alliances
Once you have identified the strategies that you want to use, put them in a 2x2 matrix of execution( easy– hard) and impact (low- high). See which are the quick wins and embark on them immediately and start planning for the major projects (high impact and high effort)
However, nothing is truly ‘zero cost’. There are manpower and infra costs incurred by these ideas. In conclusion that are many marketing ideas which do not require a budget to execute to get users aboard your platform.