Entrepreneur Journal: Bootstrapping Marketing

Blank Label was a really neat idea that Fan Bi and I decided to make reality. But with a great idea – creating dress shirts that consumers designed themselves with our dress shirt design platform – you have nothing unless you had a team to support it, which for us included Graphic Design, Programming and Marketing.

Marketing is where I come in, and is an integral part of our business. How could we sell our dress shirts if no one knows about our product and our platform? But how could we market with no cash flowing into our pockets?

I had a few (relatively free) solutions which I manage every day:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)– ranking your website higher in the Search Results for targeted terms

• Public Relations (PR) – receiving press from bloggers, journalists and reporters without having to pay for that audience (we’ve been featured on Forbes.com, TheStreet.com and Xconomy)

• Social Media Marketing (SMM) – our Twitter and Facebook accounts keep our fans and followers engaged while allowing us to leverage their networks when they decide to share information we’re posting

It’s definitely tough not being a Fortune 500 company with a $1mil+ marketing budget, with a team of marketers, and outsourced support (PR firms, Advertising Agencies, etc.). But I have to figure out some way to keep promoting Blank Label on a tight budget.

I’ll be discussing the ideas of SEO, PR and SMM in later articles, but for now, just a brief introduction to Blank Label and my areas of interest.

About the Author: Danny Wong is the Lead Evangelist for startup Blank Label, a maker of men’s custom dress shirts that’s looking to lead the co-creation custom revolution. Danny is also a guest blogger at SearchEngineJournal.com, a top Search Marketing Blog.