The competition within the marketplace is only getting fiercer and fiercer each day. Big enterprises with deep pockets can continuously come up with the newest technologies to make their advertising or marketing campaigns bring better results.
Meanwhile, startups and small businesses fight tooth and nails to get their business off the ground. They leave no stone unturned in the search for little-to-no-budget ways to get their messages heard among the noise.
The good news is, advertising your new business with zero budget is not an impossible task to do – thanks to the internet. You can now promote without having to spend thousands of bucks by going digital and building your online presence.
Operating on a shoestring? Here are some handy, actionable ways of zero marketing budget for you who just started a new business:
1. Define Your Goals and Target Audience
First thing first, it’s crucial to know what the latest marketing and advertising are all for. That’s why you need to set realistic, measurable, well-thought-out goals so you can come up with the best strategy and plan in advertising. You need to make sure that your business’ goals are neither too abstract nor too detailed.
While setting your goals, you also need to know whom you are advertising for. Understanding your target audience can help you run the campaign cost-effectively.
It’s always tempting to define a target audience that’s as broad as possible since you might think more target audience is equal to more customers. But that does not make for a credible pitch. It would be best if you narrowed down your target audience so you can reach people who have an interest in your brand.
2. Look for Freebies
Since there’s not much money in your pocket, freebies come handy. It’s okay to look for some free stuff to help you with advertising your business. Look for free software, free tools, free trials, or free demos. Look for everything you can get your hands on to help you enhance the advertisement campaign.
You can also get a bunch of salivating deals with insane flash sales, such as AppSumo, StackSocial, PitchGround, and more. Signing up for the newsletters of your favorite tools and software makes it easier for you to know when there are special offers or discounts.
Just make sure that all those free tools and trials are ones that you need and have the potential to improve your advertisement campaign.
3. Start a Blog
Whether you’re on a small business or big enterprise, no matter what industry you are in, your blog or website is one of the most crucial tools you must have in advertising campaigns. A compelling blog can be your promising online storefront in which visitors can get to know your brand better, browse your products or services, and make purchases.
You can put crucial information about your brand on your blog and create exciting content- that’s what makes your audience stick around. By all means, creating a blog is an inexpensive way for new businesses to enhance advertising efforts and attract more prospective customers.
As a bonus, having a blog on your site allows you to create posts that are related to your product or service. This means the next time a potential customer searches for a term, they can stumble upon your blog, and with the right content, go straight to your website.
4. Run Social Media Campaign
According to statistics, there are more than 3.8 billion social media users worldwide. It means that the opportunity to reach more and more audiences is higher. That’s where social media campaigns come handy.
Social media campaigns should include activities like posting text and image updates, videos, and other engaging content. With those interactive content, creating social media profiles not only help you to appeal to more audiences but also to engage them and make them convert.
With a stable and strong social media presence, you can directly build a personal and meaningful connection with your audiences, making them trust and rely on your brand.
5. Create Clickable Video Content
It has now become a fairly common knowledge that video is a must-have content you should have in any advertising campaign. The newest video marketing statistics say that 72% of customers prefer learning about a product by watching video content than reading the text-based user manual.
In your situation, creating stunning video content doesn’t always require fancy, expensive equipment. You can still create high-performing video content with your phone. After all, your audience won’t care about camera quality. They are more likely to care about the message you deliver in the video. So, make sure you include valuable words in the video content.
6. Repurpose Your Content
Repurposing content makes it easier for you to save some time and effort in the content creation process. It’s quite backbreaking to create new content day in and day out continually. In this matter, you need to experiment with repurposing existing content into new formats.
Repurposing content is such an easy, inexpensive way to get the best out of the material that you’ve already worked on. Not only will you save resources, but you’ll also be able to extend the reach of your blog for more audience.
For example, you can reformat all the articles you have on your blog into infographics or video content- or the other way around.
7. Hit Forums and Build Networks
You need to make some good friends and establish a strong relationship in the industry. In other words, making a connection with your community is another way to develop your new business with zero budget. You can attend every free event or seminar.
It helps you to meet people in your niche and share the experience in a community. You get to share what low-budget advertising works or what doesn’t, favorite advertising tools, and more. That way, you can learn from them and get more insights.
Being an active member of your niche builds your reputation and makes your brand relevant in your field. Potential customers who are looking for a service or product would look for information in forums. If you’re an active member, then chances are you have gained a potential customer- and without spending a penny to boot.
Get Your New Business to the Next Level, Inexpensively
Starting a new business can be daunting and a bit overwhelming. You feel the pressure from big competitors, looking for resources can be confusing, a shoestring budget can be frustrating, and lack of experience will leave you uncertain.
But, if you put some extra work and make use of the internet to turn your advertising game around with loads of creativity, it doesn’t even get close to a hundred dollars to level up your advertising campaigns.
About the Author
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
