My marketing budget is $0—where do I start?
The team at Evocati has navigated and excelled at marketing for more than a decade. The most common challenge we hear in the military-connected community is how to start marketing your service on a shoestring budget. The first thing to understand is that, in a few simple and budget-friendly steps, you can create a marketing campaign that amplifies your business or nonprofit. The next thing to understand is where to start so you can avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Here are three areas to start when you sit down and begin to craft your marketing strategy and content.
ID One Marketing Platform That Will Yield Results
The most common mistake we see newly-established companies make is to immediately create a presence on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, while also starting a podcast. This is not ideal, unless you are adequately staffed to post unique content five+ times per week on each platform, manage comments, and track performance. If you are not prepared to do all three, then you will inevitably lose interest in growing your audience on one or more of those platforms. Be strategic. Consider your customer persona(s) and identify the platform they use the most. That is where you start. At Evocati, we deliberately chose to focus our marketing to prospective clients on LinkedIn as the ideal location to attract them and contribute value to the community. Use a marketing channel well or not at all.
ID How You Will Contribute and Add Value
This may sound counterintuitive, but you should understand what you want to say and how you want to say it before publishing content. We typically see nonprofit organizations delegate marketing responsibilities to one person who is already wearing multiple hats. There’s often no marketing strategy, as well. To overcome these barriers, take an inventory of (1) how much time per week you can spend on marketing efforts (2) any digital assets (photos, factsheets, etc.) you have, and (3) a content and editorial calendar. To help you start we’re offering this free template content calendar to get you on the right track. Our template starts with a content overview that includes national holidays. Add your company’s events! The next sheet is a template for creating your editorial content by status, social network, content type, and more. Use this template to map out the stories you will tell and how you will contribute to the conversation in your industry. To make posting on social media even easier, consider using a free content scheduling tool, like Buffer or Later, to publish your content automatically.
ID the Tools and Talent at Your Disposal
There are a variety of tools at your disposal to help with graphic design and photography. We recommend starting with Canva.com which offers a wealth of marketing templates, photos, and free tutorials. Always use the highest quality photo in your marketing products. There are several locations you can find royalty-free photos, free stock photos, and free military and veteran-themed photos including:
Finally, you are under no obligation to do this alone! In fact, there are thousands of college students seeking internship opportunities in communication and marketing. Consider reaching out to your local college or university with an internship opportunity, or better yet, use the power of LinkedIn to post internship opportunities on your company page (you should have a company page) and search for candidates.
While we advocate for paying interns, we recognize that may not be possible. Consider alternatives like scholarships, school credit, networking opportunities, or free skills training. Finally, we highly recommend your internship roles be remote to provide flexibility and increase the number of well-qualified prospective candidates.
Trust us when we say marketing with no budget can be done, because we’ve been there and found success. We want to hear from you: what tips do you have for marketing on a small budget or free marketing tools you use that you can’t live without?
