Cost Effective Marketing for Start Ups

The  most cost effective marketing strategy for a start up is what is commonly called ‘Word of Mouth Marketing’ whose best results are seen in Multi Level Marketing companies. The basic principle is that if you can interest your close friends and family in your product, those will in turn sell it for you for free to their friends and other family members, and the word will generally start to go around.

For example, if you are starting up on a cup-cake business, we all know cup cakes and they are basically almost all copy paste versions of each other. However, you may try to do something slightly different and give a few of these to you friends and family to taste. Then, ask them to give you their honest feedback on the product, and for referrals.

Always listen carefully to that feedback. Profitable business is never about what you want to do, but about what clients are ready to pay for. Always keep that in mind. You may want to do cup-cakes with a dash of cinnamon, but find that clients prefer a dash of chocolate better. Just go with the chocolate. In fact, it is a good idea to do several samples to test what moves the fastest. Then focus on your successes.

Referrals, referrals, referrals!

Follow up, follow up, follow up!

Those are the two basic steps (to put it in very simple terms) that will get your work out there.

Referrals are asking your friends to tell you of anyone they can think of that might be interested in purchasing your cakes. You need to have thought through who your potential clients are so that you can lead them along. For instance, if one of your possible outlets is schools, then ask your friends if they have a contact person in the nearby school who can give you whatever permissions are needed to sell the cup cakes in that school. Often, you will find you will quickly have more contacts of potential clients that you can handle. That is why you must have worked on your business plan in advance, so that the possibilities do not derail your business intentions. 

That is where follow-up comes in. Make it your personal assignment to look through your list of referrals and follow up on those contacts. Your dream will find its way to your best market one contact at a time, so do not ignore a contact just because you thought the idea sounded ‘too simple’ or ‘mundane’.

A significant number of people who have succeeded will tell you they hit gold when following a seemingly simple looking lead.

The key word is this, do those activities that will start to make you money as soon as possible, before you start to launch on the activities that cost you money. If you can keep your costs low and your income increasing progressively, before long, you will have a successful business that can grow to the next level.