Marketing is a huge part of getting a startup running successfully, but it can often be costly and make a dent in your resources. Luckily, there are many methods of online marketing that can be executed with little to no cost.

Choose a target audience:
Narrowing down your target audience and identifying your market is a key step to marketing successfully. If you advertise posts without narrowing down the demographics, it can often be a waste of money. Directing your efforts to specific groups that are likely to enjoy your product can help you reach potential customers more quickly.

Leverage existing online communities:
There are countless social media pages and groups whose members are your target audience. Posting about your product/service on pages that already have large followings can be a great way to raise awareness about your business and get through to your target audience quickly.

Grow your email subscribers:
Having regular emails sent out to your subscribers is a good way to attract returning customers and keep people up to date with your business. You can build your subscriber number by using a landing page or pop up forms on your website and social media. An incentive to subscribe can also be helpful, such as a discount code, early access to new products and exclusive content.

Publish relevant content:
Having relevant and interesting content that your audience will find benefit in is a great way to attract potential customers through organic search traffic to your website. This can be done through social media posts and having a blog with regularly posted content that is valuable to your audience. Guest blogging is also something that can be considered as this allows you to leverage existing readers of different blogs. Make sure that the websites you choose to guest blog on focus on topics that are relevant to your business and target audience. Using keywords to help SEO can help your blogs rank higher than other similar blogs.

Incentivize your customers to share:
Offering your customers an incentive to share your product can be a great way to grow your business and attract new customers. For example, many businesses hold competitions that require customers tagging their friends to win a prize or have referral codes that provide discounts when shared with friends.