5 tips on how to market your startup

Most entrepreneurs dream of coming up with an idea and turning it into a successful company worth a couple of millions of dollars but this requires time and considerable investment. Most startups do not receive any funding from venture investors or business angels and in most cases, the money comes from either friend, or from their own savings. Since the initial cash flow is very limited, you should really allocate your budget properly in order for each dollar to work for you.

In this article, we offer you some tips on how to market your startup when you are on a tight budget.

1. Research the market

Before you start spending any money, you should check with your potential customers about whether they are interested in your product. You need to ask them how they will use your product, what features they would like to see and how much they are willing to pay for it. This will help evaluate your business model and determine the time and money you are going to need to spend for building up a company.

2. Start with a small team

A big team is likely to require a lot of money to support, which is a problem if you are just starting out. Therefore, you should hire only those people, for example, e-commerce developers, that you really need at the moment until your income exceeds your expenditures. If it is necessary, give current members of the team some additional job responsibilities and offer an incentive stock option instead of cash.

3. Efficiency

To run a successful startup, you need to be as efficient as possible. You can do small and inexpensive marketing testing until you achieve better results. When developing a website, first add the most important functions in order to launch the product on the market, but also take into account additional opportunities to minimize your further work.

4. Interns

Having some interns in your startup is a win-win. The thing is that an intern will receive some valuable experience of working in a startup, and you in turn will have someone working for small money. If your team is small, the trainee can have more influence than they would in a large company, and thus they can be involved in many aspects of the business.

Thus, trainees will provide your startup with a free or inexpensive workforce, which will lead to a quick profit.

5. Marketing

Hiring a PR company to promote your product can be a very expensive thing, and there is no guarantee that having your advertisements placed in various magazines and blogs proves to be effective. Thus, we recommend you try outsourcing your press releases but contact the journalists personally. Find stories and publications relevant to your project, and come up with your own simple story.

Summing up, we hope you find our article useful. In addition, we would also like to encourage you to learn about PPC campaign management that is also might be useful thing to market your startup.