If you had no marketing budget, how would you drive brand awareness and leads?

Create a ton of content?

Look for speaking opportunities?

How about guerrilla marketing at conferences?

It’s a conundrum that I encounter with prospects and clients. They’re excited about marketing but have little or no money to actually do it.

It’s like wanting to throw a party, but not having the money to buy drinks and food.

Here’s a few no-money/low-money approaches:

#1
Use your data or conduct original research to tell a different, interesting or new story.

With AI-generated content overflowing, you can stand out with creativity, good storytelling and data analysis.

This was a strategy that I successfully deployed while heading up marketing for Sysomos, a social media monitoring company. We used data, mostly around Twitter usage, to create mini-reports that attracted a lot of attention from reporters and bloggers.

#2
Focus on positioning and differentiation. Your product looks and feels the same as competitors so it’s hard to win by talking and walking the same way.

Instead, rally around what’s makes you different, better or unique. It doesn’t have to be a major difference but something the competition doesn’t or can’t offer.

In my opinion, positioning is one of the most under-rated marketing and sales tools. Many companies operate with uninspiring and generic positioning that fails to attract or engage prospects.

This includes companies with great product who mistakenly buy into the belief that “if you build it, they will come.” Sadly, there’s too much competition for this belief to power a business forward.

# 3
Be as helpful as possible and generous with your time, whether it’s content, comments, answering questions, making connections or jumping on calls.

This matters because trust is a crucial part of the marketing and sales mix. Prospects need to believe that what you’re offering is true, accurate, and designed to make them successful.

#4
Create content that positions your brand as a thought leader who has opinions, advice, and guidance. In my experience, the most powerful content is prescriptive, helpful and focused on making you successful.

Show and teach prospects do business better, and do it with no strings attached or blatant sales. Let your content be a powerful call-to-action.

#5
Delight customers from the beginning of the relationship and treat everyone as a VIP. Happy customers are your best and most powerful marketing assets.

The happiness journey needs to start as soon as they your product or service. It’s simple things like an enthusiastic email that thanks them for their business and, as important, quickly tells them how they can start to get value from your product.

Marketing without a budget is hard, but it’s not impossible. Be creative, take risks and willing to zig when others zag.

As a fractional CMO and strategic advisor, I’ve worked with clients that have different size of marketing budgets. A core pillar of my approach is being laser-focused on your prospects and customers.

When you understand what they do and how they feel, marketing becomes a lot easier.