One of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur or startup is to market their product or service. Everyone knows marketing requires significant investments and it can be exceedingly expensive for startups. That’s where bootstrap marketing can help startups and small businesses.
No matter how much you believe in your product or service, as an entrepreneur, you know that without marketing, nothing else will count. Unless potential customers, media, and investors know about your product, everything else is academic.
But what you don’t want to do is spend exorbitantly on marketing. If you fail to make the desired impact, your financial situation would be needlessly vulnerable. This isn’t to suggest that there aren’t any alternatives. Using bootstrap marketing tactics, you can promote your startup and rein in your costs.
In this guide, we define bootstrap marketing and share seven actionable steps that you can take to scale your business without spending much.
What is bootstrap marketing?
Bootstrap marketing is about promoting products with minimal or no marketing budgets. While larger organizations with millions to spend rely on the scale of their communication budget, in bootstrap marketing, you use creativity to make your marketing effective.
In other words, bootstrap marketing delivers more bang for your buck.
In case you’re wondering why large businesses don’t employ bootstrap marketing, here’s the answer: It takes time. You have to spend a considerable amount of time coming up with imaginative ideas and tactics to maximize your marketing budget.
It’s also important to remember that no matter what tactic you come up with or the budgets that you use, you will be competing with the big boys out there. Everyone’s competing for the same consumers and that’s why you should consistently employ viable, effective, and budget-friendly methods.
To make it easy for you, here are seven bootstrap marketing ideas for startups in 2022.
7 ways to use bootstrap marketing for startups in 2022
With these bootstrap marketing ideas, your startup will be able to amplify its communication without spending too much money.
1. Use content marketing to scale your communication
Consumers are tired of the same old visuals and catchy headlines that just talk about the product or the brand. That peripheral communication cannot connect with consumers. What can build relationships is meaningful content.
The content may be in the form of text, video, blogs, emails, or social media posts. These shouldn’t explicitly promote the product or service. They should inform the audiences and add value to their lives. They should be designed as engaging conversations.
But does it work? Research shows that content marketing is 62 percent cheaper than conventional forms of advertising while delivering three times more leads. That’s why creating and delivering engaging content should be part of your bootstrap marketing strategy.
Ramit Sethi has built his personal finance advisory business on the back of content marketing. HubSpot is a stellar example of a brand that has built its reputation on inspiring and informative content.
2. Use organic social media traffic
Most people don’t realize how social media ads influence their buying decisions. Social media has dramatically changed how people communicate with each other and engage with businesses. For consumers, it’s a direct, regular, and dynamic medium when compared to its traditional counterparts.
Irrespective of who your startup is targeting, chances are you can find them on social media. Not just that, it’s also cheaper and more effective than conventional platforms. Plus, you can target with better accuracy and measure and monitor your campaigns with ease.
That’s why most startups that successfully employ bootstrap marketing rely on social media promotions.
Facebook Business and Instagram for Business are excellent tools to discover users and build communities. You can start small by targeting specific audience groups and then create lookalike audiences to market your product or service.
The online fast fashion giant, Shein, had sales of around $16 billion in 2021. The brand didn’t rely on primetime ads or billboards to find its customers. They focused on social media ads to build a global community. Now they’re valued at a whopping $100 billion!
3. Optimize your digital presence with SEO
Another successful bootstrap marketing idea is to invest in search engine optimization (SEO). Those searching for your product or category are much more likely to be serious buyers and you can only attract that traffic through SEO.
Admittedly, optimizing your online presence for organic traffic isn’t easy. And it takes time. But the rewards that SEO can generate make it one of the most necessary tools in bootstrap marketing.
The first step is to find out the keywords your prospective customers will be looking for. As a startup, it’s important to opt for long-tail keywords and not generic short keywords. Then, it’s time to optimize your website with those keywords.
For example, let’s say that you’re an HVAC business in Philadelphia. Along with the keywords “HVAC service Philadelphia,” you should also look for “how to clean AC” or “how to purify indoor air” and questions like these.
A proven bootstrap marketing technique is to focus on local searches since that would put you in front of more relevant users. Secondly, you should regularly refresh your website’s content to move up in the rankings.
Neil Patel became a digital marketing influencer by consistently delivering content optimized for search engines that helps businesses make the most of online platforms and tools.
4. Use word-of-mouth marketing
Want to maximize your marketing without increasing your budget? Word-of-mouth marketing will help you do that. That’s because consumers are resistant to generic messages from brands. They want to hear from their friends, family, and colleagues.
To put it another way, consumers want to hear from people like themselves.
How do you include word of mouth in your bootstrap marketing? You start by identifying your satisfied customers. This is the core group that can exponentially magnify your communication without you having to spend significant sums of money.
Talk to your happy users and thank them for using your product. Ask them to refer their friends, family, and colleagues and incentivize them with discounts or sneak peeks of upcoming products or early bird offers.
Along with asking for referrals, encourage crowd-generated content. If your users can talk about your product, show how it solves their problems, and recommend it through a video or post, it will have greater credibility.
Dropbox was highly successful in widening their user base when they offered their existing users up to 16 GB of free space when they referred their friends.
5. Start doing your own PR
Most entrepreneurs believe that they need an agency for PR (public relations). But the truth is that with consistent effort, you can build your own PR and promote your startup. It involves research and persistence but when done well, it can boost your brand’s visibility.
Your objective should be to market your startup and its product to consumers, media, potential partners, and investors. You can start by listing out online groups, podcasts, blogs, and publications where you would find these audiences.
Remember to also focus on your own social media pages. Post long-form content that’s both authoritative and credible. Start discussions using relevant hashtags. Regularly post content and you will start getting noticed online.
Use your social media connections to appear on podcasts and online publications. Make sure that you mention your product on all these platforms.
6. Create an affiliate program
Another effective bootstrap marketing tactic for startups is creating affiliate programs. This can instantly increase the visibility of your brand provided you’re smart about your affiliate partners.
What you want is to identify your potential customers and then discover what other websites or social media pages they follow. If you choose affiliate partners without doing an audience analysis, you will end up driving irrelevant traffic to your website.
You should ensure that your affiliate partners are credible and experienced in generating quality traffic. Like every other bootstrap marketing tactic, it’s important to regularly audit your affiliate program’s success.
7. Use authentic and purpose-driven messaging
The consumer landscape has fundamentally changed over the last few years. Consumers want their brands to be rooted in their ecosystem and aligned with causes and issues that matter to society at large.
In other words, successful brands will be about more than just products or services.
To effectively connect with customers on societal issues, the first step is to identify your brand’s mission and purpose. It should be beyond the product benefit and tied to a larger benefit to individuals and society.
Secondly, you should proactively support movements both offline and online associated with those issues. Finally, contribute to organizations that work in those areas and invite your users to follow them on social media.
Remember not to make it about your product or service. This is about your startup’s commitment to a cause that matters to society.
In short
Where conventional marketing presents limitations to startups and small businesses, bootstrap marketing offers smarter solutions. With these tactics, you can maximize your marketing tactics without having to make significant investments. It takes time, but once it starts paying dividends, you will be glad that you did it.