Unicorn Dreams on a Tuna Fish Budget
Five lesser-known growth marketing strategies for today’s resource-strapped startups and small businesses
Honestly, who doesn’t dream of meteoric success?
For many entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses, dreaming about a big payday (or changing the world) is the only thing that makes all the long hours of hard work seem worthwhile. No matter how you define success, one thing is certain — it rarely comes easy. This is especially true for today’s resource-strapped companies desperately needing more business, but uncertain how to get it. Unfortunately, for such companies, real business growth often remains as elusive as the mythical “tunacorn.”
This free cheat sheet via Virtù b2b offers some uncommon growth marketing tips for companies with little to no budget.
For the past couple of months, I’ve been connecting with all sorts of entrepreneurs, small business owners, and consultants. Consistently, what I have heard from everyone is “things are a mess right now.” Many have also been remarkably candid about the growth challenges they are facing. While this is unsettling, we’ve all nonetheless reached the same conclusion: it’s time to get more creative about growth marketing.
To that end, here are five DIY growth marketing ideas to get you started.
1. Advisors
One of the things I’ve learned is just how valuable a few good industry advisors and mentors can be. Aside from lending their insider insight and expertise, an advisory board comprised of industry professionals can help you make extremely valuable business development connections. Often they will introduce you to colleagues in their network who can help you bypass the normal vendor queue, bringing you some quick wins.
When I advise clients on putting together advisory boards, I always suggest starting with people who you know. Reach out to your family, friends, and business network. Ask for their help. Write something like, “I’m putting together an advisory board for my company. Do you know anyone who works in the [industry] I could speak with?”
You’d be surprised at the number of people who want to help you.
2. Partnerships
Like advisors, co-marketing partners can be a great way to generate new business opportunities and revenue streams. Unlike normal sales and channel partnerships that often require complex legal and remuneration agreements, straight-forward marketing partnerships, such as co-branded webinars, publications, and other collaborative efforts can yield big results.
The trick is to pick business partners that are aligned, but non-competing. Think about Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins both selling to the same audience, from the same store, without directly competing.
Finding eager marketing partners and/or resellers is a win-win.
3. Credibility
Branding is often used synonymously to mean the corporate logo, web site, and tag line. For business-to-business (B2B) brands, nothing could be further from the truth. Branding is a much more expansive concept that encompasses how customers see your business and the associations, positive or negative, they have with it. For example, Volvo is widely considered to make the safest cars. Whether they do or not, that is their brand.
For startups that have little to no brand recognition, affiliating yourself with recognized brands boosts credibility. This can be as easy as citing respected publications like The New York Times or Harvard Business Review in your corporate marketing and blogs.
This is a no-cost way of building your credibility and brand.
4. Pricing
Ordinarily, advising people to reconsider their pricing is counter-intuitive. Furthermore, the idea of working for free is completely antithetical to business. That said, these are anything but ordinary times. Right now, traction, particularly for young companies, is more important than immediate revenue. If you truly believe that you have a great solution and you know who you want to buy it, let them use it for free.
Trust me, if they see the value, they will find the money to buy it. Remember, many of their budgets are frozen, but when they are unfrozen they’ll remember you.
If you’re unwilling to discount your pricing, consider offering a special pilot program for eligible customers as a limited-time promotion.
5. Shift
Experts agree, real growth marketing is all about problem-solving. Seen from that perspective, growth marketing skills should be in high demand right now. For example, businesses that shift the focus of their growth efforts from new customer acquisition to building and nurturing a more robust pipeline can change the narrative.
Not only that, in doing so, they will be better prepared to meet the inevitable pent up demand when the crisis finally abates.
Therefore, my final piece of advice is “shift.” Even if 2020 is unlikely to be a big growth year in terms of new customers, it can still be a great year for growth year in countless other ways.
As I always have to remind myself, “without conflict, there is no change and without change, there is no growth.” If you’d like to talk about your growth challenges, feel free to book a Zoom Coffee with me. I’d love to chat.
Sean Smith is Founder and Chief Iconoclast at Virtù b2b (V2b), which published an earlier version of this article.
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