No budget? No problem. Do this

This week, I’m giving you my #1 tip on how to boost your marketing campaign’s visibility, engagement and leads massively, with no budget required…

Low Budget, No Followers? Do This!

🐷 Piggyback off other people’s following 🐷

Startups naturally struggle with marketing because they have little brand awareness and budget.

If you’ve got hardly any social media followers, email newsletter subscribers, contacts and little budget to boost it with ads, your campaign is in danger of failing.

If this is the case for you (or even if it’s not), I strongly advise that you find someone to co-host or co-sponsor your campaign.

Doing this will allow you to piggyback off their large number of followers and will give your campaign some added prestige.

So who is the ideal candidate?

You’re either looking for an individual or a company. Individuals are perfect for workshops and webinars. Companies are more fitting for eBook and scorecard campaigns.

What to look out for

• They must be within your niche or targeting the same people as you.
• They need to have a large number of followers. Check on LinkedIn.
• Ideally, they will have a large email newsletter list. You’d have to ask them to find this out.
• They must be willing to promote the campaign to their audience, not just co-host/sponsor it.

Where to find them

Book a meeting to discuss this with your team. Your perfect campaign partner is right under someone’s nose. Usually, the founder/s of the business will have good connections in the industry.

Ex-employer

Most founders will have previously worked for a big player in the space. This is a great place to start (providing they’re not a competitor). Look for the most well-connected person within the company.

Partner/supplier

If you use a partner or supplier to deliver some of your services, they could be great candidates.

Friend

It’s a small world. You probably have a friend, or friend-of-a-friend, who knows a well-connected person within your space.

LinkedIn connection

If you’re struggling to find someone, check out your LinkedIn feed. Look for one of your connections with a high engagement on their content. You may not have a personal relationship with this person, so you need to nurture one. Start liking and commenting on all their posts and send a few friendly DMs. After a few weeks of relationship building, ask them if they’d be interested in collaborating on a campaign.

How to co-promote the campaign to benefit you

It’s important that the landing page for the campaign is hosted on your website, not theirs, so the leads belong to you.

As the campaign was your idea, it’s only fair, right?

It’s critical that your partner promotes and distributes your campaign to their network. Remember, that’s the whole reason why we’re doing this.

Book a meeting with the partner to discuss campaign distribution. Agenda:

• Social media
• Website popup/banner
• Email newsletters
• Ads (Caution, this might be too cheeky to ask)

Make it easy for them to promote your campaign

Offer to do the hard work for them. Design the social media graphics, website popup and banner for them. Do the copywriting for the email newsletter.

Imagine your campaign being promoted to tens of thousands of people… for free. Having the right partnership unlocks this possibility for startups.

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By Ryan James

Founder @ Rocket SaaS