Bootstrap Marketing on $0

No ad budget? No problem. The best early growth comes from doing things that don't scale—conversations, relationships, and showing up where your customers already are. This week: scrappy tactics that cost nothing but time.

Tool of the Week

Apollo.io (Free Plan) — Find emails for potential customers and automate cold outreach. 50 free credits/month is enough to land your first clients. Use it to email decision-makers directly instead of waiting for inbound.

Book Suggestion

"Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares — Breaks down 19 customer acquisition channels and how to test them. Key takeaway: Most founders waste time on the wrong channels. Run cheap experiments, find your one traction channel, then go all-in.

Marketing Strategy / Tactic

Build in public — Document your journey and attract customers organically.

• Share weekly progress updates on Twitter or LinkedIn (revenue, lessons, failures)

• Be specific with numbers ("Hit $1K MRR" not "Growing fast!")

• Engage with other builders—comment, share, support

• People buy from founders they know and trust

Business Opportunity of the Week

Done-for-you service packages — Freelancers are moving to productized services. Pick one repeatable task (e.g., "LinkedIn Profile Optimization," "Shopify Store Setup," "Podcast Editing"). Create a fixed scope, fixed price, fixed timeline. Sell packages at $500-$2K. Market via cold DMs and referrals. Scale by hiring contractors once you hit 5+ clients/month.

Marketing without money is just creativity with a deadline. Go make some noise.

— Basat

P.S. What's your biggest marketing challenge right now? Hit reply—I might cover it next week.