Advertising is expensive. Is it?

Connect, Interact, and Engage the mantra to promotions known to almost every person dealing with humans as their target market. But, is it possible to engage and earn only by burning bags of bucks? The brands today answer NO.

The trends of Zomato and Blinkit, the blogs of Neil Patel, and the popular posts of Mad Over Marketing pose as a clear representation of how is marketing the way to market. But, most importantly they feature ways to break through the constraints of budgets and win over the minds and markets. Zero budget marketing strategies are the ways of marketing a product where execution matters more than production i.e., this involves building your brand awareness without involving sums of money but, with tons of creativity to create strategies that are free of cost and full of results. Some of the zero-budget marketing strategies implemented by brands in today’s market space are-

What is better than a 6-inch screen saving your 6-digit funds?

Social Media Marketing works wonders if the brands could be very cleverly focused on finding the preference of the content of their consumers. Good social media costs none but could bring in a huge sum. For example- today in an environment where start-ups are focusing on their peeks, this helps them win over the markets and money without investing a penny. Brands such as Dunzo and Paper boat do have their social media game top-notch to reap X factor benefits from their N number of followers. The power of media that works best for the brands is via this beautiful medium. The brands could become highly interactive like Sugar Cosmetics and highly relatable like Tinder. Other brands could give us a tweak of the humour and satire a person always craves for to get a good laugh like Durex. The brands are today making people feel homely and very easy to access. How?

Well, the brands are using their figures as admins and highlighting perfectly that real humans are making these unreal posts. The trend of Instagram reels is grabbing the most popular the way it did for Droom and Talkcharge. A person on average spends 2-2.5 hours on his social media giving the brands enough time to grab the user’s attention till the clock completes its circles. The brands have cleverly dealt with the challenges of gaining the most interactions while brands like Zomato are even running contests occasionally to keep their followers competitive enough to make them comment. Hence, giving them the popularity, they need via a post ideated for hours but posted in seconds.

Long Form Content is a story for the long term. Yes, or no?

The content posted over social media is not enough to build a long-term relationship sometimes. Because people may hunt for creativity, laughs and humor but are also hungry for knowledge and news. Social media helps gain the brand a humongous amount of attraction While other tools like blogs, newsletters, and most importantly e-mail campaigns like that of Zomato and Swiggy are the ones that customers wait for. The level of creativity set up by brands like Zomato not only builds a consumer base but helps them gain the best results at the lowest or no cost. Some brands are highly informative about their products on their Instagram page like Carmesi, which holds a population of 136k as its follower and is highly informative about their products. The newsletters of brands prove as a positive point to promote because this engulfs all that a person might search for in the respected brand or its industry. Blogs are the recent attraction point that also is a zero-budget form of advertising. Therefore, what is very clear is that the Connect stage of the series is incomplete without adding value to your consumers’ lives. And a way to do that is to be informational and knowledgeable to some extent because people are looking for smartness and attractiveness altogether in one brand.

The recent collaboration between Blinkit and Zomato proves the point of how collaborating is the new trend of zero-budget advertising too.

Users and UGC – User-generated content

We all have heard about word-of-mouth marketing, let’s term the UGC as another extension to of same. User-generated content when used in marketing is the most relatable form of marketing. How?

Well, a layman always seems to believe in the power of money. All that he sees on his social media or billboards of brands seems to be paid to him. This is a general perception that is built around the basic ideology of marketing done by brands. But, when real people post real responses, real trust is generated. An example of How a brand is winning over its users via User-generated content is the very popular iPhone. The very popular brand Apple has its own series of hashtags #shotoniphone which is the key to its marketing success too. The users post their shot pictures or videos which are then reposted by the brand. This very clearly displays the authenticity and functionality of the brand. Another example of the same strategy being followed is by the popular FMCG brand- Cadbury. The brand recently been working hardest towards its new way of promotion- Madbury allows customers from very different regions of cultures, colors, taste and place to come together and mix two variants of ingredients to create their very own Cadbury chocolate. This kind of marketing allows the brands to connect but also create a story for users making them believe that the brand cares and the users should care too.

Queries and Quora- A new take on advertising.

𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬? 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐥, 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬.

I have worked on Quora marketing and researched the same during my previous tenures at varied companies and this platform is very underrated. The consumer base on Quora is so high that the queries answered is relatively low to the queries raised and brands could tap into this very cleverly. The brands could deal with the questions in their forte and field post-filtering the multiple questions available. This would make the consumers believe in the fact that brands are answerable but also believe in their values much higher. This is still an untapped form of marketing but, the one with maximum potential if tapped because real learnings are learned from real experiences and once the brands connect, interact and engage with real people they would get an unfiltered image of where they stand in the shopping lists of their buyers.

A prominent example of a brand making billions without investing in marketing is Zudio. Tata’s Zudio is not the one investing in the advertising budgets but is the one brand being a part of every household’s budget. The organic growth boosted by the review and reels of consumers benefited them a lot. Another rising trend in the category of investment advertising is the one that involves barter collaborations with influencers as done by the start-up- Heart Up my Sleeves. This sustainable fashion brand is homegrown and grown entirely over organic ways of consumer acquisition. The keyword fights of the era are the new war rooms for brands ensuring their growth given the amount of time users invest on their phones and so, these ways of organically growing than involving money prove the point of how Zero budget advertising is definitely doing wonders for the brand if done wonderfully by the brand. Zero-budget advertising and strategies are the most common and safe way to grow in the crowded market space and steps like viral marketing could make you viral enough to make the consumers aware enough that the next time they see your logos, they do not wonder Where have I seen this brand?