How to Generate Marketing Buzz On a Tight Budget
Here on the EL Passion blog, we regularly stress the importance of generating a marketing buzz around your product. In previous articles we have said that you should be marketing your product both before and after its release. We’ve also said that you should contact as many blogs and news publications as you can.
But this may seem like an impossible task if you are a small startup or if your company just doesn’t have the funds to hire a PR team. For that reason we’ve put together this guide for creating a marketing buzz on a budget.
1. Be a Forbidden Fruit
When you’re trying to get people to use your product, it may seem unusual to limit its availability to a selected few. However, one effective way of generating marketing buzz is to make your product ‘invitation only’.
Google has used this method many times before. Gmail initially launched in 2004 as an invitation-only beta (it was available to the public in 2007). They also tried it with their Google Glass wearable. Social media sites Pinterest and Ello both used invitations. Even smartphone startup OnePlus made their OnePlus One phone invitation-only for the first year.
In each of these cases, an enormous amount of marketing buzz was whipped up around these products. Critics were eager to review them (as so few people would have gotten to test them). Potential customers desperately wanted to find out more. The invitation-only releases also allowed the companies behind the products to limit the release and work on fixes and improvements in the meantime.
2. Create a Waiting List
Yet, the risk with making your product invitation-only is that not everyone likes begging for invites. After the initial marketing buzz wears off, they may forget to check back in. That’s why it’s also a good idea to use a waiting list.
With a waiting list, you have a tangible idea of how many people want to use your product. This can help you figure out what sort of resources you need to put towards your product in the future. If you’re trying to raise funds, it can also give you something to show to investors. Additionally, just like the invitation-only system, waiting lists allow you to let as many people in as you would like. So before you let more people through the door, you can work on user-suggested improvements and bugs.
If you do decide to choose a waiting list system (or indeed a invitation-only one) you should be wary of the backlash. Popular email app Mailbox incited rage several years ago when users could download the app but it if they were waiting in line, it wouldn’t give them a mailbox. Instead, it would just show them their place in line. What would have been a smart idea is if Mailbox’s developers had have offered those in line something to use in the meantime. Even if it was only a barebones MVP.
3. Get Your Friends Involved
When you’re creating a marketing buzz with little money, you have to use every single other resource that you can. Including your friends and family. If your friends, your friends’ friends and each and everyone of your family members gets involved with sharing information about your product, you can quickly whip up some free marketing buzz.
To get them involved you should just ask them to post about it on Facebook or Twitter (or any other social media site that they’re on) and spread the word. What you shouldn’t encourage is reviews and things of that nature. That would go from ‘free marketing’ to ‘biased and false promotion’ which is never a good look.
You could even offer benefits to other users for sharing it with their friends and family, perhaps giving them a discount if they do.
4. Be Personal
This last piece of marketing buzz help is actually about the tone of your marketing, but it can still be just as effective.
When you put together blog posts or tweets or press releases, you should be sure to be personal rather than overly promotional. If you have a great story about quitting your job to make your dream come true, or a story about how many people your product is helping, you should share it with the world.
Oftentimes, even if a product is good, it takes that extra little human element to help people buy it. By being personal, you can not only pull on their heartstrings. You can help people realise how the product will fit into their lives too.
Check out the human element of EL Passion.
