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How would you market with no money?
by
Nishant Modi
Like the steps below?
Create a landing page
Post on social media
Write blogs
Build an audience
Ask them to Sign up on the landing page
Trending on Indie Hackers
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IMHO the single most-effective cost-affordable way to get customers if you're B2B SaaS is SEO. Just write a bunch of evergreen content, with each article targeting one topic/keyword. Just write, write, write. It really works.
Definitely cost effective... Just a low velocity channel at first. It takes 12 months to really gain momentum.
What if there are competitors (and there always are) that have (almost) everything covered?
Look for alternative mediums. TikTok, YouTube - video is often less competitive than the written word.
Solve one problem and solve it well, better or different than competitors.
I think in that case then you need to lean on what your niche is.
What makes you slightly different/unique, as a founder this is where you can be slightly different than bigger competitors.
What's one piece of advice you would give about keyword selection?
I don't really have any useful advice to give. What worked for me will likely not work for you exactly. Find keywords that are very relevant to your niche and on which you can rank high. Sounds kinda obvious but that's essentially the gist of it.
That's helpful. Any tool you recommend?
You need to learn basics. There is forum with thousands of useful threads about basic stuff like keyword research, links etc. https://www.blackhatworld.com/
Thank you!
I'm tired of hearing about SEO. I'm looking for alternative's. SEO is the last thing I would want to try—tried it and wouldn't recommend for starters. I'd recommend to produce content and drive traffic and forget about SEO, backlink building, etc.
But backlinking and content marketing are all part of SEO as well. On- and off- to be specific. Maybe you're referring to the technical part though?
I'm only referring to the high quality content—everything else i'd ignore. even the meta tags not worth the effort for Google, i'd optimize the metatags for platforms like Twitter and Facebook
"and forget about SEO, backlink building, etc."
hmm, interesting point. Is it good for beginners??
If I had no money I wouldn't focus on marketing. I would focus on sales.
One on one, old school relationship building style. Help one person, make a relevant offer. Repeat.
THEN I would have both money to do marketing AND a better understanding of who I'm selling to, making my marketing efforts and investment more effective.
EDIT: very weird to see so many people in here saying cold calls and emails when that's specifically NOT what I suggested here. 🧐
Exactly! Sales and Cold calling is still highly effective.
I never said anything about cold calls. 👀
How do one start cold calling... It's not like I have an inventory of numbers stashed somewhere
If you don’t have numbers try cold e-mails and cold DMs. It’s about the concept of approaching cold and don’t be afraid of rejection it’s a numbers game so just do the numbers like 100 DMs/e-mails/calls and see what happens.
"No Fear of Rejection" is the keyword here!
This is gem!! Thanks!
You're welcome, but with all the people replying to means chirping about cold calls and emails, I want to be clear:
I am NOT advocating for the numbers game of emailing/calling strangers until you get a bite. That's an easy way to waste a ton of your limited time and resources at the earliest stages. You want to stack the deck in your favor, which apparently everyone has forgotten how to do 😂
My approach is to look for, and build, any amount of leverage I can.
At a bare minimum, that's exploring how my existing relationships could help me to ask for warm intros. If I don't have any existing relationships with connections, it's time to start figuring out who lots of my potential customers could be connected to and/or consider influential, and earning THEIR trust first.
(I also might view my lack of existing bridging relationships as a red flag that I am going to struggle to reach this audience and instead focus my efforts where I DO have advantages.)
Old school networking also includes finding where are already active and participating in those communities, online and offline. NOT going to immediately cold pitch them, but going to listen and learn. To understand how I can help them (regardless of my product) and focus on helping them.
Helping people and earning trust might seem like a slow path, but the hit rate is astronomically high especially compared to the alternatives of cold calling and emailing. In the time it'll take you to get your first "yes" from cold leads you can easily get 5-10 actual customers just by approaching potantial customers as people to help instead of wallets to open.
Can you say exactly what your product is? I'll write exactly how I'd do it!
Exactly this. If you need sales you need to outreach to your ICP's by email and calling.
Where did I say anything about email and cold calling?
Isn't low-key SEO marketing more achievable for an early-stage startup compared to doing actual sales, be it one-on-one or cold calls?
Definitely not.
Exactly. This is what I came here to write.
Pick up the phone and start dialing.
You should be spending half your day on sales, the other half you can divide between marketing and working on improving your product.
Where did I say anything about cold calling?
That's what much of sales is. The main part, really. If you just sold to people you know, you wouldn't have much of a business. That means talking to new people is your only option.
I've had many sales roles and started several businesses over the past 20 years, and all of them required massive amounts of cold calling, by either calling prospects on the phone or meeting people in person.
Who you gonna call?
It depends on what your product is and who you will be buying and using your product.
Let's say you have a job board. Are you just going to throw up a facebook ad and wait for businesses to find your site and post ads?
This is very passive, and you will likely be looking at a very slow burn getting to that tipping point where you have enough content and word of mouth where people 'just find you'.
Most marketing is very passive. You do something then you sit back and wait and hope they come to you, right? Ads, blog posts, SEO, etc.
What you want to do for your job board is start calling businesses, talk to the owner or manager, tell them about your site, answer any questions they have, and maybe give them a discount (or a freebie) for being one of your first customers.
If they are a local business, then actually go in and talk to them in person. I know, it's scary talking to people, but it works. Take your laptop in there with you so you can show them your site and help them sign up on the spot if they are interested.
You will make quite a few sales over the phone, but you will make exponentially more, and be exposed to more interesting business opportunities, if you can make your sales calls in person.
This is also why B2B businesses are much easier to get off the ground. It is much, much harder to make sales calls to consumers than to businesses.
Good luck!
I definitely think that social media has made it possible to launch pretty much anything with no upfront investment in marketing or advertising. However, it can take considerable time and resources to manage it well.
True that! You be the machine or hire a machine. No other choice.
1 - you dont need the landing page to hit 1000 MRR
2 - you don't need to post on social media
3 - you don't need a blog
4 - you don't need an audience
5 - you dont need the landing page to hit 1000 MRR
What you have to do for your initial $3K MRR, is to identify the problem you solve, who you solve it for, and when they experience it. Then you find them when they're looking for a solution, get in touch and close.
"How to do marketing for your SaaS" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m--nyQcsas0&t=45s
Interesting, how do you find them? There must be something inbound or outbound you would create or no?
outbound first, inbound as you scale
yep! and start with people / colleagues you know who trust you, believe in you and are willing to take a chance to be your first buyer or refer you to a friend. then you have a case study to sell to similar customers through "cold outreach"
outbound will require money unless it is a B2B saas (where can just message people to try the product). Am I correct?
No difference between b2c and b2b, for both cases the best practice is to go after first 100 customers manually.
Awesome, that's very helpful. I am looking for a way to reach the first 100 for the product I launched 5 days ago, audienceos.com
In addition to writing article, you should publish videos on YouTube.
You should also build an email list to send news about your website / product / service.
I like it, the landing page will help in building an email list. But Youtube (production, editing, etc. unless you are willing to learn everything) would not be that free, will it?
I have made an automatic video generation tool, with a free account (watermark on the video for a free account). You just have to paste your text and click on a button: Rollideo . com automatically create videos with auto-generated voice-overs & the exact subtitles.
Email marketing can be costly if you are on a budget.
Mailjet has a free plan with unlimited contacts if you want to do email marketing. Then if your website has success you can upgrade to a premium plan.
I have an Email Marketing platform https://Birdsenger.com and willing to help founders scale and grow with email marketing anyone interested should DM me offering you a lifetime plan at a good deal.
Sounds good. How it is different tham=n MailChimp or convertkit?
Well the most basic things about this platforms are that they allow you send marketing emails, but differences come majorly in 1. Deliverability 2. Pricing 3. Feauture sets
For the feature set it most time similar, so for birdsenger where we are currently making a change is via our pricing model, even though i havent figured out my pricing all yet out :D, but I know how hard marketing could be for a first time founder, if i could help with a relatively low pricing model specifically for them, without harming deliverability and functionality, then that sells for me, whilst my plans would sell on normal profitable range for general end users, but founders with verifiable idea could always get the special plan.
It's not coming out on your website. It looks old, to be honest. You need to just show me what you do with a graphic etc. Probably that would help. Currently, I would just buy standard solutions. Yours is not jumping out yet.
I would go with Content marketing: not just blog posts, but, more generally, a website full of content about your product. It requires time, but not money and it is a great long-term strategy.
Indeed.
The target audience of https://monitup.com/ is high-level employees such as CEO and General Manager of remote companies.
To reach these people, I am looking for people on LinkedIn and sending a connection request. If they accept the request, I send a message describing the product in more detail and try to get a break for the meeting.
I am using this method for 0 cost advertising for now.
Thanks for sharing your process. What percentage converts to a meeting?
It didn't grab the attention of a lot of people, I sent an average of 40 connection requests, I set up 2 meetings and one of them is currently in demo phase and looks like it will probably turn into a sale.
Not bad. A sale out of 40 and no money spent. Congrats!
I actually tried a lot of things, like AppSumo but I was only able to sell a few licenses. Other than that, I'm looking for sales professionals who can sell my product and get 25% of what it sells.
If you have any advice on selling, I'd love to hear it.
Based on your product. I'll double down on LinkedIn. 1. Direct reach 2. Post on LinkedIn every day and build an audience there.
Here are a few marketing ideas that require $0 in budget --
If your product is B2B --
Go on LinkedIn/TikTok and search for creators, relevant tangental product companies, and groups that have your customer as their audience. Engage with posts by commenting, liking, and sharing at least 5 times per day. Make sure your profile is complete and tells a story about your product.
If your product is B2C --
Do the same as above but on TikTok.
Start a referral program for your current customers and incentivize WELL. Give them a very compelling reason ($$$) to share a referral link with their network. This works even better if it is built into your onboarding flow.
Start publishing content (writing, podcasting, or video) that provides value to your audience. Educate them on solutions to common problems they face. This doesn't have to be directly related to your product. Just think a little more broadly about what your customer cares about and what you're an expert in... write about that!
Hope this helps!
Also, shameless plug <-- I just acquired a marketing newsletter that I will be using to send weekly tips and help marketers/business owners grow their business. (https://marketercrew.com)
Thanks for the in-depth response. Very helpful. If video is not preferred what other platforms would be good for B2C?
If it's ecomm/physical goods then I would check out Pinterest.
If it's a B2C app (and you prefer not to do tiktok) then I would focus on communities, forums, and other content publishers.
You may want to check out a tool called "SparkToro" that will help you identify which communities, products, and social accounts that your customers interact with. That's always a good start!
Thank you! I am currently focusing on Instagram.
Do you have any reccomendation if my audience mostly be on Discord? I mean, can I do the same way?
I guess so, as long as you are reeling them from somewhere. Keep in mind, that you use a platform and target an audience who are Discord receptive.
Thats sound nice. I try to build landing page for beta test, listed some ways to reeling them. Like, first 10 user who try software & send feedback will get Solana for free etc.
More PRODUCE, less consume.
Choose a platform where your customers hang out (like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and start creating content, content and more content for your customers.
TikTok has made this incredibly easy. Broad 100% free ToF distribution. Just pick up your phone and create!
One thing I don't like is TikTok's geo posting. I mean being in Kazakhstan, my posts are not seen to US/Europe audience:( but if I post in English, my local audience doesn't get it and my videos get low growth ..
Good point. I was aware that TikTok has a "Designated Market Areas" for businesses that run ad campaigns... I didn't realize that it automatically applied this to organic posts.
Yeah makes sense. Just takes time but works.
Build in public. Find a subreddit that is your niche. Post... go crazy.
But most subreddits don't allow self-promotion or advertising. What about that?
I like this advice.
Subredits are amazing. They're perfectly focused on the subject you want to target.
Like it. Simple.
Another one you may want to look is : Be part of social media groups( linkedin, facebook) and be active there by commenting and helping others. Your target audience may relate when you are ready for the launch later.
I agree. This is a good method when done consistently.
By the way, I would appreciate your feedback on a website I created called AnyGo, to compare trip costs: www.anygo.info
Plenty of errors on your website. I like it..."Fly or drive, decide in seconds"
Thanks for the feedback! Anything you recommend doing to improve the website?
indeed. Time taking but works.
It's possible to market your website with no or very low budget. You should spend more effort on Tiktok and create interesting videos regularly. If you're not camera-friendly like me, you can hire influencers to create them. PM me, and I will share the contacts with you.
Here is what I do for my logo maker InstantLogo on Tiktokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@instantlogo_design
Isn't Tiktok locale-specific? If you are not in the US and want to market there, what would you do?
And that's a great quetion
I believe that marketing with no money is possible, but it's not easy.
The first step is to analyze your current situation, and think about what you can do to make your product or service more attractive. As an example, if you're a small business owner with limited resources, you might decide to make it a focus of your marketing efforts to appeal to people who are looking for a more personalized experience. This could mean targeting local customers by hosting events in their area and offering free tastings.
You can also try changing the way you present yourself online. For example, if you have a website but don't yet have an established social media presence, create an Instagram account and start posting pictures regularly. If you already have a Facebook page or Twitter handle, post updates regularly as well!
If these ideas don't appeal to you or don't seem realistic for your business model, try thinking about other ways of reaching out to new customers without spending money on advertising. Perhaps there are some events coming up in town that would be good opportunities for promoting your products—for example, if there are any festivals or fairs coming up soon where local businesses will be selling something similar to what yours offers (maybe even something similar enough that people might be interested in both).
Thank you for the detailed suggestion.
I wrote blog articles about design and built a community around it for almost a year. This helped me to build an audience even before building Peerlist. I got my first 1k users from this audience only!
I checked PeerList, awesome work. I am developing a similar concept as well. Would love to connect and see if there are any synergies. Let me know.
I would love to connect! You can book a meeting from my Peerlist profile itself. 😊
Great strategy and execution. Did you put in SEO from the start?
Yes! We treat SEO as one of the most important feature of Peerlist.
Try outreaching and making unique promos to your founder users. Then you get small money for Ads.
I started with that on my project https://LeadGen.tools
I think social media provided us with a big alternative. Now you can easily join Facebook, Linkedin groups, Reddit subs..etc
Talk to influencers into promoting your products and with time you'll notice the difference
100% this
Partnerships are great. It works.
These are the best steps for the creation of Digital Fortune
Ya, try and try harder. Succes for those who do not return back.
If that's a possibility, make the product open-source (you have always full-control over the license).
That's what I've done with DoTenX (an alternative for Zapier):
https://github.com/dotenx/dotenx
Suitable for SaaS for business or consumer products?
For SaaS it definitely works and there are multiple examples. Sentry and Gitlab are two examples.
Give the product free to podcasters/influencers in your space. Become friends with them. Actually give a damn about them. They'll reciprocate.
Relationships always win.
What if they try to steal it? I have a notion template to sell.
Building an email list is what has worked for me the most so far in terms of consistency and retargeting.
How do you bring people to your subscription box?
Twitter was my primary means of getting new subscribers for free albeit a slow means. I used to have between 1 - 3M Tweet impressions and somewhere between 50k - 90k profile visits monthly. I had the subscribe link on my profile and I would add the subscribe link at the end of some of my tweets that had good engagement.
That's awesome! How many followers you have on Twitter?
About 5k followers.
Thank you!! That helps. Gives me a direction.
If you have your target market identified, a good call might be direct outreach. The "build an audience route" takes a lot of time unless those people are actively searching for solutions to the problem you are tackling. Even then, it takes time.
But if you have a bunch saved from your job, a good call would be to spend money to save time.
I've spent so many hours building stuff that only a few people of my audience wanted, even when many "showed" interest. So, right now I am taking a different approach. Trying to figure out if there are enough interested people that would pre-order a product.
Since the product I am testing is basically a "plugin" for a video editing platform, then I can quickly build what I guess would be an MVP that people can use. And I use that as a lead magnet for the email list but also have a pre-order button on the landing page.
Like the audience-first approach.
F5bot + posting on reddit / HN is usually a pretty good combo.
You should also use as many channels as possible but not focus on all of them at once. For example a twitter page with links to your product can do passive work like linking people to your landing page then collecting their email from a newsletter input.
This HN one is a mystery to me. I'll check out F5bot. Thanks
After early advocates are onboarded, think about how you can build vitality into the product. These can include referral bonuses (you get discount, I get discount) or softer approaches like your company branding on your widget if it’s something public-facing. That only really works after your first n customers though.
Sounds good.
Depends on your project, your market, your business model, your positioning, your skills, and what you have the most fun with. Because marketing takes time, don't invest hours and hours in something that's boring to you.
Overall, the marketing you do should address proactively:
Gut works well for the rest. Good luck!
Thank you!
What blog sites would you recommended posting to? I have just started with Medium and find it quite good, although it would be nice to know if something gave you a bit more benefit for your business.
Medium is good. I do prefer owned blog, write seo done articles to rank on google. Helps a ton long term.
Forums seem to work very well by engaging with potential customers of your product.
By the way, I would appreciate your feedback on a website I created to compare trip costs: www.anygo.info
Great steps especially if you already have a social media following. If you don't, here is a slightly modified approach:
Never thought about a free giveaway. That's a good idea to implement.
By the way, I would appreciate your feedback on a website I created called AnyGo, a platform to compare trip costs: www.anygo.info
This is awesome thanks!