3 Tips for Marketing on a Budget

Unbounce’s Noob Guide to Online Marketing is a massively massive infographic (see below) that teaches the basics of online marketing. It took months to create, and it’s been hung in the 500 Startups office, translated into different languages, and used to start whole marketing departments at other companies.

This Noob Guide is just one of the ways Vancouver-based startup Unbounce got the word out about its business. Unbounce is a tool for marketers and startups to create landing pages – roughly as easy as making a PowerPoint – and then test which one performs the best. I chatted with cofounder and CEO Rick Perreault, and these were the standout lessons from their marketing strategy:

1. You don’t have to spend extra money. Until recently, Unbounce had only one employee focusing on marketing, cofounder Oli Gardner. (After raising venture funding last fall, Unbounce hired a few more.) They also don’t market through paid channels like ads.

2. Create great content. For the most part, Unbounce’s blog has been its marketing tool. They write about Internet marketing, focusing on conversation rate optimization (which, of course, is what Unbounce is for). Actionable tips are popular, like 12 Things You Must Do After Writing a New Blog Post.

“Creating quality content gives us some respect,” says Perreault, who has a long background in marketing. “Get yourself known as an expert in your field – or if not an expert, certainly somebody worth listening to and paying attention to.”

The quality content on Unbounce’s blog, including the Noob Guide to Online Marketing, is probably why Unbounce has over 25,000 Twitter followers and launched in 2010 with hundreds of customers already interested.

3. Engage with the community. One way to become somebody worth listening to, even if you’re not banging out genius blog posts every day, is to share other people’s great content in your field, says Perreault. Commenting on that content will also help you make connections and get on the public radar.