4 “almost” free marketing methods that every small business & startup should use.

First off: “Push” doesn’t work. It’s so 1990’s, and people have had enough. It’s not “outbound marketing”, it’s spam, no matter how “targeted” it is, if it’s unsolicited email.

But how can we sell our product, if people don’t know about us?

Anything you come up will most probably will be a “push” method. Forget about it. Even if you manage to get a response, you will not have the upper hand. And it’s not a position that you’d like to have, if you want to sell them something. They shouldn’t need to be “convinced”. They should want it.

Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, you need to “pull” the users to your product, to your website, to your app. And I’m not talking about Facebook, Play Store or Google ads. They’re costly. And as a small business & startup, you should spend your hard-earned dollars wisely.

1- Let them notice you

You have a solution that Microsoft could use? Don’t ask for an appointment. Pull them to your profile instead.

Linkedin is not a fan of automated tools, but we will not extract any data from their database, so we should be fine. And you need to purchase their Premium plan to make it work, so, as a paying customer, you can expect them to be more tolerant.

First step: Open a new Linkedin account and edit your profile to make it look more interesting.

Second step: Search for your ideal customers using detailed criteria such as keywords, title, function, seniority level, industry, company, etc. (You need a Premium account to be able to see 1000 results) Download the profile visitor app so that you start visiting their profiles automatically. You will be visiting hundreds of profiles every day, and if your profile looks interesting enough, 3–5% of those people will visit yours.

Third step: Sit back and enjoy the inbound interest.

You’ll be better off when they call you, instead of the other way around.

You can do the same with Twitter, using a service such as Twitfox to auto-like tweets and follow people based on their content.

2- Track your users’ behaviour and reach out automatically.

Luckyorange lets you watch user actions based on preset conditions.

Track and watch user behaviour for their critical actions, using a tool such as Luckyorange. If a user cancels their account, ask why they did it, and how you can improve your service. If they visited the billing page to downgrade, offer them a discount code to give you a second chance. Use Mixmax to automate this process:

3- Outsource B2B sales

Use bant.io to handle initial contact for B2B sales. You simply define your prospects, they do their research and engage in email conversations with your ideal customers. Once they respond with interest, your sales team simply picks up the conversation with them and work on closing the deal. Use your valuable time to make your product perfect. We tried it, and it works!

4- Affordable, 24/7 customer support with bots

You will see how many man-hours it saved you, real-time!

Your e-commerce business runs 24/7, so should your customer support. Nothing is more frustrating than a “we are offline” message. And since 80% of questions your customers ask represents only 20% of your knowledgebase, you’re basically answering the same questions over and over again! Use Easy Chat + Chatbot to easily train your chatbot, so it will handle customer support for you, when you’re away. It will save you hundreds of man-hours.

Questions or comments? We’re ready to answer! team@botego.com, @botego