Marketing is crucial for all businesses and plays an important role in starting up a new business. One of the biggest challenge startups face is letting their customer know about their service or product. If you own a startup, chances are you don’t have a big marketing budget as marketing can be pretty expensive.

The good news is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to spread the word about your new business. Marketing ideas are often inexpensive and simple. However, you’ll have to think outside the box and create something out of the blue.

The key to being successful in marketing is building a reputation for being great at whatever your product or brand offers. Being an unknown and new startup with no previous record, you need to earn your customers’ trust. So, what can you do?

Get featured in a big publication is a great place to start since it gives you a direct line with big brands and businesses. Start by building relationships with those through social media by sharing their posts and engage with their content.

Getting featured in a publication with major reach can give you a big boost in terms of traffic to your website and product sales. Do some research and find a strategic partner that will give your brand exposure as well as build your reputation.

Obviously, social media has become a great marketing and selling channel. The majority of people use social channels for product discovery and product research. That’s why startups can’t really afford to neglect social media marketing. But you need to find the networks that are relevant to you instead of wasting resources for marketing everywhere.

It’s important that you leverage methods that are working best on your chosen networks. Connecting your brand to a social cause could be what makes potential customers turn to you instead of the competition. Furthermore, most social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, allow business owners to pay for traffic and exposure. With Facebook Ads, for example, you can create ads that appear in user’s news feeds or in the right column of the Facebook website.

It takes more than just a profile to succeed with social media marketing. You must post engaging, relevant content that gives users a reason to follow your account. And once you have attracted a fair share of followers, you should encourage them to stay by liking and responding to their questions and comments. Besides, social media also allows you to tell your story as it pleases your audience.

Email marketing is an essential strategy for attracting customers to your startup for little or no cost. The truth is that the right email sent to the right person is marketing gold. Once you have a prospect or customer’s email address, you can send him or her emails to promote your startup.

To use this marketing strategy to its full potential, you first need to collect prospective clients’ email addresses. If your startup has a website, consider placing one (or more) newsletter signup form on it.

Alternatively, you can ask customers directly for their email addresses. The key thing to remember is that you must diversify your emails with non-commercial content like guides, how-to articles, videos and infographics. To be even more successful at this strategy, you can do some research about the type of people who are likely to share your product or service.

Content marketing uses search engine optimisation to increase your rank in search results. Your marketing plan should include what types of content you will create. Whether it’s an article or video, your business content will also help you establish your brand’s voice. So your readers, who may become potential customers, can understand how your business can help address their needs.

Startups that post blog posts frequently tend to develop an audience much quicker. Most startups rarely upload content on their website. To top that, they don’t even update it regularly. It is important to get your blog indexed by search engines such as Google and Bing. Make sure you set up the privacy settings of your blog to make it visible on search engines.

Blogging is a very powerful strategy that can help your startup generate the exposure it needs. With a blog, you can position your startup as a leading source while also attracting organic search traffic to your site. The secret to creating an effective business blog is to publish content that your audience wants to read. If the blog article is valuable and is worth reading, the search engines will reward your hard work. They will do so by ranking your blog at the top of the search results. And when your blog ranks high, it will attract more visitors thus meaning more people will learn about your startup.

You can also make sure that your blog is loading fast enough by hosting it on a server that is close to your audience and is very fast. For example, if you are in Australia, you can check 28msec which has reviewed the top Australian web hosting services and can choose the right one for your website.

Word of mouth marketing is a tried-and-true method of marketing. It’s an unpaid form of promotion where your satisfied customers tell others about your business and what they like about it. It’s credible, it’s free and it works. You can add a referral programme to your marketing plan. With this type of word-of-mouth marketing, you create incentives for people to refer others to your business. Whether you offer a special discount or gift card, referral marketing can help grow your business brand.

Marketing is the lifeblood of every business. It becomes even more challenging if you don’t have a natural talent for selling your company. These tips will give you the assurance to approach marketing in a logical way. With time, you can try to become a pro at it. All of these marketing approaches can help you achieve organisational goals depending on if you understand the needs and wants of your target market while delivering quality products people prefer.

Creating a killer marketing plan doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. All that is required is your time, effort and creativity. Focus on providing unique solutions. By being creative with your service, you will soon find your target customers opening up their wallets for you. Always remember that ideas for marketing campaigns, especially when it comes to startups, should aim at inviting, encouraging, and rewarding customers for engaging with your business.