When creating our startup’s launch strategy, for many of us the number beside our marketing budget can be a big fat zero.
Of course this can make things challenging, but we’re entrepreneurs so we love a challenge, right?
I always believe that when it comes to marketing, you always pay in one of two ways:
1) With a marketing budget for marketing platforms such as Facebook /Google etc. These are very effective as you can buy users on a Cost Per Click basis, meaning that if you have budget…you can essentially buy growth & users (e.g. using Facebook to Google PPC to get 5,000 downloads in a week at a cost of, say, $10,000).
What the quality of these users are is for another conversation, but if you target the right users on these platforms (which allow you to target now with insane granularity), there’s no reason why they need to be sub-par.
However, if you don’t have a marketing budget, you can (have to) pay in another way:
2) Your time. That’s hustling to get unpaid organic downloads
Although cheaper in straight financial terms, be under no illusion that the hustle option is hard. Some people never manage to get beyond a small trickle of organic free users.
When we don’t have a budget and we’re in hustle mode, we need all the help we can get.
For this reason, I’ve created this Hustler’s Guide to Getting $1,420 Free Ad Budget, to help startup founders & hustlers get enough budget to help with their launch.
It contains up to $1,420 worth of free ad credit across 7 platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and many others. All these platforms want to get you as a customer too, so to help entice you many of them are offering some free ad credit it to help you get started (& hooked on their platform)
You can use the free ad credit on all these platforms to quickly get hundreds, if not thousands of users for your startup.
Who said there’s no such thing as a free marketing budget?
Free Google PPC Credit
Google’s PPC ad platform is still one of the leading ones out there. Use the links below to get free credit:
£75 Credit (U.K.)
$75 Credit (US & Canada)
$100 Credit (New Zealand & Australia)
You can also buy these vouchers on Fiverr for $5 here. ). I’ve never tried this option, but I hear it does work.
Bonus: Get $5 free Fiverr credit here, so you can use that to get your free $100 Google credit 😉
Free Bing PPC Credit
Don’t laugh, yes people use Bing. It works very much like Google PPC does, and can be cost effective as fewer advertisers think to use it. Try it for free here:
£50 Credit (UK)
$50 Credit (US & Canada)
Free Twitter Ad Credit
Ever want to test twitter ads? Now’s you’re chance. I only know of a code for UK at present, if anyone knows a US code please let me know and I’ll update this.
Free Facebook Ad Credit
When it comes to free Facebook ads, there’s good news and bad news.
Bad news: Facebook take different approach to the other platforms here and they don’t really throw free ad vouchers around anymore
I’ve heard reports that you can get credits when you first signup as an advertiser & follow the Facebook Blueprint training. If anyone can confirm / deny or has another way to get credit for non-mobile app businesses, please let me know.
Good news: If you’re a mobile app startup, I’ve got some great news. You can get a decent chunk ($1,000+ in some cases). How?
FBStart – is the big opportunity (for some people). The FBStart program is for mobile startups only. However if that’s you, it’s a great program if you get onto it.
One of the startups I’m an advisor to, got $1,000 of free Facebook ad credit through this program. They signed up and got $500 credit, and then when they progressed through all the training they got a second $500 Facebook ad credit.
That’s a lot of win!
Free Yahoo Ad Credit
$50 free ad credit, use this coupon: Yahooads
Free Amazon Ad Credit
Really only for products, but if that’s your bag, this is a good one!
Free Perfect Audience Ad Credit (retargeting)
Retargeting can be a really smart strategy in your marketing plan, here’s a great way to test it out
That’s up to $1,420 free ad budget for you to help you get started!
Disclaimer: All these codes are tested & working at time of writing. However these ad platforms change these links frequently, so if you find any of these links no longer work please let me know and I’ll update them with a valid new link. Last updated: March 2016
