Marketing Strategies for Bootstrappers: Maximizing ROI with Limited Resources

Bootstrapping a business is no small feat, especially in the competitive landscape of food and CPG brands. With limited resources, choosing the right marketing strategies is crucial to ensure you get the most bang for your buck. Some marketing and customer acquisition techniques are better suited for bootstrappers than others, and in this blog we'll be discussing which is which. 

There are two key attributes we can use to help identify the marketing techniques that are more likely to be bootstrapper-friendly:

1. Who invests/pays up front: Some strategies rely on others to do the upfront work, which can reduce your initial outlay in terms of time, cost or both.
2. Duration of payback: Some strategies offer quick returns, while others take longer (months or even years) to generate a return. The cash payback period is important for every company, but it can be a matter of life or death for bootstrapped companies. 

Affiliate and Referral Marketing

Affiliate and referral marketing can be a godsend for bootstrappers. Imagine having a team of affiliates and happy customers doing the heavy lifting for you. Affiliates create content, write blogs, or place links, all with the hope of earning a commission once they generate sales for you. The beauty here is that you’re not footing the bill upfront.

The benefits are clear: it's low cost and highly scalable, meaning you can reach a wider audience without spending a fortune. Plus, referrals from trusted sources, like friends or family, tend to convert better because people trust recommendations from those they know.

But, of course, there are some challenges. Managing a large number of affiliates can be a bit like herding cats, and ensuring their content aligns with your brand can be tricky. However, with the right management tools and clear communication, these hurdles can be overcome.

In my personal experience it actually helps having a diverse set of marketing minds focusing on your product, especially early on. What I suspect you may learn from this is that the value propositions and the way others' talk about your product will be different to the way you do. Listen carefully to this, as it can be incredibly educational. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is another strategy that's good for bootstrappers looking for quick returns. The concept is simple: you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This allows for controlled spending and almost immediate results (assuming you have an effective funnel). You could set up a new campaign in the morning, see sales roll in the same afternoon, and 1-2 days later you're likely to have the funds from those orders already in your bank account. 

The beauty of PPC is in its immediacy and targeted reach. You can zero in on specific demographics, locations, and even times of day, ensuring your ads are seen by the right people at the right time. Plus, with budget controls, you can set daily or campaign limits to keep your spending in check.

However, PPC isn’t without its downsides. It can get pricey, especially in competitive markets, and you need to keep feeding the beast to maintain your traffic and sales. But for the right product and audience, the quick payback can be well worth the investment.

If you are going to go this route, make sure you've done your homework on CPC and CVRs for your niche. It's very difficult to get PPC to work with a LTV (revenue) below $50. 

Email Marketing

The best customers you'll ever have are the ones you've already got. Email marketing is like having a direct line to your customers. Building an email list takes some time, but once you have it, you can communicate directly with your audience, driving repeat sales and fostering loyalty. It's a low-cost strategy with high returns—many businesses find email marketing offers one of the best returns on investment.

With email marketing, you can segment your list and send personalized messages that resonate with different customer groups. This personal touch can significantly boost your engagement and conversion rates. However, building a quality email list takes effort, and poorly executed campaigns can end up in spam folders. But with good practices and engaging content, you can keep your audience interested and coming back for more.

Assuming you have the capabilities to do so, we think email is a good strategy to be employing early on as a bootstrapped Food or CPG business. Aside from the software, the costs are very low, and it is well suited to experimentation and testing (eg learning) which most young companies need to do a lot of.  

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a long-term strategy that involves optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results. While it can drive consistent organic traffic and enhance your brand's credibility, it's not the best choice for bootstrappers looking for quick returns. It will take months of not years to see a positive ROI from SEO. It's also not a particularly 'nimble' strategy - i.e. it can take a long time to change the direction of the ship. 

Content / Social Media Marketing

Content production and Social media marketing can deliver short term returns on the caveat that you know what you're doing with it. If you don't, then you can waste a lot of time with it or worse still actually damage your brand.

The brand-building aspect of Content / Social (which ultimately helps create a moat, and allows you to charge higher prices) takes a long time to build. If you look at the time (and $) invested relative to the impressions generated organically and contrast this to what you can pay to generate impressions for, it's likely that paid reach is going to be much cheaper especially early on.

You need some level of social presence to create social proof and make the pages look legitimate, but posting 1-2 a week is enough to achieve this. 

A bit like SEO, this can have a long payback period and we think more time and money should be put into paid social rather than organic social for bootstrapped brands. 

Conclusion

As a bootstrapped brand founder, it's essential to choose marketing strategies that align with your resources and goals. Affiliate and referral marketing, PPC advertising, email marketing, and retention marketing offer quick paybacks with manageable upfront investments. While content marketing and SEO have their merits, their longer payback periods make them less ideal for those looking for immediate returns. By understanding the nuances of each strategy, you can make informed decisions that drive growth and success for your food or CPG brand.