People often think that marketing is a difficult and expensive process, but this is not necessarily the case. In fact, there are many ways to get users for your startup without spending any money at all! This article will talk about 9 free strategies for getting users for your startup.
1. SEO Content
This is a long-term game. It will take months to start seeing the first results, but you will see results, and probably more than you think!
Get started writing a company blog, write articles that might interest your customer persona, and find ways to turn them into leads from your blog.
Write one or a few articles every week, based on your budget, and don’t ever stop until you see results. I guarantee that the results will come but you must not stop.
This will eventually create a lot of traffic to your blog which your can leverage to get users for your startup.
2. Social Media
Do I even need to explain? Social media is the new “finding customers in the city square”. Be on social media, have a constant presence, make sure anyone who searches you there can find you. Don’t just be there and make posts from time to time, try to become part of communities, interact with other users, in particular those who fit your customer persona. Don’t just talk, make sure you also listen.
This is also a long-term game, although you could see results a bit faster than with Search Engines.
3. Direct Email marketing
Got a list of targeted emails? If so just go at it!
Don’t have one? Can you get one?
For example, for Usophy I found out that universities give out Uni email addresses to their students. In many universities, these emails are generated progressively, so it’s really easy to generate a list of all student emails in that university. Just like that, we had more than 50k emails to do a cold introduction to!
4. Do guest blogging.
Guest Blogging is writing on someone else’s blog in exchange for a link to your own blog inside the post. This is great for two reasons:
- get users for your startup from the other blog’s audience
- it will give your blog a boost in domain rank meaning it will rank higher in search results
If you do this a lot, you’ll see great results.
5. Build a reputation online.
Start by participating in communities related to your product. Talk, listen, and answer questions with what you know or don’t know but always be honest.
This way people will start recognizing your name and trust you more from the get-go which is very important for when they eventually do need help with something that’s relevant to what you sell.
Quora is a good place to start doing this, as well as StackExchange.
6. Post your product on Product Hunt
If your product is interesting to a broad audience product hunt might be a good place to publish it to get a momentary traffic spike and get some quick users for your startup.
7. Post your content to aggregator sites
For example post your blog articles on Reddit, in subreddits that will genuinely enjoy the content!
Be careful not to spam though! People don’t like that! Only post stuff that is relevant and actually useful.
8. Research the competition
What are they doing? Is there something you’ve overlooked? This is very important!
9. Attend conferences!
Meet actual people, let them see your true self, the human being(s) behind your product, they will be more likely to stick around!
If you manage to get a speaking engagement for yourself even better! You’ll position yourself as an expert automatically!
Conclusion
This is what comes to my mind for free and sustainable ways to get users for your startup! Do you know more? Let me know in the comments!
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