It has been a difficult time for startups especially in the post pandemic era. Consumers are very careful of what they are buying and the markets across the industries are still not back at their usual best. Some trends have changed forever and some businesses have taken a big hot for being obsolete in this new era.
For any bootstrapped startup, it is difficult to maintain a stable growth without a steady cash flow. It is difficult to generate that cash flow without any funding. This leads them to an unfavorable situation where they have to make a decision and cut down on costs to focus on their priorities. Most of the time, it is the marketing that takes the back seat.
What is a Bootstrapped Startup?
A bootstrapped startup is a company that is run on its own without any funding from external sources. Usually, a company is in its early phases when it is without any funding. All the shareholding is with the founders in a bootstrapped company since they didn’t or haven’t received funding in exchange of any equity.
There are some ways however to keep your business going without having to dilute your equity. Here are some ways that most bootstrapped startups use to fund their needs.
Own Capital
Most founders use their own savings to fund their newly started business. This is a temporary solution till they either find investors or get their revenues going.
Financial Institutions
Many founders opt to avail loans from financial institutions by mortgaging either their business assets or their personal assets. This is recommended only if the founders are assured of some sort of revenues in the foreseeable future.
Borrow from Friends and/or Family
A very popular way is to borrow some money from your loved ones. Family and friends are there to help aspiring ideas. Immediate families do not expect any form of returns from the founders but distant relatives or friends could ask for a little interest in the payback.
Self-Sustained
Many startups find a way to generate some sort of revenue very quickly. This can either be through their main products or services or by diversifying their solutions to generate some side income. Many founders expand their product portfolio in order to start generating revenue straight away.
Most of the above methods can only help your business grow to a certain extent. To grow your business beyond a point, you need to incorporate broader methods. All the sophisticated options to market your business involve expensive campaigning and collaborations. Amidst all that, there are some very cost-effective ways in which you can market your business.
Best Cost Effective Ways for Your Bootstrapped Startup’s Growth
Thanks to technology and a very fast growing internet, we are able to reach out to more people than what we can think. The rise of social media has acted like a boon for businesses. But you need the right tools and guidance to make sure that you leverage the massive usage of social media and the internet worldwide.
There are some very smart and cost effective ways to market your products or services with the use of technology. Here are some of the best of them.
- Referrals
Building a referral engine works very well for your startup. This involves rewarding your existing customers for referring you to their friends and family. This motivates more people to not only use your products but also to refer them to as many people as they can.
This generates an organic word of mouth marketing for you as your customers will refer them albeit to avail industry benefits for themselves. An innovative twist to this can be gift cards. You can avail gift cards to your customers who can gift them to their loved ones. This way you are facilitating two customers with just one service feature.
- Content
Content marketing is an old school way of spreading the word. Posting regularly about your business and relevant topics on various platforms can prove to be a great way to attract people on your own website or online store. This negates intermediaries and you can reach your consumers directly.
All you need is a website and a clear content strategy in which you not only post on your own website but also post as guests on other high profile websites from which you are more likely to get visitors. You can then facilitate these visitors at your website where you can sell them your products. All you will need to write the content and web development services to maintain a robust website.
- Barters
Barter system is an arrangement where you share your platform to market their business in exchange for them doing the same for you. In this kind of arrangement, no monetary exchange is involved. This is a very popular concept among startups.
For instance, you can host an event where you invite people from your local radio station. They can market their activities there in exchange for coverage of your event on their radio channel.
- Emails
Emails are still the preferred mode of communication at work. In a world of instant messaging and social media, emails are still considered to be the best way to communicate for business purposes. You can create a format of cold email marketing and send them to the list of emails you have.
You can use mailchimp or other email marketing platforms that help you reach out to your target audience via an email marketing campaign.
- Social Media
Social media is at its all-time high in terms of usage. It has all the attention in the world at the moment. You can leverage this attention by placing smartly designed ads on popular social media and content hosting platforms like Instagram and Youtube.
All leading social media or streaming website owners have their own offers and campaigns that help you find your consumers through their platforms. The best thing is that you get to choose everything from your total campaign budget, your target age group, regions, industries and even genders.
- Freemium
One way to make people used to your products or services is to offer a version of it for free. Most services divide their offerings into two categories: free and premium. This dissection is called the freemium model. Avail some of the most popular features of your services for free.
This helps you build a larger user base and their analytics. You can offer a time-bound free trial period after which your users can get charged on a monthly or annual basis. You can also avail your best features for free on a permanent basis. Once you are flocked with users, for a premium price you can then offer them some premium products or services like uninterrupted access, prior access, complimentary things, exclusive access, etc.
- Platforms
There are many platforms that help new startups to market their products on them. Apart from the general usage of social media, there are platforms on which you can target a more specific group of users. Many people use platforms like Product Hunt where they can showcase their products and get traction.
Another way of using popular platforms is by posting regularly on Substack. Substack is a publishing model where you can publish your content and the content you publish is then sent as an email newsletter based on subscriptions.
These ways will surely help you build a great user base or at least get you a lot of engagement and traction. All these ways are very cost effective and deliver high quality results. The good thing about most of these methods is that you don’t need any intermediaries to execute them.
Verdict
Methods like referrals and freemium are very popular among modern day startups. These methods guarantee you a larger user base. It is then up to you to proclaim your expertise. Using the phenomena of social media, genuineness of emails and availability of platforms that help us showcase our products are great ways to market our products/services at a very minimal cost. The key is to use them wisely and make sure we filter out the target audience that we want to reach.
