Getting started

Hey! How are you?

This being the very first issue of the No Budget Marketing newsletter, we’re going to focus on how to get going if you have marketing to do, but no cash to spend. It’s all about getting started!

But first, thank you! I really appreciate that you’ve subscribed and I look forward to your feedback, which can help shape this newsletter as it grows. If you want to send me your thoughts on anything, you can find me on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and TikTok or just reply to this email.

A little about me and my marketing experience

I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years, working across multiple industries, including healthcare, associations, restaurants, education, the performing arts, and technology.

More than once, I’ve been with a nonprofit or someplace where budgets were tight; sometimes there was no budget at all for marketing. And I’ve worked through some tough economic times. No Budget Marketing is something I’m very familiar with.

There have been plenty of times where I’ve had budget to spend on marketing too—I’m sure I’ll be sharing some of those perspectives in these newsletters too.

In this edition

I’ll do two things in this edition of the newsletter.

First, I’ll go over a concept I’ve previously discussed on X (Twitter): Three steps you can take to get started on marketing with no budget.

Second, I’ll show you this concept in-action, as I begin going through the steps myself and continue with it next week’s newsletter. Alright, let’s get started…

Whether you’re a founder, a cash-strapped marketing manager or building a personal brand, this tactic applies

If I were a small business or a startup founder without a marketing team, here’s the first thing I would do when I wake up Monday morning.

There are three steps and that all begin with G:

1. Get Inspired
2. Generate Your Ideas
3. Go Take Action

I’ll explain the details of all three and then down below this, I’ll post a video as an example.

1. Get Inspired: Think about your favorite brand. What would you like to know about them? Is it something about their product, something behind the scenes, something related to strategy or how they were built?

Turn away from your screen to take a minute to think about this. If it’s a product you truly love, there must be something you wish you knew about them.

Spend some time with this idea, surf around the social media channels for these brands and definitely see if you can figure out what their leaders are posting on social media. Did some ideas start flowing as you did this?

2. Generate Your Ideas: Take whatever it is you wish you knew about your favorite brand and apply it to your ideal customer. Think about what they might find interesting and where you could show them something that would make them want to buy or continue buying your product.

Take your current and future customers (maybe even past customers you’re looking to win back) behind the scenes. You can even ask some of your customers what they’d like to know about you and your brand—you can do this in a simple email or social media post and surveys are great too!

3. Go Take Action: Take an idea from item two above, hit record on your camera and start talking.

You don’t need to hire anyone to help you do this yet and you don’t need to save the recording until you have time to edit—you can take action right now and post it.

Decide on how you want to get this content out to people. Maybe it’s through an Instagram account or YouTube. Record these videos every Monday and post them as quickly as you can. People have come to expect quick videos from people and they aren’t always looking for polished, professional formats. Embrace DIY and focus on the value of your words.

What’s next?

Once you have your Monday posts going, pick a different topic to touch on every Wednesday and launch those videos too.

Next, start pulling quotes or idea from those videos and post them on Instagram as photos on other days of the week. Canva is a great tool for this. Pretty quickly, you should have content flowing multiple days a week.

Congrats! You acted instead of staying stuck

Action beats getting bogged down in planning or waiting until the conditions feel perfect for you to start your marketing.

Take the things that work and document those as your initial marketing plan so you can hand that off to the people you eventually hire.

More than anything else: Act!

Let’s put this into action right now

Remember when I said “hit record on your camera and start talking” in the third step up above? I want to share an example where I did this quickly and posted it on TikTok.

The topic of my video is the No Budget Marketing Trifecta, which focuses on email marketing, content creation and search engine optimization (SEO).

I turned on my camera and just started talking. Watch it below and, in next week’s issue of the newsletter, I’ll take that video and turn it into written content.

@mikeholdendotcom

No Budget Marketing Tips - Here are three ways you can market your product without spending additional money. #marketing #marketingtiktok ... See more

A final thought

Thanks so much for reading. I’d love your feedback. Just reply or connect with me on social media. See you next Sunday!