Congratulations on starting a new business! You’ve taken the right decision. There surmounts a myth around your new business about the requirement of around a million dollars to kickstart your entrepreneurship. However, this is so not true! You could kickstart your professional journey with as little as $100.

Setting up a new business with limited funds without VCs and other investors might not be the way for most conservative businesses but it is possible. This is known as Bootstrapping. Through this blog we are going to help you figure out five major ways through which you can promote your business, promote it and enhance its growth, all on a bootstrapped budget.

1. Local SEO by Google

This step holds very important for new and small businesses who are willing to leave an impact in the society. Local SEO exposure is a must for them! Instead of trying to woo customers throughout the country, you need to first focus on people in a local area in your business vicinity. This can be easily done by optimizing your Google My Business Page, also known as Google Places or simply the Google Map Listing. Ensure that you own that particular page and do have all the necessary access to make major and minor edits to your local listing. Once you are done with this, you need to file in all important information which might still be missing. Two words hold the utmost importance here – accurate and descriptive. Do not forget to throw in a few keywords, but no matter what you do, be crisp and be specific.

For example – if you are setting up a new bakery and cafe, you could take help of keywords like “outdoor cafes” or “bakery and coffee shop” or simply “coffee shop”. Do not forget to optimize all the fields, add your business hours, pictures, and every other little information. It might take some time, but is going to pay you in an elaborate manner.

2. Blog your way out!

Posting fresh content on a regular basis is important to improve your rankings on the Google search engine. Each time a new blog/article is posted on a website, spider bots, also known as Google web crawlers are going to visit the page and index it later. Once indexed you are going to be visible on the search results, ranked as per the analyzation of these spider bots. The fresher your content, the more in number, the better is its ranking. Quality content is always the king and you should never forget that. You will have better chances to be visible with that in the long run. If you continue posting high quality, unique content, your website is eventually going to be looked upon as valuable, making it popular among the masses.

If you think regularly posting fresh content to your blog/website is going to be a hassle, trust us it is not! You are your own boss when you start your own business, this means you should be able to think of a few topics and interests over which you can definitely write. You might not be a strong writer, but you can definitely write “how-to” or other “list” form articles. The content in such formats can be broken down into fragments and still contain all the necessary information.

3.Links, links and more links!

This is not just the oldest, but the most trusted way to enhance your website rankings and traffic. 3rd party links are looked for by search engine crawlers. These links are considered to be powerful as they help you get a higher position in the search engine result rankings. Higher the quality of the 3rd party links, the better your ranking.

Though link building as an SEO practice is time consuming, businesses should still undergo the same to enhance their popularity and visibility, at least in the local vicinity. Therefore, yellow pages listings, local online publishers, business directories, chambers and associations are something you should be focusing on. You could get innumerable links in a matter of hours. This is a sure-shot way to enhance your visibility among the masses in a limited budget. You are not only going to improve your business ranking like this, but are going to drive good amount of traffic your way.

4.Networking in real life!

Networking events and meeting new people are your go-to options for instant success. In the business world, even if you are an introvert, you have to go out, present yourself and gain instant leverage. The big sharks might be waiting for someone like you! Who knows? Once you meet new people and new clients, you must ask them for referrals. Asking for referrals like this is going to ensure you always have more and more clients your way! It’s all word of mouth, and the best part? It is totally free!

You should know that networking is not restricted to just people outside, it can also happen inside. You could take help of your friends, families and other acquaintances to gain advantage in the big world.

5.Just keep calling!

This might be an overrated and a conservative way to garner success, but hey! It doesn’t hurt if it works! The method is sure-shot, simple, and foolproof. You just need to call and market your business outside. The process is free (unless you do not have free calls), it is not going to break your budget and your back-bone and you are going to find better suited clients. Calling ensures better communication with others, which means there is a scope for transparency. This is why the method is so popular and has been with us for so long. It might sound boring in the long run, it might even demotivate you at times, but hey you can do it!

Though limited budgets are looked down upon as a disadvantage for most, yet over 80 per cent people have established successful business ties with a bootstrapped budget. All in all, it is not difficult establishing your name and status in this big world of business. No matter what your budget, and no matter how bootstrapped it is, you can still manage to make your way and garner success. Always remember to look for the positivity in everything, no matter how difficult it gets! You are definitely going to come out as a winner.