Last Updated on September 18, 2019 by Larious

Know what’s the greatest challenge every startup faces? Trying to remain cash positive. While experts tell us that the average cost to initiate a startup is in the region of $30,000, that amount is only the tip of the iceberg. For, these numbers don’t include team salaries, office-leasing prices, and raw materials’ cost – all of which add up to cost thousands a month.

When facing this situation, most entrepreneurs abandon marketing. What they don’t understand is that effective marketing doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. For, there are plenty of strategies which, despite being low cost, can help your startup grow. Here are four such marketing tricks which every startup business should use.

1. Create Scannable Content

In today’s world of social media, no marketing strategy could be deemed as effective unless it contains digital marketing. And to make sure your digital marketing is successful, nothing is as important as content as it drives traffic, improves your business’s visibility and potentially leads to sales.

Most businesses are aware of what you’ve just read.

What they aren’t aware, fortunately for you, is that not every type of content will make their business a standout performer. Apart from being original and valuable, the content on your website should be “scannable”.

Why? Research tells us that of all the people who will visit your website, a remarkable 80% will only read headlines, which leaves a meager 20% who expend the effort and time to read your content. That means you need to maximize headlines to engage your readers.

Also, it would be brilliant provided you can include relevant images and videos in the body of the article. Not only will they get your ideas better, but they would also do so efficiently.

Finally, since it is a proven fact that SEO strategies are favored by longer content. That means your article should, at least, be longer than one MS word page.

2. Use E-Coupons

Ask people who do online shopping – which is pretty much everyone these days – and they’ll tell you the lure of e-coupons.

Research also supports this argument that not many people can resist a great coupon; as 80 out of 100 consumers use coupons regularly. It further shows that almost 50% of users do business with a company after getting a coupon from the same.

Now that you’ve realized the importance of e-coupons, in comes the next question: how should you distribute them? Sure, you could rely on the traditional route and use snail mail, but, if you want to hit two birds with one stone, use e-coupons to populate your email list.

Put simply, you should be giving people e-coupons in exchange for them to agree to become a part of your email list. If you’re successful in doing that, you’d be getting direct access to their inbox, which you could then use to market your other products as well.

Therefore, provided you start using e-coupons, not only will you make the existing customers happy – by letting them appreciate how you care for them – but also add next customers by alluring them with the temptation of cut-price buys. It’s a win-win for both of you.

3. Go for PPC ads

Here’s what most people don’t know about Pay-per-click ads: the advertiser only pays for the ad when the internet user clicks on it. Hundreds of users might see your ad, but you won’t have to pay a penny as long as somebody clicks on it.

Also, while PPC ads can become expensive if your keyword is targeting high-traffic, there are platforms – like Facebook – which even the most bootstrapped startups could find the user. For instance, Facebook lets you pay as little as $5 a day for certain ads.

Despite the huge popularity of Facebook, it is the Bing Ads and Google AdWords which are leading paid search networks. They direct more traffic to your site by showcasing your ad whenever someone searches for a keyword which is relevant to your business.

Granted, both these platforms aren’t as inexpensive as Facebook, but due to the sheer amount of traffic they’d send to your site, both of them are worth spending your money on.

4. Sponsor a local event

Lastly, there’s no better way to acclimatize your local audience with your business than sponsoring a local event. By paying the event’s organizers a paltry free, you’d be able to promote your business with signs, banners, booths and whatever you can afford.

That said, as common sense dictates, you should only sponsor events that are relevant to your business. For instance, if your startup business is an exercise app, sponsor 5k and 10k runs in your neighboring areas. Or, if you sell sports merchandise, consider sponsoring a local school annual sports gala.

Conclusion

Here’s the bottom line: regardless of how much bootstrapped your startup business is (and you can always get a startup business loan to help), you should never let its market share slip to your competitors. What you should do, instead, is to consider these 4 marketing tricks and adopt whichever you think will suit your startup business and generate sales.