It is a journey that can get quite lonely at times, and requires an indomitable spirit hardened enough to chase the possibility of an idea coming to life despite an array of challenges. The most obvious challenge that almost all entrepreneurs face is a lack of finances in the early stages. The little money that small-businesses begin with is barely enough to cover the start-up’s operational costs.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about chasing Lamborghinis and retiring in your 30s. It is about making the world a better place by creating viable solutions for complex problems. Given the lack of financial resources, start-ups need to get creative in their marketing endeavours.

Compensate for the lack of money with an abundance of consistency on social media

Start-ups don’t usually have dedicated budgets to spend on several marketing channels. However, advertising on social media platforms requires creativity and consistency more than financial affluence. A single Instagram post can be broken down into individual building blocks. The picture and the caption should not be treated like two separate entities. They must be created in tandem with each other — in a way that compliments the brand’s identity and captures its voice in textual as well as visual mediums. Along the same lines, there are certain intricacies to marketing on social media platforms that startup owners need to understand. If you don’t have the money to hire a dedicated marketing staff, you need to educate yourself about how different platforms work. Once you strike a balance between quality and consistency, you can sit back and watch the conversions happen. Furthermore, look into partnering with other influencers and influencer marketing if your company’s resources permit you to do so.

Create a Blog

In a world where new technologies like AI and AG are set to transform digital marketing, blogging is still a viable marketing tool. B2B marketers have been able to generate 67% more leads by using blogs as a marketing tool compared to advertising strategies that don’t use blogs. Another study indicates that marketers who prioritize blogging over other forms of content marketing have a 13 times higher chance of getting ideal ROI compared to those who do not prioritize blogging. Yet again, blogging is a marketing practice that requires time and effort over money and other resources. Along with working on your own blog, you can also take out time to guest blog on popular websites in your niche.

Connect with digital marketing expert

Given the rise in consumption online content, especially videos, many digital experts share latest tips and tricks that can be easily embraced by you. They also take a few questions during live videos. Not only this some digital experts work with you as your mentor to guide on various problems you wish to address in online marketing, social media campaigns and more. This does not necessarily involve monetary terms but a service in exchange of a service is a thing in trend now. So, find a digital marketing guru who you can trust and talk your way out!

Build a Community by Straightening out your brand’s message

As a business, you’re likely to communicate with customers across several channels, both online and offline. You’re likely to run into potential customers at business events. You can be reached out via email, or other contact options detailed on your website’s contact page. You can have hundreds of messages from your loyal customer base on social media platforms. The first and foremost step to building a community for your business is figuring out what it stands for. Have a clear idea of what your business end goal is, and what its target audience is. After that, create an elevator pitch that you can broadcast over online as well as offline channels as and when required. Concise and consistent brand identity will lead to the creation of a community that will last the test of time

Create Videos

Anyone with a modern smartphone or tablet can create a video and upload it to YouTube. So why not harness the power of the technology you have in your pocket? Product demos, behind the scenes tours and how to work brilliantly and other exciting videos are very popular online. You can too publish them to a ready-made audience on YouTube at – you guessed it – zero cost!

Conclusion

Marketing your product or service without sufficient financial resources is a difficult task, but not an impossible one. It would have been a pipe dream a decade ago, but in today’s digital age, it is a possibility as real as the oxygen we breathe. At the end of the day, none of the above ways will necessarily open the flood gates when it comes to new clients. Have realistic expectations as you invest energy, effort and time into building the marketing foundation for your start-up. First, it will provide your team with valuable leads that can help to initial growth. Second, it will prevent you from losing the interest of potential customers, who could be turned off by sloppy or unprofessional marketing messages. Finally, when you can afford a full-time marketing/PR professional, that person can truly focus on bringing your company to the next level. They won’t waste time and money ripping apart and rebuilding what could have been executed correctly in the first place. Entrepreneurship is all about working around constraints, and a sparse marketing budget is nothing but a constraint that needs to be tackled.

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Social Media Campaigns, Digital Campaigns, Creative Ads, Creative Video, PR, Digital Marketing, Technology, Advertising Strategies, B2B marketers, Influencer marketing, Brand Marketing, Product marketing, Online Campaigns

Either way, running online campaigns is one strategy that will hands down increase your website traffic and help to push sales.

Hop onboard with the latest trends

If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to integrated campaigns, one way to start is to run seasonal online campaigns — these work around the main holidays and seasons throughout the year, capitalising on the busy shopping periods.

Furthermore, by understanding and researching the ecommerce trends 2019, you’ll find just how to make your campaigns more effective, target more customers, and increase overall customer satisfaction. For example, mobile shopping is forever growing, so ensure your website is mobile friendly to maximise your sale potentials. Make your emails or social media promotions easy to follow through when someone opens these up on their phone. Combine what you do with when you do it, and you’re sure to give your business a push.

Valentine’s Day

Of course, it depends on what type of business you run that will dictate which way you run with a Valentine’s Day online campaign. According to ecommerce trends 2019, audiences love to be engaged and have the chance to participate with brands easily.

Think of ways to get your followers to share Valentine’s related stories via social media platforms. Perhaps you could tie this into a competition, where the most romantic/cringe-worthy story wins your products or service.
As February is a month surrounded by the love theme, you could run offers which are encouraged to be shared. Why not start by sending loyal customers a Valentines Day discount code, which they can then ‘share the love’ by sending on to those they love. This type of email marketing keeps offers exclusive yet allows customers to feel special while being able to spread the offer.

Easter

As the Easter period is around school holidays and bank holidays, it tends to be a period where people go away. Tailor your Easter campaigns to run just before the actual Easter weekend, perhaps a week before.

Not many companies out there will retail Easter-themed merchandise, but any brand can get involved by embracing an Easter theme. Change the email template to Easter-friendly colours and add Easter-themed designs.

Easter is a key shopping period, so focus on using this time to run your strongest discounts and promotions. Avoid cliché email subject lines on email marketing, switching up cheesy lines for more heart-warming, fun subjects instead.

Halloween

The scary season is a fantastic time to indulge in some of your most creative social media campaigns. It’s all about offering your audiences more treats, less tricks, and some frightful themes fun along the way. If anything, Halloween is a holiday which lets brands have some fun with their audiences, engaging them with shareable videos, memes, online games and competitions.

Lots of people embrace Halloween no matter what their age, dressing up, and getting involved with the theme. Use this as an anchor point for any marketing plans you may have. How can you encourage audiences to share their Halloween activities with you? How can this be incorporated with your brand? It’s worth having a brainstorm of how to successfully do this, and really get those social media stats soaring.

Black Friday

Black Friday signals the start of the holiday season, kickstarting the shopping frenzy. More importantly, it’s a huge opportunity for brands to close off the year with the biggest boost in sales yet.

Most brands jump onto Black Friday and Cyber Monday to slash prices and create some shareable online content, so you’d be falling behind if you didn’t join in. The key is to carefully plan your Black Friday campaign in advance. You need to ensure you launch the biggest discounts at the right time.

Why not look at running a declining discount which can be shared on social media? Your biggest discounts can start at the beginning of the day, and if shoppers aren’t fast enough, the discount declines by the hour.

Tags:
Valentine’s Day Campaigns, Easter Campaigns, Black Friday Campaigns, Halloween Campaigns, Social media campaigns, Email marketing, Digital, Online campaigns

The secret is out, and the ones you expected never to be online, forget about shopping online are out there, ready to surprise you. That’s what #EveryoneOnFlipkart campaign, a series of video ads under the same theme aim to establish. One of the ads features Dolly Mausi, a Bengali lady who shares a laugh with her nieces as she solves the problem of choosing a perfect gift for her relatives using her favourite shopping app (flipkart). Another video showcases the everyday life a watchman and his trysts with online shopping! An interesting video in the series is based on a very real conversation amongst friends about online shopping and how it has impacted the neighbourhood retailers.

Like always, all the videos have taken a light-hearted tone to convey the brand message. The growing popularity of online shopping in emerging cities like Lucknow is the best example of how Flipkart is making inroads into India’s tier II and tier III cities. Watch these series of ads and enjoy.

Don’t forget to give us your take on these.

Rastogiji on Flipkart #EveryoneOnFlipkart

Mausiji on Flipkart #EveryoneOnFlipkart

Constable Sahib on Flipkart #EveryoneOnFlipkart

Watchman Anna on Flipkart #EveryoneOnFlipkart