Methods and techniques to build a brand without spending money

Everyone must like the idea of ​​building a brand without spending money. Since I shared some experiences in brand building for B-end and C-end products online, many people came to me and asked me how to build a brand.

In my communication with them, I found that the vast majority of companies are small but beautiful. To put it bluntly, small and beautiful means that they have no money and no budget, but still have the ambition to grow into a big brand.

It cannot be said that these companies have no hope of becoming big brands, it’s just too difficult. Some of these business leaders come from product backgrounds, some from design backgrounds, and some from business backgrounds, but not many of them understand promotion.

Brand building is a technical job and you can’t learn it just by watching it once. Have you noticed that most of the new brands (Internet celebrity brands) that are emerging nowadays are created by founders with a marketing background? This is due to the founders’ genes.

If you have no money and no experience, is there no way to create a brand? Not necessarily. Next, I will share with you how I built brands in some small companies with almost no advertising budget.

The fans here are not the fans we eat, but the loyal users of our products, called fans. When a product is just released, the most urgent thing is users, but the demand for users is actually not that great at this time.

Just imagine, if a product has just been launched on the market and 10 million users buy it all at once, but the backend chain has not yet been run-in, and the production capacity and supply chain cannot keep up, all that awaits the company is to sigh in despair and wait for bankruptcy.

I once grabbed a parasol in a Douyin live broadcast room, but it wasn’t delivered for half a month. When I went to check again, the store had closed down. Was there no order? No, they were overwhelmed by too many orders. When a small company launches a product but does not have the money for promotion, it can send private messages to vertical media to recruit people and recruit KOCs.

When I was making an APP before, a cleaning APP, in order to obtain real user feedback, I went to the forum to send private messages to recruit people, saying that we have a product to be tested internally and asked if they would like to experience the product. If their suggestions are adopted, there will be a reward of phone bills.

This stupid method attracted more than 300 people. You should know that most of these people are KOCs who have the ability to produce content. After experiencing the product, if they think it is good, they will recommend it to us in the forum. They have a lot of say and brought us many new users.

Although the effect is not as good as KOL, it is already very good for a new product that does not cost money and has no popularity to achieve such a result.

I adopted the same strategy when I was working with fast-moving consumer goods. We found more than 200 Xiaohongshu KOCs, a group of foodies who are good at taking photos and have the ability to write copy. We usually just mail some samples to them without spending any money.

We communicate with them sincerely, ask them how our products taste, invite them to participate in offline activities we organize, give them additional titles, etc., treat them as friends, and they will also selflessly help promote our products.

There is a common sense here. When becoming a fan, the brand must make sacrifices first, and the sacrifices may not necessarily bring rewards. You must be aware of this. Some companies are more selfish and also want to have fans, so they hesitate when it comes to sending products for free. I send things to you, are you sure you will help us promote it, or how about we put our handprints on it?

Companies that have this kind of thinking should not be fans. If parents raise their children for the sake of rewards, their lives will most likely end in tragedy, and the same goes for being fans.

Before the emergence of Toutiao products, brand exposure in the media meant spending one cent to get one cent of exposure. If you didn’t spend any money, there would be no exposure. Small companies without advertising budgets really had a hard time making any progress.

But after Toutiao products came out, the algorithm they are most proud of, that is, as long as the content is high-quality, it will be recommended, is simply a life-saving straw for small and medium-sized enterprises. Relying on the quality of the content itself to get recommendations, there is no doubt that they have the opportunity to be on par with large companies.

There are many small businesses around me who have accumulated 50 to 1 million fans through Douyin. Acquiring customers, which used to be extremely difficult, has now become a thing of the past. To describe their current situation in one sentence, the thing they lack the least is users.

The algorithm advantage of Toutiao can be said to have played a good demonstration role. Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Baijiahao, Video Account, etc. now all recommend high-quality content as the first choice. So for a small company of five or six people, if they choose a familiar platform, produce high-quality content, and make a platform popular, the rise of the brand is just around the corner.

Taking Toutiao as an example, as a product of Toutiao, its recommendation mechanism is the same as that of Douyin, and content quality is prioritized. I made a low-sugar product. When I was writing an article about weight loss, I incorporated the product name and also included a picture of the product.

Since the entire article teaches users how to lose weight, it has a wide demand and contains a lot of useful information, so the comment and forwarding rates of the article are extremely high. The article was read over 50,000 times. You should know that the number of followers of this headline account is only about 30 people. Later, I wrote several similar articles with reference to this popular article, which also received good exposure.

With reference to this approach, when promoting my new book "Full-Stack Operations Expert", I also maximized the role of Toutiao products. Did you know that Toutiao has a WeToutiao? The headline version of Weibo also prioritizes high-quality content in its recommendation method.

So I output a 200-word operational practical paragraph every day, post it on Weitao, and then add a picture of "Full-Stack Operations Expert". One of the paragraphs even had over 100,000 impressions. How is the effect? Although there is no blatant advertising, people who understand the pictures will naturally understand. Some people will send me private messages asking me where they can buy it. I don’t need to say more about how things will develop next.

If you spend money to buy such high exposure, it must be a considerable expense. If there is no promotion budget, just hire a few people who specialize in content operations to develop Toutiao's products. If Douyin can succeed, it would be perfect.

Speaking of short videos, I feel quite ashamed. I have created several video accounts, but they just can’t take off. There seems to be an insurmountable gap between pictures and videos. Although I am very good at writing soft articles, I still leave the video to professionals. Remember, only when professionals do professional things can they achieve twice the result with half the effort.

New channels mean benefits but also risks. Before the rise of Xiaohongshu, most manufacturers did not see it, but Perfect Diary did. It focused all its efforts on Xiaohongshu and reaped the first wave of dividends from the new channel. Of course, if Xiaohongshu had not become popular, it would be a different story.

Because new channels have fewer followers, advertising competition is not fierce, and there are many loopholes that can be exploited. For example, there was no problem with advertising placement in videos posted by Tik Tok before. However, when it was later launched on Star Map, it tried to place ads without going through official channels, and there was absolutely no exposure.

In addition, the commercialization capabilities of new channels are not yet perfect, so it is very likely that one will achieve great results with little money. When I was promoting products on Xiaohongshu, some influencers would also give me an Oasis Diary. This is the bonus of the new channel.

You may ask, where can I find new channels with bonuses? Please recommend. If I knew, would I tell you? Just like some media with high advertising conversion rates, once you make it out, you will definitely not tell anyone else.

I don’t know how many channels I have run and how much advertising money I have wasted to test out this good channel, so how can I easily tell others about it? Therefore, if you want to find new channels with bonuses, you can only try it yourself.

When I was looking for a new platform to promote weight loss products, I was dazzled by the dozens of weight loss apps. It was really a physical job to find an app that could promote our products and was not expensive. I had to talk to, test, and look at them one by one. I also wish there is some kind-hearted lady who can give me some warmth and tell me directly which one is the most effective. But is it possible? Where can I find such a kind-hearted lady?

Remember, new channels with benefits must have developed on their own. Once you find this channel, the new brand will definitely have the starting volume. Did you know that Sandunban started out on a small APP? This APP is actually not small, but it is more vertical and not as well-known as Douyin and Xiaohongshu.

There are no shortcuts in the world. If you don’t want to spend money, you have to work harder than others. Go find such a channel quickly. If you find it, don’t forget to tell me, because I am looking for it too.

The fragmentation of information on the mobile Internet has increased the difficulty of brand building. In turn, what opportunities has the mobile Internet brought to brand building? After much thought, I think it is beneficial for small teams with no money and no fame. You no longer have to spend tens of millions of dollars on CCTV to build a brand like in the past.

As long as you fully utilize a small media, it becomes extraordinarily easy to create a small and beautiful brand. As for whether it can break through the circle and become a national brand, it may require the intervention of capital, which is a story for later.

Author: Tiger

Source: Tiger