Surviving the first year – How to ensure your start-up business gets enough customers without spending a fortune

Many startups are so poorly funded that they have nothing to set aside for a marketing or advertising budget. This doesn’t stop creative entrepreneurs from finding ways to market themselves well, though. If they can’t afford traditional outbound marketing, they use their industry experience to create an inbound one. Here’s how a low-budget inbound marketing strategy would work.

Putting out creative content 
A startup isn’t just a new business started with little money. Startup founders are innovators and experts in their field, having discovered a new angle that no one before them recognized. Expert startup founders, in other words, have knowledge to share that the rest of the world wants to hear. When a startup founder devotes himself to industry guides, e-books, blog posts and a presence on Twitter and Facebook, he is likely to play to a ready-made audience that wants to pick his brain.
A new business doesn’t even have to technically be a startup to have excellent information to share. An entrepreneur with any mundane new business has insights and experiences to share that many people would be interested in. Many people are curious about what exactly goes into starting up a business from scratch. An honest tell-all account would make be great material for a blog or Facebook page.
Quality, honest content of the kind that a startup owner is able to come up with, can be the basis of a winning content marketing strategy.  With such content on hand, a startup owner doesn’t need to go after an audience – the audience will come in on its own.
Creating a persona 
Many entrepreneurs are in business because they have natural leadership qualities – a commanding way of speaking, personal charisma that inspires confidence in others or a powerful personality. Entrepreneurs who have these qualities need to keep in mind that people love to watch and learn from such people. They simply need to put themselves out there – create YouTube videos on subjects that people want to hear about or speak at industry events and so on. It can take nothing more than the strength of a business leader’s personality to draw people in.
Using the agility of a startup to create relevant, up-to-the-minute content 
Even small businesses are often too large to allow their owners enough time to run the company Facebook page or blog. Startup owners, though, are perfectly positioned to decide on their company’s content strategy. They are out there, in touch with their industry each day, gathering information and learning firsthand what people care about. Each time they hear about something that has urgency and appeal, they can write about it. Since Google may reward content that is fresh and relevant to current happenings, startups can be uniquely positioned to beat established players to the punch in this respect. It’s a powerful kind of inbound marketing.
Startups need to find other low-cost ways to conduct their business, too 
As important as a low-cost marketing plan is, startups need to consider other ways to lower their costs too.
Shrinking overheads: Fixed overheads can be a serious burden to startups with limited funding. Utility charges, for instance can be a drain on their resources. Startup founders need to make sure they compare business electricity prices to get the best deal. They also need to learn to find better, cheaper premises to rent, cheaper vehicles to lease. Few things are as important to a start-up as a learning how to conserve resources.
Lowering costs through outsourcing: In the beginning, started businesses should consider outsourcing as much as they can. Outsourcing software development, marketing and other necessary functions that would cost too much to perform in-house can be an excellent way to save on costs while maintaining quality.
 
Harry Lawrance is an experienced writer. He enjoys writing about the tips and tricks to a successful business venture.