The problem here is now you’re strapped for cash, and competing with brands who have endless money for a marketing budget. So, how do you gain the customer’s attention? How do you put your product or business in front of as many eyes possible? How do you gain the attention of your desired audience? How can you incorporate bootstrap marketing into your business? Try these five ways, and let us know how they work for you.
1. Engage with your followers
Social media is an unbelievable bootstrap marketing tool. It is a free and easy way for brands to interact with potential, current, and future customers. You can easily automate the entire process with a social management tool, or you can do it on your own (although, not smart time-management). Make your followers feel important. Let them know they are valuable members of your brand. Remember, a single voice can disrupt 6; a single tweet can disrupt 600.
2. Content is key
If your brand isn’t pushing out content on a daily basis, how do you expect consumers to find your website, or once they find it, how are they going to find out what you’re all about and what you do? Push out “How to” articles, create videos from within your organization, etc. Give people a reason to come to your site. Give people a reason to start talking.
3. Be consistent during bootstrap marketing
Referring back to social media and pushing content, make sure you are posting on a regular basis. Whether that be creating a calendar for your content, or setting an alarm to make sure that your content goes out, make a uniformed, consistent model to your posts. Quick tip — The optimal number of posts on Facebook is between 5–10 times a week, and Twitter is 5 tweets a day. Content should be 3–5 times per week. It all about getting your name and brand out there, the more content that is pushed, the more eyes it will reach. Bootstrap marketing can be easily achieved through consistency.
4. It’s all about the customer
When people come to your site, blog, or social media pages, do they feel welcome? Are they greeted? Are they given a call to action from the get-go? Provide value to your visitors. Share information on your site and social media, which interests and engages people. People don’t stick around for boring shows. Give them something interesting and have them coming back for more.
5. Experiment with small investments into platforms
Experiment with various social media advertising opportunities to find out which one have the best ROI. We recommend playing around with a vanity URL (for branding purposes) and try out pay-to-play on Facebook, sponsored tweets on Twitter, and LinkedIn’s premium services. If you’re going to pay, might as well brand it in the process. Find out what works for you, and then take full advantage of it.
These are all very effective ways in which your brand can incorporate bootstrap marketing. Using social media and a blog to their full potential, will definitely prove advantageous.
This article was written by Nikhil Sharma from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
Source from : http://www.monster.com/news/business/5-marketing-tips-for-bootstrapped-entrepreneurs-3e9d60?nichecat=marketing-careers