Getting your name out there can be one of the most difficult parts of building a startup. No matter how innovative your ideas are or how impressive your service is, it won’t be successful if nobody hears about it. Because of this, we’re going to cover three ways you can promote your brand for free and build your startup into a recognizable enterprise. Here are some quick tips to help you promote your startup and build awareness:

Utilize Your Network

Chances are that you’ve been told networking is one of the most important parts of the business world, and that is absolutely right. Building a personal and professional network offers countless opportunities for business and relations that wouldn’t otherwise be available to you. Once you’ve built your network you can use these connections and people to distribute your brand others via word of mouth on social media, or customer testimonials if your startup is consumer-facing. You can also leverage your personal connections to boost your ranking on sites like Product Hunt and Amazon, depending on your service or product. As you get started building your network, we highly recommend Ryan Paugh and Scott Gerber’s book, Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships that Matter.

Reporting and PR to Promote Your Startup

Public relations is one of the most important departments in any business, but in a startup you’ll likely have to be your own PR and marketing department. One of the most useful tools you can use is offering yourself up as an industry expert to services such as HARO (Help a Reporter Out.) Getting your name out there and having your brand published is free publicity, and these media connections can build your contacts in the industry while getting your personal identity out as a CEO or founder. Essentially, you should take any opportunity you can to be in the media, and it’s important to be your own biggest advocate.

PR can definitely be a full-time job, but we put a guide together that gives you the tips and resources to do PR on a budget (and free!):
How To Get Press As A Startup And The Tools To Help

Mentoring and Recruitment

At any given time there are college students and hopefuls out there looking for internships, training, job shadowing, or mentoring. Taking these on not only informs the candidate of your brand, but also their immediate peer group and people related to them. You never know who you could meet in these programs, and screening for well-connected trainees is also a great way to build a bridge between yourself and whatever connections they may already have. It’s just important to remember that these people will hear about your startup through the people you’re mentoring, so make sure they only have positive things to say.

Going Forward

It’s not easy to build a brand, but these ideas will help you promote your startup for free or on a budget. Marketing and development can take excess amounts of time and money to get off the ground. However, with these three strategies, you have real, free alternatives to boost your startup and promote it with little to no financial investment.

Ready to start growing your startup to the next level? Let’s chat.