Marketing may not seem like the most urgent thing to work on, especially when you’re at an early stage, trying to build and define your product.
However, contrary to common belief, marketing is affordable and highly scalable. There are many examples of good marketing regardless of the size of the business, whether you have a modest media budget or thousands of dollars to spend. Marketing in the early stages of a startup has many proven benefits, including the fact that when you have a substantial marketing budget, you already know which channels are most effective in customer acquisition and sales. It’s important to realize this early on because startups tend to grow quickly. Before you know it, you will have a substantial budget to spend on marking. So without further ado,
here are five affordable marketing tips for startups.
Content marketing is free
Content marketing costs you nothing, but it can be just as rewarding as paid advertising. Get started blogging right away. Use long-tail keywords to surface even without paid search ads. If you don’t have a website yet, create an account on Medium, LinkedIn, or an industry-specific content publisher to publish blog posts and attract followers.
Launch social campaigns with free tools
Take advantage of all the free tools available on each social media platform. Facebook offers free marketing tools specifically for small businesses. For example, automating FAQs on Facebook Messenger could reduce customer service response times and help them get the information they need to make a purchase right when they need it.
Use keywords to reach customers
Each brand must have a list of keywords to reach the target audience. Due to the vast amount of content available online now, some companies also use long-tail keywords to reach customers.
Keyword research requires diligence. Businesses should first identify keywords and then do a weekly review of the position of company-owned pages on the search engine results page for each given keyword. For example, a yoga studio tries to reach a wider audience with keyword research. The studio is located in bangalore, kerala and students can book a class on their website. The studio would keep a list of keywords like “bangalore yoga” and “kerala yoga classes” and Google them to see where its website ranks each week. If your website is in the top five on the search results page, that means the study has a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. They can keep tracking these keywords on Google and record in a spreadsheet where their e-commerce website ranks each week. The aforementioned keywords “Denver yoga” and “kerala yoga classes” are considered perennial. Seasonal keywords could include “bangalore outdoor yoga classes” or “Zoom yoga classes” in response to COVID-19.
Paid Marketing: Start Small But Start Early
Paid social media and paid search are important components of paid marketing campaigns, but you don’t need a big budget to get started. It’s totally fine if you don’t have the budget for them yet. As you already know, it is 100% free to create business accounts on social media platforms. Start with organic social media posts and learn a thing or two about your audience. And then start by making small offers, constantly A / B testing, and focus on identifying the sweet spot for your business – the most effective channels, content types, and target demographics. That way, when you start to grow rapidly and suddenly have thousands of dollars in marketing budget, you know the right mix of strategies that will give you the highest return on investment.
Implement geotargeting elements
Attracting local customers is essential when you have a physical store. But did you know that geotargeting elements are just as important for non-local businesses?
For example, there is an educational technology startup that connects college students with high school students for private tutoring. Since it’s new, they are first hiring teachers and looking for those who are enrolled in universities in the india. To help with the hiring process, the company wants to share testimonials from teachers who have already signed up and are teaching on the platform.
You can implement geo-targeting elements here for an interested bangalore undergraduate student to see a testimonial from a University of bangalore student and a kerala viewer to see a Gitam University, Kerala student’s testimonial about the landing of the recruitment drive page. This is just one example of geographic targeting and the possibilities are endless.
