Over the years, businesses and entrepreneurs have developed strategies to help them achieve one goal or another. For instance, Crowdfunding helps in fundraising, marketing solves sales, awareness, and adoption problems. In the same way, Side Project marketing is here to solve a specific problem –to attract the target audience to patronize a company by offering a free service. 

Because of the benefits attached, businesses, especially those that are just getting off the ground and have limited time and resources, go from their main product offering to create a side project. However, we know that some companies, especially startups, are likely to find side-project marketing challenging. Therefore, we are putting this article together to help you out.

1. What is Side project marketing?
2. 10 examples of side project marketing
3. Benefits of side project marketing
4. How to start your side project in 3-steps
5. Conclusion

Also Read: Startup pricing: A Simple Guide on how to set the right price

What is Side project marketing?

Side project marketing is a customer acquisition strategy where a company or entrepreneur uses a free tool or resource to draw target customers who may later pay for their main services. This is usually achieved by creating an entirely different service or product aside from the main product or service.

The goal of side-project marketing is to increase visibility and attract more customers or users to a company's primary services or products. When we talk about side project marketing, you have to understand that we are not saying that the new product has to focus on current customers. Again, the new initiative cannot be centered on making money. 

Remember that the essence of side project marketing is to draw in new customers and people get attracted to free services. For instance, a blogging company that needs traffic can offer free consultations as a side project, then entrepreneurs will come to them for free consultations and in the process, they also subscribe to other services the company offers. 

Also Read: Do you want to know what it takes to be an entrepreneur? Hers is a checklist to help you find ou

10 examples of side project marketing

If you are looking for a side project marketing idea for your company, find some examples below.

Aggregator

They function similarly to directories but allow everyone, not just the organization that created them, to exchange data and resources. An example of an aggregator tool for market research and audience intelligence is SparkToro. To bring digital markers (their target audience) together, they created "Trending," an aggregator of digital marketing resources.

Quiz

On this platform, there are usually quizzes that are entertaining or educational. The quiz participants are frequently encouraged to purchase the goods or services by the quiz's outcomes. You can take a quiz on RamseySolutions to find out the best way to file your taxes. With this as a side project, they advertise their tax preparation service through the Quiz result. In the end, users would be persuaded to patronize them.

Directory

Typically, they are locations where you can find a lot of data or resources that have been selected by the business that established them. The "Open Startups" website of Baremetrics, a Stripe analytics tool, lists the figures of several transparent startups that are highlighted within the Baremetrics service.

Games

As their primary purpose is to generate a lot of PR and backlinks, they are typically games with a strong shareability component. Mention allows social listing and media monitoring because it is software for monitoring newly launched brands. To practice side project marketing they developed a game called  Battle of the Brands.

The essence of this game is to allow you to contrast the internet mentions of any two brands so you can compare how intriguing their data is. With this game on the platform, many customers would be keen to patronize their main services.

This means, your company can develop a game as a side project marketing to help attract more customers to your goods and services.

Physical goods

As the name implies, they are goods that businesses frequently develop to get shares and media attention. As we said earlier, they are not always related to their main products. But physical products, compared to all of the aforementioned forms, have manufacturing and delivery costs. This indicates that these goods are frequently sold. As long as the goal of side projects is still to draw clients rather than to make money, they can charge for their services.

Calculator

These are free online calculators (or, in some cases, downloadable Excels) where you may enter information and receive results in the form of numbers and graphs. Z1, a digital product studio, created the app development cost estimator called How Much to Make an App. Here, you would be able to create an app when the result of the cost is out.

Tool/Apps

These are free web tools designed to meet a specific demand of the users. Hatchful is a free logo creator offered by Shopify. Entrepreneurs seeking a logo may also be considering an e-commerce platform and may end up becoming Shopify clients.

Templates

Typically, you may fill them with your data or information and they are Excel, Google Sheets, PowerPoint, or PDF files. The template is to guide a newbie to carry out a task or design exactly as the company provides them. For Excel or Google Sheets, ActiveCampaign, an email marketing, and CRM solution offer a free CRM. On the same page where you can download the template, they advise you to use ActiveCampaign's CRM because it will be insufficient for your particular needs.

Converter

They enable the transformation of one item into another. Businesses that deal with audio, video, images, or files are the ones that frequently build them. Online video editor known as Kapwing has created a free program that allows you to convert videos to MP3, GIF, MP4, or JPG. You can consider this tool too if your business is in this niche.

Checklist

Checklists are online lists or downloadable PDFs that let you verify the different steps needed to complete a task. Gusto offers a checklist for onboarding new employees online. As a tool for payroll, benefits, and HR, it works perfectly for their company.

Read also: How to validate your business idea

Benefits of side project marketing

I mentioned earlier that companies especially Startups choose to run side project marketing instead of Google ads or content marketing because of the numerous benefits that accompany it. Below are some of these benefits

It is less considered a marketing

Content marketing and advertisements always answer "marketing questions", whose essences are brand promotion. At the same time, these are very competitive marketing strategies that sometimes do not favor startups. But startups can gain more promotion and brand adoption from audiences through side-project marketing.

It is a less competitive advertising channel

While other areas of digital marketing are very competitive strategies, side project marketing is less competitive because it is relatively very new. Hence, start-ups that adopt it are bound to excel massively.

Ability to generate backlinks and PR coverage

Many of the side project examples mentioned above have gained thousands of shares and backlinks after going viral. That means, your initiative might receive widespread media coverage with some luck and the right timing, giving you backlinks and higher domain authority.

It can consistently attract customers

Similar to Google ad marketing, side project marketing may rank on Google for particular keywords, bringing in new visitors each month, some of whom may become clients. These projects can be beneficial repeatedly, which implies the same user may visit your project more than once where as you seldom read the same piece of material more than once.

Also Read: How much influence does the internet have over the success of a startup?

How to start your side project in 3-steps              

I presume by now, the zeal to start a side project marketing for your company is bubbling within you. So how do you start? Here are three ways to begin:

1. Develop a side project idea

I advise you to start by seeing if any of your competitors have developed any side projects. So that you just only need to think about taking their idea and improving it.

Then, look for inspiration on your website. Look for content that could be the foundation for a side project in your blog, podcast, or reference sites. For instance, if you have an article on "How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value," you can make a CLV calculator.

Finally, look for information that might be developed into a side project by visiting specialized blogs, podcasts, and communities.

2. Begin building the side project marketing

Ideas will remain ideas if actions are not taken on them right. So, this is the part you bring your project idea to implementation. However, you may not be able to work alone depending on the project. Sometimes you might need developers, consultants, managers, or strategists.

3. Market the side project

After creating your side project, you must advertise it, just like with other marketing strategies. Side projects receive these categories of traffic:

Time precise traffic

For a side project to be marketed at a precise time means it would be introduced at a time when everyone is discussing the subject. As this will help it blow up immediately. If you can recall when the GDPR was released, Mailjet promptly developed the Ultimate GDPR Quiz, a test that determined whether your business was GDPR-ready. More than 300 consumers voted for the product on Product Hunt in less than no time because the timing was right.

Organic traffic

Organic or natural traffic means the project itself is searchable on the Google search engine or is SEO friendly. Now, you can tell that by their nature, certain projects don't work well with organic search. For instance, Nobody looks for a GDPR quiz on Google. But a lot of people go online every day for video to MP3 converters. This means you have to make your project searchable by seeking to satisfy users' intent during creation.

Viral Traffic

Although it is highly dangerous, relying on virality to drive visitors to a project you've invested money and time in has succeeded in many of the side projects we used as examples. Viral traffic is good for your side project. But the project needs to be funny, very controversial, or exceedingly timely to go viral. You can be conscious of at least one of these things when creating yours.

Conclusion ‍

The marketing strategy known as Side Project marketing has proved to be a fantastic result-oriented means of attracting customers to a product or service. And, every niche offers Side Project Marketing ideas. You will receive a fantastic ROI if you attempt it because it's not a highly competitive channel.