Action is your friend

LET’S TALK ABOUT ACTION

In the first issue of No Budget Marketing, we talked about three steps you can take to get started with your marketing.

Step Three: “Go Take Action” might be the most important part of that process.

It’s easy to get stuck in a planning stage, never moving forward with anything because we feel we can always make it a little better. But so much can be learned by just doing something.

This issue will focus on examples of taking action because it’s the best way to determine what parts of your marketing work so that you can do more things like it.

-Mike

THIS ISSUE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY…

ZUCK SHOWS HOW IT’S DONE

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg provided a great example of how you don’t need studio-level production for every piece of content.

You can just hit record on a phone and get your message out without a special mic, lighting, or editing. You can just do it.

Once you have your video, you can pull the transcript and leverage AI to create written content with it.

MOVE FASTER, DO MORE WITH REPURPOSING

You can learn a lot by studying what leading content creators do and then borrow that for your own brand. Ross Simmonds is a great person to follow, and I fully agree with what he says below.

One piece of content can be used across multiple platforms, often with little to no changes. This mindset will let you take action and move much faster.

DOING THINGS THAT DON’T SCALE

Have you heard about the concept of doing things that don’t scale? It’s the idea that, as a startup company, the founder sometimes needs to go out and jumpstart things by doing something that might not be scalable.

This could involve knocking on doors (in-person or virtually) to get your first 100 customers. Tyler Denk with beehiiv (the software I use to create this newsletter) recently had a good post about this.

You need to subscribe to his free newsletter to read the full article, and it’s definitely worth signing up for.

In it, Tyler mentions that “sitting on the sidelines is much easier, but these tactics convert your default muscle memory to action.”

The more you lean toward action, the better.

Andrew Yeung, formerly with Google and Meta, recently wrote about the same topic. Doing unscalable things is a great way to take action and get things moving for your business.

QUICK HITS

• Paul Millerd shared a nice example of how you can do no-budget marketing to put your product into people’s hands. He left copies of his book, “The Pathless Path,” on a table in the airport with a sign saying the books were a gift from the author.

• Chris Bakke made a joke on Twitter about investing in a delivery driver, but the flyer he shared in the post is actually a great example of no-budget marketing. A delivery person named Tony hung an old-school flyer on a utility pole, promoting his delivery business as a much less expensive option than Uber Eats and DoorDash. The flyer includes a QR code, bridging the old-school tactic with the smartphone era.

• Bart Szaniewski, who co-founded the DadGang brand of hats, recently posted about how some founders and business owners spend too much time on their organic social media posts. “Just post and keep going about your day,” writes Bart. His post is a great lesson on leaning toward action and not overthinking.