What to do if your marketing budget is $0 🪫

The article says companies can grow on a $0 marketing budget by repackaging features as free SEO tools, doing public value work, publishing internal data, using shareable badges, and leveraging employee and founder personal accounts plus “Word of Sight” product design.

• • The article argues that if a marketing budget is $0, companies can still grow by using internal resources already inside the business.
• • One tactic is to turn an existing product feature into a standalone free tool on its own URL so it can attract SEO traffic, backlinks, and product-led interest.
• • Another tactic is to do useful work on behalf of a dream prospect, send them the result with no pitch, and then make it public if they do not respond.
• • Companies can also mine internal data for surprising patterns, publish the findings, and let customers, journalists, and competitors spread the results for them.
• • Creating status symbols like certificates, badges, or verified tags encourages users to share them publicly because the recognition reflects well on them.
• • Employee-led marketing can outperform company pages because personal profiles reach more people, and founders, teams, or ghostwriters can publish consistently from personal accounts.
• • Products can be designed so that using them naturally spreads the brand, which the author calls “Word of Sight.”