4 Cost-Effective Marketing Tactics for B2B Bootstrapped Startups

In this article, you’ll learn:

Starting a business with limited resources is both exciting and challenging. On the one hand, it’s exciting because you’ve overcome significant hurdles to launch your dream business. On the other hand, it’s challenging because as a bootstrapped business, you may not have sufficient resources to market your brand.

As established brands in your industry flaunt their well-executed marketing campaigns, you could be left wondering if you have what it takes to penetrate the market.

Worry not because with some strategic thinking and creativity you can still run effective marketing campaigns that will help you grow your startup. In this article, we will discuss 4 cost-effective marketing tactics that any B2B bootstrapped startup can leverage.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is an affordable marketing tactic for established brands and B2B bootstrapped startups alike.

Not only does it help you establish your brand as a thought leader, but can also help with B2B sales lead generation. By creating gated content like ebooks and whitepapers you can effectively capture leads through your website using forms.

However, you need to create content at scale that addresses the needs of your target users to succeed with content marketing. This is why B2B marketers invest time and resources in creating quality content.

According to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing has become more important for 71% of B2B marketers, compared to the previous year.

This means the B2B content marketing space is becoming more competitive and you’ll need high-quality content to stand out.

But what kind of content is this?

It can be anything from blog posts on topics that matter to your audience, to video tutorials showing your clients how to use your product or any other relevant content. You can even start a podcast to discuss important issues in your industry.

A good example of a B2B brand that found success with content marketing is Semrush. The brand has a blog that covers topics like SEO, SEM, and digital marketing. Semrush also collaborates with industry leaders to research key issues and publish original research.

This strategy works for Semrush because the brand demonstrates the value of its product to potential customers through examples in its educational content.

Similarly, if you’re a tax consultant, for instance, you could create content around tax season and planning to help your audience understand what needs to be done to remain compliant with the IRS.

Social media platforms provide a great avenue to market your brand. It costs nothing to publish posts on various platforms and promote your services. Alternatively, you can invest a few dollars in ad campaigns to reach a highly targeted audience.

However, as tempting as it might be to rely on paid ads to connect with potential customers, an effective social media strategy requires a long-term approach aimed at building a thriving community of passionate brand advocates.

Thus, you will need to focus on creating diverse content that appeals to your followers. For instance, enhancing your social media strategy with videos, images, and infographics should drive engagement since social media users prefer visual content.

Luckily, you can enlist AI-text video-generators to create affordable marketing videos. Such tools transform your written ideas into engaging videos, without requiring any technical skills. It's more cost-effective than hiring an external video content production team.

Now, let’s discuss two budget-friendly tips for effective social media marketing for bootstrapped B2B startups.

Engage Your Followers

Interact with users when they respond to your social media posts to build a connection with your audience. Apart from increasing your engagement rate, it can help your social media posts to reach a wider audience.

Moz uses this tactic to great effect, as shown in the screenshot below. This has helped the brand build a strong sense of community and improve its online presence.

Moz brand engages with followers on LinkedIn. Source

User-generated content is another powerful cost-effective marketing tactic for B2B bootstrapped startups. Customers trust the opinions of other shoppers more than brand recommendations.

This makes sharing UGC content on your social media pages an effective way to grow your brand. You can share a testimonial video or a regular testimonial post of a customer who has enjoyed your product, like Buffer does on its Instagram page.

You could also create a brand ambassador program and feature your ambassadors in social media posts to get further exposure.

3. Referral Marketing

Still, on the theme of customer trust, referral marketing is another cost-effective marketing tactic that relies on customer recommendations to drive sales.

According to this strategy, customers promote brand products to others for an incentive. For every successful referral, both the customer and the new customer get rewards, which can range from freebies and discounts to cash incentives.

What makes this strategy one of the cost-effective marketing tactics for B2B bootstrapped startups is its foolproof nature. Unlike other marketing tactics that require you to pay before you see the results, referral marketing only pays for a successful outcome.

To implement this strategy, you’ll need software that allows you to track your referrals and offer the right incentives. Attrock has a comprehensive list of the best referral marketing software that any bootstrapped startup can use.

Tip: Make sure you choose a platform that offers gamification features and multiple incentive options to create engaging referral programs.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines remain top destination for potential customers who want to learn more about a product before making a purchase. When these people perform a search, Google and other search engines display the most relevant content to them.

More often than not, a person will click only the top search results. A recent study found that the top 3 search results receive 68.7% of the clicks.

As a bootstrapped startup, you need your website to appear in the top search results for keywords related to your business. A high search ranking will help you drive organic traffic to your website. To do this, you’ll have to optimize your website for search engines. SEO is affordable and can provide a significant ROI when executed effectively.

That said, here’s everything you need to know about SaaS SEO:

Find relevant keywords: Find the keywords your target customers are searching for online. Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Moz, and Ahrefs to find relevant keywords and add those to your web content.
Work on your technical SEO: SEO is not just about keywords. Your website also needs to provide a great user experience for it to rank high on SERPs. This includes optimizing site navigation, page load speed, and more.
Build backlinks: Backlinks are an important part of SEO because they signal to search engines that your website has valuable content. Build backlinks through guest posting and linkable assets like infographics.

Conclusion

Running a business with limited resources is challenging but not impossible. With some creativity, you can still promote your brand to the right potential clients and achieve significant growth.

highlighted the cost-effective marketing tactics for B2B startups that are known to deliver results. Use a mix of these and implement them effectively to drive sustainable growth. Good luck!