How we generated 100+ leads on zero budget

These are tough times we live in. With the funding winter that started a couple of years ago and continued into 2023 as well as 2024, many of us businesses have had to tighten our belts.

Startups have shut down and well-funded companies have wound down unprofitable business units. Even for those of us not overly reliant on external funding cycles, we do face the brunt of our clients or customers having reduced their spends.  

But founders are nothing if not problem solvers. Right? Right.

Reducing costs in the face of an adverse external environment is only one half of the story. For startups and SMBs with strong PMF and fundamentals, demand is still there for the taking. And if we can’t reach them via the power of the dollar, then we have to find other ways. More organic ways, ways that give a bigger bang for our buck.

And that’s exactly what we at FlexiBees have been doing. We started a concerted push on organic last year and soon, we reached 100+ leads per month through non-paid channels — our ever-highest organic demand.

All without spending a dime (we did spend on our usual paid channels, but not on these).

So how did we do it? Let’s start at the beginning

We invested in organic or inbound marketing

Unlike paid channels, organic demand cannot be switched ON and OFF like a tap. It takes time to build and optimise. You hit your stride once your brand has established itself for something, when your target audience knows what you offer.

Once these fundamentals are in place and the environment is this fertile, a simple nudge in the form of a piece of communication can result in a lead.

All of which means that you must start your organic marketing today, if not yesterday.

Also Read: Why businesses must consider fractional marketing as a growth solution

At FlexiBees, we have a pretty sophisticated organic demand generation system; it is a multi-channel approach that we are always improving on. It includes:

• Content marketing across social media for branding and top-of-mind recall
• Email marketing for our 10000+ subscribers who we segment as per their stage with us and send customised content to
• Repeat marketing and referrals generation led by our sales teams
• Business partnerships with 30+ aggregators, including government bodies and VCs
• Earned PR initiatives and content partnerships

Our content pillars include multiple themes, properties and formats where we mix long form and short form, industry news and FlexiBees benefits, trendy and topical communication as well as evergreen content.

We set a target and rallied the team around it: Our mission 120!

A target only works when the people carrying them buy into it.

This is how we went about it:

• We looked at the various channels that make up our organic demand, their historical trends and arrived at a target that seemed like a good stretch yet was achievable
• Once that number was in place, we rallied various teams such as content, digital, partnership and sales around it. They each needed to know the overall targets as well as their individual ones
• We communicated why this number was crucial as well as how it could be achieved. For our sales team, repeats and referrals were the way to go, whereas for our content and digital teams, email marketing was the best bet

The point at which motivation meets actionability is where the magic happens and a target comes alive. We created both of these before handing over the baton to the teams themselves to win with execution.

We gave our prospects a trigger to purchase

When targets are ambitious, it helps to have a little something that can nudge potential customers to give you their business. What is important while designing these add-ons is to ensure they answer a customer insight. For example, for a customer segment that is trying a new category for the first time, a trial works beautifully.

For us, we tried a showcase of vetted and high-performing digital and social media candidates that helped our prospects visualize their growth strategy better.

We tracked, optimised, course-corrected 

Creating and communicating the target is only the beginning, it has to be tracked through reliable means. We created a tracker that was updated via CRM on a regular basis and sent to relevant teams. Oh and never underestimate the power of a good MIS in triggering some healthy competition, we had one team go from 85 per cent to 101 per cent within two days (it might not work for all targets and teams, but definitely works for Sales as in the above example).

Apart from tracking achievements, we also tried to understand why something might not be working. For example, we discovered early on that a certain piece of communication did not work and we quickly changed our plan.

Also Read: The key digital marketing tips to help small businesses thrive

And all of this led to us generating 117 leads from organic and unpaid sources, our ever-highest at the time. Since then we have continued this effort and have consistently hit these numbers and even beyond!

Was it easy? No. Was it fun. Yes.

And that’s why we are in the business of entrepreneurship. Not only do we entrepreneurs get going when the times get tough, doing something that has never-been-done before — be it generating more leads or creating new products and offerings — energises us.

So chin up dear entrepreneur, the winter is no match for us! 

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