ENTREPRENEUR/STARTUP SPECIAL .........STARTUPS SING AS BARRIERS FALL (2)

STARTUPS SING AS BARRIERS FALL (2) Cloud Computing, Social Media, And Open Source Software Have Dramatically Reduced The Cost Of Developing And Marketing A Product The best marketing comes free on the Net     Pallav Nadhani has charted an enterprise on low entry barriers. His Bangalore-based company, Fusion Charts, which provides a variety of attractive charts to showcase data, has 23,000 customers including GE, IBM, Google and Microsoft. Nadhani uses free services like blogs, YouTube videos and SlideShare presentations to market his products to the right people. “We do pay for some marketing. But (we) also (use) a lot of free marketing tools,” says Nadhani.     ChargeBee, which has over 300 customers, also does not spend on marketing. “All we do is post 4-5 blog posts every week which generate (enough) traffic and give us customer leads. We are active on other forms of social media too,” says co-founder Krishnamoorthy Subramanian.     Silicon Valley investor and advisor Guy Kawasaki believes you shouldn’t pay for tools because a lot of tools are available for free on the internet. “You shouldn’t pay for marketing, because the best marketing is done free through networking sites like Facebook and Twitter,” he says.     Paras Chopra of Wingify Software uses blogs and writes guest posts on popular websites about testing and website optimization to attract eyeballs to his product.     Posting stories on social media about your customers’ experiences with your products can be a good way to market your startup. A public picture of US president Barack Obama looking at the Federal IT dashboard (it uses Fusion Charts) has been used by Fusion Charts effectively.