Bootstrapping As You Build Your Brand From the Ground Up
“Every artist was first an amateur.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As a new entrepreneur, marketing and branding are important areas to focus on - but how do you get started if funds are limited?
You already know the reason why you want to run your own business, that’s a given. You have the passion, the drive, the determination. But not the extra money… yet.
It’s possible to get started with your marketing and branding on a shoestring budget with little to no money.
Let’s get started by thinking about how you will brand yourself as a leader in your niche.
You can become a leader despite not having any experience or previous clients or money to start.
We’ll share some tips below so you can start taking action and move forward with your idea.
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What is an entrepreneurial leader?
A leader is a guide, a visionary and someone your potential clients can turn to for answers.
As you’re starting out, you’ll need to do planning, research and your own hands-on case studies in order to develop your knowledge base and leadership skills within your niche.
This will be an ongoing task; you’ll always be learning as an entrepreneur.
Here are a few tips to get you started with setting yourself apart as an entrepreneurial leader:
- Always be honest and ethical.
- Figure out a unique angle for your business that reflects you and the message you want to share.
- Think of a way to build a buzz around your brand.
- Start curating information for your niche.
Curation is when you go out and gather information in your niche and then share it, providing your own commentary about it.
It’s kind of like how a museum curator goes around the world finding pieces for the museum and then shares them with visitors and walks around giving the history and background on it. Think about how you can do the same with your business.
- Interview Experts
One way to curate information is to interview other experts in your niche.
You can create weekly or monthly interviews with colleagues and leaders in your field, making you the go-to person where your followers can get tons of great information and advice.
As a former journalist, I’ll be sharing tips in future lessons on how to find and contact experts, how to conduct an interview and where to post.
Book a free 15-minute Strategy Session with Eva Abreu
- Information Products
Start thinking about and planning your own informational products for your niche.
This won’t happen overnight, but having your own e-book, podcast, online course or other information product will further your position as an authority figure and also create an additional stream of income.
You can even outsource the process of creating information products to a virtual assistant, ghostwriter or you can license material that is already created and put your name on it.
Keep this in the back of your mind and we’ll continue to talk about those options in future lessons.
- Sharing OPP (Other People’s Products, or Affiliate Marketing)
To get started as an entrepreneurial leader, you don’t necessarily need to produce your own products right away; that can be a long-term goal.
Instead, you can recommend existing products and services that might be helpful for your target audience. As you are doing so, not only are you establishing yourself as a knowledgeable resource, but you can also earn some extra income on the side whenever someone purchases a product or service from your links.
This is known as affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a business model where you bring buyers and sellers together in return for a commission, if a purchase is made through your affiliate link.
Learning affiliate marketing is not something that happens after reading one article or a blog post, or watching a video tutorial.
It will be an on-going process that evolves over time. We’ll cover more about affiliate marketing in future lessons.
Book a free 15-minute Strategy Session with Eva Abreu
Let’s Get Started
Here are three things that you can do today to get started with getting the word out about your business and establishing yourself as a leader in your niche:
· Sign up for a free website
There are several platforms that will allow you to have a free website. The catch here is that you’ll have no control over the advertising that appears on your site. Another risk is that you’ll need to conform to the rules of the platform so check out the Terms of Service (TOS) on the platforms.
If you’ve flouted their rules, the website platform could boot you out unceremoniously without giving you any notice. Countless entrepreneurs and marketers have lost their businesses overnight by “building their houses on rented land.”
So, your goal is to build a free website and once you’re generating sales, you should immediately buy your own domain and hosting so that you’re in control of your business.
Here are 2 free platforms you can use:
*While Medium doesn’t allow you to build your own site, it allows you to post articles on their platform. The site gets a lot of traffic and has potential when it comes to ranking for low-hanging keywords that you may wish to target. From there, it’s just a matter of publishing more targeted articles.
· Get your affiliate links
It should be free to join most affiliate programs on places like ClickBank, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, Rakuten Marketing and so on. Go ahead and sign up for one or two, or all of the programs, and get your links.
Forget programs that require you to ‘pay to play’ – where you need to have a monthly paid subscription to the software/service/etc. before they allow you to promote their products.
There are tons of excellent affiliate products that you can promote for free and it’s easy to get started.
Book a free 15-minute Strategy Session with Eva Abreu
· Generate free traffic
If money is tight right now, paid ads may not be an option at the moment. The next best way to generate traffic to your pages is to siphon it from high-traffic social media sites and platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google.
It’s important to know that free traffic takes time. Don’t expect to generate massive traffic overnight. You’ll need to create content consistently and almost daily to get reach and traction.
If your content is valuable and top-notch, you’ll build a following and have people clicking on your affiliate links, article links and eventually, your product and services links. So, go ahead and create accounts in the different social media platforms, then:
- Start making videos with your mobile phone and post them on YouTube
- Set up a Facebook group and a fan page and start posting content
- Write articles on your niche and post them on Medium
- Start tweeting and sharing your articles/videos/etc.
- Use Canva.com to come up with attractive creatives you can use. (It’s free!)
Once again, it’s important to remember that social media sites are not your web properties. The goal is to always generate sales until you have enough money to build your own website and list, which become YOUR assets.
Putting It All Together
One way to get started is to write and start posting useful articles on Medium (you’ll embed your affiliate links in the posts). Just remember to disclose affiliate links and DO NOT overdo it. Moderation is key here.
As long as your content is good, you’ll have curious readers clicking on your links and reaching the sales page of the product or service you’re promoting, which is one of your main objectives as you build your business - to have some income coming in.
· Share on social networks
Top influencers and leaders understand the power and reach of social media and are active users on multiple social networks.
Make sure you are on whatever is trending right now, whether it’s Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest or others. This will change over time and it’s a matter of learning how to adapt. We’ll talk more about social media marketing in future lessons.
Point your YouTube videos, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. to your Medium article so that you can pre-sell the reader by providing more information and value.
Once you build trust with your audience, your chances of getting the sale or booking a client will be much higher.
Your Medium account with all your content will act as a hub-site for your content development and affiliate marketing.
The free traffic methods you employ will direct online traffic from different platforms and point them all to your hub site’s content.
Then, it’s just a matter of time for the traffic to convert into sales, if your content is valuable and persuasive.
Book a free 15-minute Strategy Session with Eva Abreu
What’s Next?
Keep on keeping on until you start seeing sales trickle in. Give yourself six to twelve months to see your efforts yield fruit. This is a slow process, but a rewarding one.
As your sales and affiliate commissions start coming in, do invest in your business with the next step of getting your own domain, hosting and an autoresponder.
Being able to build your own mailing list will help to elevate your marketing to the next level and skyrocket your sales and commissions.
This is one of the best way to bootstrap your way for free from scratch to entrepreneurial success.
Let me know if you decide to try some of the suggestions here or if you have any questions or additional tips.
We’ll talk more about planning and researching your niche and setting up your own products for sale in future lessons.
Here’s to your success!
Eva Abreu
Accountability Coach
Book a free 15-minute Strategy Session with Eva Abreu
Disclosure: Per FTC guidelines, the author may be compensated by third party companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise in this article. Visitors to this page are not obligated to click on any link or buy any products that are mentioned or advertised. The author may have financial relationships with merchants, products and services mentioned and may receive a small commission at no cost to the consumer, if consumers make a purchase by utilizing the paid links and advertisements located throughout the page. Any references to third party products, pricing or website links are subject to change without notice. Consumers should do the appropriate research and due diligence before purchasing or participating in any third party offers.