You have $0 marketing budget, what do you do?

Question

I know this is not an easy assignment 😁 But let's say you have a ZERO marketing budget and want to get your first 50-100 customers on your software/app, subscription price is under $15/mo.

How do you achieve that? 🤔

RK Lokesh · Accepted Answer

With $0 marketing budget, there are many things you can do. 1. Make a list of directories and list your business on them, many of the directories provides free listing. 2. Use ad-credits, many platforms like google, microsoft binge, linkedin etc gives ad-credit but the exception is you have to use your own money first in order to use them. 3. Take help of social media, now here you have to use your time as a currency, choose one platform where your target audience hangs out and start making content, the process is slow and takes efforts. 4. Partnership - Contact some of the influencers in your space and ask them to use your service/app for free in exchange for a word of mouth or promotion and if they like they can share it with their audience and you give them lets say 50% cut from the total sales. 5. Community - join groups and start giving free value around your app/service, teach for free, then offer your app as a solution. these community can be found on facebook, indie-hacker, twitter etc. Conclusion - $0 marketing budget should not be the excuse, if your product really solves the problem then proudly work hard for it and gain testimonials, feedback video for proof. hope this helps, in case you need a web design, product design like ux/ui for your startup than I have recently beta launched my agency called design subscriptions. you can check the pricing 😊 Link - https://designsubscriptions.fram...

Cameron Scully · Answer

If you not paying money you are paying in time. You can do what I do for my B2B marketing gallery and that is content distribution. Create a piece of content that talks to your target audience, by taking unfiltered conversations from Reddit posts and comments and distributing it across different platforms.. https://www.growtharchive.xyz/st... Then you can self-promote your platform in different communities such as FB groups and subreddits using this strategy I posted here. Exploding Ideas uses this strategy to drive 1000s of subs to his newsletter https://x.com/cameronscully_/sta...

Matej Cabadaj · Answer

@slimmy82 I remember your post about the power of reddit, really motivated me! When it comes to podcasts, I guess it is just a "numbers game" - one will eventually say yes :D

Slim Geransar · Answer

@cameronscully_ Reddit is a great suggestion. People use Reddit to get answers to problem. Find appropriate subreddits and help those who need a solution. Be genuine and do not spam.

You can also try getting on related podcasts, offer a discount code the podcaster can offer their listeners and offer the podcaster a small referral fee for any new signups.

Create engaging content on social media and repurpose accros channels.

Worst case, start Uber driving part time to pay for some marketing campaigns 😅

James K. Magnuson · Answer

@cameronscully_ nicely said

Trang Pham · Answer

@cameronscully_ if we self-promote in FB communities and more, but no one interacts with our post, what should we do? And how do you think of useful newsletter?

Khul Anwar · Answer

@rklokesh insightful !

Cameron Scully · Answer

@slimmy82 it's great and slightly unpredictable some times.

There's comments i do under hot posts that i spend 30 min on that don't blow up and some times they really blow up..

The best timing seems to be when there are 1.2k+ people online in r/Entrepreneur and a post is starting to heat up when you see '30+ people are here' and you are early with a great comment.

Otherwise if its past its peak then some times its better to comment on someone elses hot comment instead of responding to the post itself.

Rayan Zeggari · Answer

@dzts I would see SEO as the long term game and rather get heavy on socials to try and get viral + solid outbound strategy to get first traction - what do you think?

Cameron Scully · Answer

@matej_cabadaj thanks man hope everything goes well for you

Roland Marlow · Answer

I'd split between social media videos (youtube, tiktok, ig reals, and pinterest) and long form seo. In the beginning, most of the focus would go to the social media content. It's basically 1 piece of content that you reshare to all the other social media. I would probably do 2-3 videos per day, different styles trying to test what works best.
SEO content is going to take months at minimum, so I would just focus on the technical SEO and blog content. Social media is a grind and you're only as good as your last video while SEO can last for years without much if any work.

Cameron Scully · Answer

@tranggpham Firstly make sure your piece of content is tailored for FB communities. it needs to be short style content with an image. Then If your post is getting a lot of engagement in other communities/platforms maybe the problem is the group you in and not your content. id recommend posting into 10-15 different groups in the beginning to see which ones are getting the most engagement for you and then double down on those ones Try start off with a line that targets the users in that group so you grab their attention. i made an example here https://www.indiehackers.com/pos...

Slim Geransar · Answer

@rklokesh love the directory idea! Great call!

Dzmitry Tsemirau · Answer

@rayan_zeggari I agree, but since SEO doesn't require financial investments (at least you can make it), but takes a lot of time to bring results, it is advisable to start with it the sooner the better.

Rich Watson · Answer

@rklokesh this fella pointed out a lot of what I was going to say, and saved me time of doing it. upvoted

You have $0 marketing budget, what do you do?

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