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Having worked on this vertical for a while...

We are extremely excited to announce the recent launch of DO Masterclasses! 🚀

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And we now bring you... DO Masterclass Minutes: A summary of the insights and learnings from each class.

On 12^th January 2023, we had our first masterclass in the series.

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Topic: Zero Budget Marketing Strategy ‍

Expert Speaker: Sotirios Seridis, Founder & Head of Product Marketing at XYZ Lab

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What is a Zero Budget Marketing Strategy?

Zero Budget Marketing Strategy refers to all the marketing initiatives you take to level up your business without spending and burning a hole in your pockets.

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Why does a company need a Zero Budget Marketing Strategy?

Every person, business, or corporation, however small or big they may be, should always try to level up their business. To do this, especially without wanting to spend money, businesses need to focus on having a marketing strategy that is zero budget.

Although our world is accelerating, recession(s) are still present and economic cycles repeat themselves. Marketing budgets, despite it being a favorable financial time, can get cut – many a times without proper warning. You must have a plan that can work and generate positive leads without a heavy budget being involved. Relying extensively on paid media can backfire in various situations, hence, it is important to have a zero-budget marketing strategy in place. Businesses should focus on zero budget marketing ideas and use them as foundations to set up their paid marketing campaigns as well. Overall, the lack of budget will help enhance creativity and push them to think outside the box.  

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What are the best Zero-Budget Marketing Tactics?

Given the name, many people can misunderstand the meaning of zero budget marketing strategy.  
Just because it is zero budget does not mean it requires zero effort.  

Every idea and plan will require effort and execution. But Sotirios has tips and tricks to make the planning easier!

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Create SEO-Friendly Content:

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‍Create content that solves problems while adding value to the consumers’ lives. Publish new content at least twice a week and also insert call-to-action (CTA) links to increase engagement. It will require zero budget as you can use your own ideas and materials from your home/office to create props if need be.

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Guest Blogging

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‍Identify relevant guest blogging websites to invite guest bloggers to create content for your business and cross promote the content on your social media organically. This is not influencer blogging, so use your personal connections and get guests who will not require you to pay them, making this supposedly expensive idea, in reality, zero budget.

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Do Direct Outreach & Affiliate Marketing

‍Get relevant influencers and other prospects on social media platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram) to check out your business and give you feedback [Follow up at least twice with those who don’t respond immediately]. Many influencers may prefer to do paid partnerships, however, if you have a solid product, it can be zero budget marketing if you get people to try out your product and talk about it without getting paid.

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Respond to FAQs

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‍Find relevant question threads on websites like Quora and Reddit to answer questions, including a link to your website. Note down the most frequently asked questions and create content by answering them. It will only take a few minutes to answer questions, after which you can take screenshots of your advice and answers to cross-curate content for other socials like Instagram and Twitter.

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Host Meetups, Panel Discussions, and Podcasts Online

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‍Create podcasts about topics your consumers care about, get thought leaders from your industry as guests to add value, and cross promote on your social media and repeat. If you have personal connections, it will require zero budget to get them to come and talk to you over a free podcasting platform online.

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Attend More Networking Events

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Attend more networking events relevant to your industry and meet likeminded people. Give out business cards and collect more, to follow up with the connections you made. Some events may require you to purchase a ticket to attend, however, a lot of them might be free. Research about the events that you connect with and use that time to promote yourself and your brand. Handing business cards out and talking about what you do is a great zero-budget marketing strategy.

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Develop Partnerships That Are Win-Win

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‍Search for companies that target similar audiences as you but are NOT competition, and collaborate for potential partnerships. If you both add value and find tasks that are equal in time and effort, you don’t need to pay for partnerships. There shouldn't be zero effort from your end but, you CAN manage to do this even with a zero-budget marketing goal.

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Do High – Ranking Content Outreach

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‍Find non-competitive content that ranks highly on google and look for author emails. Message them directly asking to be featured in their articles. All you will need for this is a laptop, internet, and an enthusiastic attitude!

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Offer Free Consultations And/Or Free Samples

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‍Offer free consultations/samples that are promoted by organic marketing materials. Create an offer that has a time limit to increase speed and incentive. Of course, marketing your services to be free may seem counter-intuitive but doing so will intrigue customers as well as give them a chance to become more aware of you, through trying it out first. This zero-budget marketing strategy will lead to loads of profits in the long run!

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What Tools Can You Use for Zero Budget Marketing Strategy?

Just because it is zero budget marketing, does not mean it can be done with zero hard work. You will need to put in the effort, but these tools will help you create an effective plan and execute the strategy you wish to, when conducting zero budget marketing.

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SEO-Friendly Content Creation – Ideation

Chat GPT: This tool is an AI (artificially intelligent) chatbot created for auto-generative responses. However, it can help in creating prose and longer pieces of content. From “Write me an essay about freelancers in Singapore” to “Prepare an article about tools a graphic designer can use,” this tool can be an aid for you to get ideas and foundation points for your final piece. You cannot use the entire write-up as your own as now there are ways to identify plagiarism. However, for listicle based pieces, this tool can be extremely helpful for the ideations phase.

SEO-Friendly Content Creation - Recreation

Quillbot: This tool is a step two of creating content, and can follow after ChatGPT helps you ideate as Quillbot will help you paraphrase and rewrite content. You can choose to make it easier/more complex than the original text you pasted by also conducting a grammar check. Alongside that, it helps you create citations in multiple formats. Not only that, you can also use the tool to create bite-sized content by summarizing your write ups.  

Direct Outreach & Networking

RocketReach: This tool calls itself the “world’s most accurate and exhaustive source” to search for contact information of professionals globally. You can do bulk lookups for people in your industry, which can help you do direct outreach and marketing. RocketReach can help you gain customer insights and increase sales whilst aiding you in the recruit process, especially if it is difficult for you to find candidates who are the right fit for your business.  

AnyEmailFinder: This tool is simply there to help you scrape the internet and find authentic emails to reach out to for sales and marketing purposes. You can simply put in the person’s email or company and get a verified email you can reach out to. It helps you scrape multiple web pages simultaneously whilst letting you upload lists of names for which you need emails.  

Responding to FAQs & Staying Relevant

Reddit: As popular as it is for discussing every possible topic you can think of, whether it be as a director answer or a response on a subreddit thread, this platform can help you establish your presence as an industry expert. If you filter out authentic questions, you can and should answer these questions and be the responder to “look out for” every time someone posts a new question in a similar thread.  

Quora: Similar to Reddit, Quora is a platform where you can ask questions about any topic possible, and users from across the world can provide you with answers based on their knowledge and experiences. You just have to make sure to differentiate between trustworthy responses and ones simply based on opinions. As someone preparing a marketing strategy, gaining expert-level status on a tool like Quora is a good idea to stay in people’s eye view as well as gain credibility. If you answer enough questions and get likes on them, you can over time gain an “expert” tag which will put your future responses as the first ones visible to users.  

Hosting + Attending Networking Events

Meetup & Eventbrite: Both platforms are great choices for networking with likeminded individuals and professionals in numerous cities across the globe. You can join groups, find events based on your interests, or even create a group for others to join and initiate your own events. Both platforms have trending categories like Music, Business, Sports, and Arts, amongst many others, and you can use it to find, create, and buy tickets to numerous upcoming events whilst following organizers to get updated on any new events they put up.  

Optimizing Your Website(s)

Clarity & Google Optimize: Both these tools help you analyze your websites and get a view of how users/visitors experience your website. They are connected to Google Analytics and help you identify areas you can improve upon. From ad targeting to UI experience, these tools can be set up and integrated with your business to provide you with insights (numerically and graphically) about visitors, engagement, reach, and many other metrics that you may find useful and want to focus on.  

And that’s the list of tools you can use to level up your business, especially when you don’t want to spend more than just your effort! This is simply a summarized version and you can learn way more by joining the sessions live and getting your questions answered by experts in real time!  

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About the Expert: Sotirios is a Digital Marketing Instructor with extensive hands-on experience in performance marketing and digital analytics. After spending more than a decade working with the world's biggest digital media agencies, he founded XYZLab, a digital marketing training and consultancy firm in Singapore. He is also the organizer of Co-Founders Matching, a community for aspiring cofounders to meet each other.

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Upcoming DO Masterclass: Positioning Your Brand in 2023

Expert: Dr. Manmeet Barve, Associate Professor of Marketing & Startup Mentor at Mumbai Educational Trust, MET League of Colleges

Date: 3^rd February 2023

Time: 4 PM SGT (Singapore Time)

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P.S. DO Masterclasses are free only for a limited time and will soon become a feature for Premium Members only… So, reserve your free spot before time runs out!

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#Knowmoretogrowmore