Starting a business is an exciting endeavor but equally challenging as well. Particularly with the proven failure of traditional belief “build and they will come”, overnight success stories seem fake. Those motivational stories you hear are often result of years of hard work, consistent efforts, and brilliant marketing campaigns. After all, a business is just a worthy idea (innovation) and its marketing; the rest are mere formalities as noted by Peter Drucker However, marketing your startup idea is a unique challenge that you’ve to address. It’s usually an outcome of limited financial resources, shortage of time and talent.
To meet it, you have to ensure that every step you take, no matter how small, is well-planned and perfectly executed particularly when traditional marketing strategies aren’t sure of working in your favor. Funding your startup marketing campaign is one such step that can make or break things for you. To help you secure reliable, secure and affordable funding, we are sharing 5 key options in this post. They may help you in finding the right kind and amount of finance for your business and marketing campaigns. However, do study your local market as your laws and rules of the land may be different to the one of author’s.
1. Self-Financing:
You should never write off the option of self-financing. It’s a popular method of financing for business startups and is a good place to begin. To begin with, you should have a clearer picture of what your assets are, what amount of cash you have. Rationale evaluation helps in self-financing the most. Most of the people who seek self-finance, the most common option is getting a home equity loan. Personal savings can also be a great method to go ahead and finance your startup marketing plan. However, if your savings can’t fund the entire process, divide the amount and secure different. Therefore, it is strongly advised that you maintain a personal self-finance portfolio to use at the time of need.
2. Microloans & Grants:
Microfinance loans are primarily subsidized loans by the state, designated authority, or non-profit organizations. If your business and marketing plan is comprehensive, you can get them easily. In USA and UK, respective SBAs help applicants get advice and government grants in small amount. Usually microloan is a small, short-term loan available to small businesses that can be used as working capital or towards purchasing new inventory, supplies or machinery. This might not be an ideal choice if you are looking for big amount but if the amount is few thousand dollars/pounds, you should consider it. In addition, you can also approach NPOs/NGOs that specialize in providing micro-finance to individuals and businesses.
3. Logbook Loans:
Logbook loan is a kind of secure loan that can best be cited as an example of a security bill of sale. In this transaction, borrowers transfer ownership of their car, van or motorcycle to the logbook lender as security to secure the loan. While making the repayments, borrower keeps possession of his/her vehicle and can use it; however, ownership of the same would rest with the lender until the loan is cleared. Logbook loans can be the best choice for the people who are in UK as there is a designated legal process to administer these loans (so they are secure).
4. Friends and Family:
Friends and family can play a very positive role financing your startup campaigns. Getting finance from family and friends can be fairly simple and straight forward as there is already a mutual respect, trust and understanding. Secondly, they can give you loans on favorable terms and even without any interest (in some cases). To make the deal mutually beneficial, you can offer them some kind of dividend like; share in the profit, revenue etc.
5. Crowdfunding:
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding your campaign/business by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people. It’s a relatively new concept of alternative finance that gained significant popularity after 2005. Trends indicate that crowdfunding is set to surpass VC funding in 2016 as the industry size has reached $ 35bn and set to grow further. Crowdfunding can be reward-based, equity-based, or debt-based. You can use internet to your advantage and consult some meditating company to get you reliable funding partners.
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