Hello Lynxdry.
I have read the responses of others in this thread, as well as your replies. Off the bat, you sound like a paranoid startup founder, snap out of that. Doesn't mean you tell everyone who will listen, but in here, seeing as it will benefit you, you should just spill the beans. Anyway:
1. For what reason have you proposed FB and emails as the marketing channels? Have you tested any of the other channels, or to be more exact, have you tested any channel, cos at the moment it reads like you haven't tested anything. Thus, to say you have £500, shoestring budget et al, and to not have tested channels, to me is capital inefficiency.
2. My £500 advice, save it. If the problem is so prevalent, your audience is so vast, then walk to your nearest 5 - 10 potential customers, and talk to them, offer to buy them a drink. Friday after work, you know the pubs will be rammed, especially with Xmas round the corner, and people a bit friendlier than normal, bah humbug. My reason for this although my advice appears too late for you now, and may well not have been applicable anyway, however, if a person / business is willing to pay for a service, by finding us via tech, then why would they not pay for that same service by finding us through non-technological ways? The tech is there to automate, expand, blah, blah, but the service itself can exist with or without the tech. It’s like a marketplace, before the tech a person can still connect a buyer and seller and take the commission.
3. Use the 5 -10 to hone and refine your message, for when you do decide to test marketing channels.
4. You may well mention your surveys. Honestly can't say anything on that, would need to see the questions, how they were structured, as well as the responses. Anyway, your surveys, if good, should have helped you to whatever degree to have some messages to test. So, test them in person.
5. You are doing the right thing in that you are searching for scalable acquisition channels, but seeing as you are here asking the questions that you are (how much FB ads cost), I would say you are not ready to use them, so test them. Typical figures floated round for testing FB is $100 to $1000. I would start off lower, build it up based on results.
6. However, new business, I'll call it a startup, in the traditional proper sense, ie tech-enabled, decent size market, etc, etc. You are going to have to do some un-scalable things to get your ball rolling.
7. Circling back to another comment(s) you made, broad target, broad range of age and group. No, could lead to capital inefficiency. You don’t go broad, you go narrow, when you start getting an acceptable ROI, then start widening, although a host of other things would need to be taken into account here.
Cheers, Ace.
