Bootstrap Entrepreneurs

[bizentrepreneur]

I am working on a new start up and have a small to medium sized budget. The discussions I've had with various marketing companies have all told me that it is difficult to promote a site through PPC and SEO on a small budget, so I'm looking at other forms of marketing such as generating PR.

I'd love to hear from others that have worked with small budgets and been successful at marketing a website.

I'd like to know what works and what doesn't work.

Thanks

[ravi]

from experience you pay for what you get marketing wise - you might get lucky and try something which goes Viral in which case you are laughing from a ROI point of view. So...

1. Guerrilla Marketing is worth trying as it can achieve great results on a low budget but you need to really need a clever idea.

2. Do get a press release done and distributed, probably around £300-£400 to write and double that for initial distribution attack - although there are cheaper online alternatives here.

Good Luck!

[bizentrepreneur]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm working on a guerilla marketing campaign and press release at the moment. I'm learning about SEO at the moment. I engaged a marketing consultant through Elance.com who is producing a strategy. I will be launching a marketing campaign in a few weeks.

[Tara Kelly]

How is that going for you so far? Any ups or down you can share yet?

[bizentrepreneur]

At the moment I'm having changes done to the site. Once that is complete it will be full steam ahead with the marketing campaign.

[paul bilan]

From my experience SEO can be pretty expensive and time consuming (6 months+) depending on your market space and the keywords you wish to use. A cheaper and more effective way to get ranked higer is to get lots of sites to link to your site for free, this could by marketing your USP i.e. press releases, reviews et al

Have you looked into banners, affiliate programs, blogging et al...

[Daniel Burge]

Hello,

From my point of view it depends entirely on what it is you are marketing. I'm not a trained marketer myself, but just have a lot of practical knowledge through experience.

I agree that you can do some of the search engine marketing on your own to get started. I think one great way to advertise on a budget is to just get involved in online communities and participate. Within the rules of the forum you can post tag lines on your messages which accumulate over time. I work with one site for which this is the only form of marketing and it is achieving good results.

Good luck and stick to it!

Daniel

[bizentrepreneur]

I'm working on promoting it through forums as well. At the moment I'm getting ready for a big launch and am also making some changes to my website. Hopefully launching in the next few weeks.

[Darren Stuart]

/* Warning I have no experience to comment on such subjects */

I think if the product is one that fixes a problem that people are going to be searching for then SEO and PPC will work and the cost should be cheap if you are in a market with not much competion. IE I am looking for a Square Widget and you sell Square Wdgets. If the product is more of a social product then the traditional methods of advertising might work if you can get it in front of the right Audience IE Sqaure Widgets Subscribers Magazine or Square Widgets Annual Meetup. I am not convinced of Viral campaigns unless you have enough people to get that Viral in front of already to spead it, it could be a waste of money,

The blogger market would be a good place to get some free marketing. You could just take the easy route buy Micheal Arrington a Monkey :p