Nyle Wilson 
With continually changing innovation and start-ups, the marketing process is event-driven in nature, offering limited chances for short-term successes while demanding greater attention to the long-term outcomes. It is an intricate process that requires careful husbandry of resources.
shared topics: the best low-cost promotion and marketing strategies startups can use to get their voices heard in an overloaded marketspace (eg, guerilla marketing, viral marketing campaigns)
Content marketing
It’s an advantage held by startups too when it comes to thinking of unique marketing strategies that resonate with their desired audiences and build a devoted fanbase – from creating viral postings on social media, harnessing community outreach schemes or even engaging in some good old guerilla marketing – startups can help their brand stand out without having to splurge on a big marketing budget.
Content marketing is a great tactic for building your brand as an expert and bringing in new business. Backlinko, a search optimisation software company, educates their audience about how to improve search rankings with informative blog posts and Whiteboard Friday videos.
Other strategies are hosting offline or online events to reach the specific audience. For instance, a fashion start-up could host street art interventions for the identity creation made by the artists in public places to share the brand message.On opposite side, Reddit and Quora are great search tools to refer to many industry questions answered while promoting products and, in the same way, answering customers’ questions about those products. Another strategy is launching contests where your customers have to share pictures and/or videos regarding the product use.
Social media
It has become the best way for startups to establish an influential online presence without any hope of a budget bump. Using networking through social media, startups can engage with their target audience directly and garner confidence and goodwill while doing so.
User-generated content (UGC) is another form of cost-efficient and effective marketing, offering genuine customer testimonials and encouraging community involvement – for example, startups selling environmentally friendly packaging could ask their users to share unboxing videos as a form of a genuine testimonial that endorses a product, generating community engagement.
Partnerships and PR are also valuable because they help raise awareness. An nascent environmentally friendly shoemaking startup, for example, can approach local retailers to help exhibit the product and raise awareness. At the same time, it allows a startup to engage with valuable contacts and resources that might otherwise remain out of reach; fostering strategic alliances can help entrepreneurs develop an ecosystem that sustains reciprocal promotion.
SEO
SEO is one of the most valuable tactics that startups can do on their own and for free – that means using keyword research and on-page optimisation to increase online visibility with the goal of organic traffic and brand credibility to a budding business (along with the side benefit of, say, showing up on Google when your friends search for you). It can be a very slow burn.
Using tools such as Google Analytics, startups can understand metrics for their site such as bounce rate, where their traffic comes from, and what 404s they are recieving that they can adjust in order to raise their visibility or user experience.
It does help to face the fact that email can be a strong affordable marketing strategy for startups, especially when segmenting and personalising emails that you send to your subscribers. Not only will they receive personalised messages, but they will engage more with your brand and therefore be more loyal to your brand. Building up your brand using limited resources as a startup is possible through events in the local community or networking groups that can support your brand or help it spread through word of mouth – think creatively, and you’ll find ways to market yourself!
Referral marketing
Many startups name referral marketing as the top way to find new customers – if you’re addressing a customer that would refer your brand, those referred ought to be inexpensive customers. There’s also power in recommending; if your company is referred, your ‘brand’ is essentially backed by the referrer. This form of social proof can also be most effective for startups who have less leverage with low visibility and no brand recognition, often seen with niche products or ‘solutions to a problem’.
Make sure customers know about the campaign by email and by announcement on social media. Supplier-incentive tiers encourage longer-term participation. For example, a program can include tiered monetary values or percentage discounts for the referring customer as they increase the number of successful referrals with increased discounts for the customers that are referred. Creating competition toward better participation with reward is good!
