You’ve got a company. You offer an outstanding product at an outstanding price. Now you just need to let the world know about it. Unfortunately, you don’t have much of a marketing budget.
Fear not, you can still get your name out, drive prospective customers to your website and through your door and sell your products and go guerilla. That’s right: guerilla.
Look it up and you’ll see that guerilla marketing is defined as “innovative, unconventional, and low-cost marketing techniques aimed at obtaining maximum exposure for a product” (or service).
You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on print advertising to make some marketing noise. All you have to do is roll up your sleeves, be creative and follow these five proven guerilla marketing techniques:
Make a Movie
You don’t have to make a high-budget, full-length feature film. You don’t even have to spend a thousand dollars. Just come up with a clever concept, fire up your smartphone and film.
There are a whole lot of free video editing programs available on the internet to help you edit your footage into something polished and branded. So all you need to do is figure out what story you want to tell, get it on video and get it posted on Youtube, Vimeo and your Facebook page.
Need an idea? Here’s one: Humanize your sales team by posting 30-second clips of them doing something interesting outside the office. Show each doing something they’re passionate about. Show them fishing. Show them cooking. Show them eating their favorite ice cream cone. Heck, do an entire series called “What’s your favorite ice cream?”
People love to watch fun videos that don’t ask them for anything. They’ll watch yours, and they’ll remember your company name — and probably what flavor ice cream their sales rep likes best.
Go Get Some Publicity
Here’s a secret that many small-business owners don’t know: Reporters need story ideas.
As luck would have it, you have stories to tell. So figure out what problem your company solves, then call up a reporter and see if they want to do a story about it. You’ll be surprised how often they say yes — if you pitch the right story at the right time.
Fall is back-to-school season. Do you sell something that can help people with their preparations? If so, tell a reporter. Tell them what the problem is that your business solves. Tell them that you have three tips to help people solve the problem. And then tell them that you can put them in touch with people (your past customers) who’ve benefited from your services.
If (when) they do a story, you’re going to reach thousands of people without spending a dime. Now that’s guerilla marketing at its best.
Be Irreverent and Ironic
It might not be the best idea for every company, but it works. If you can do something edgy, people will remember you. The trick, however, is to do it while offending the fewest people possible, which isn’t always easy.
However, it’s doable.
With the affordable prices on printing and ink technologies you can easily leverage some eye catching flyers. For example, use a mildly (or entirely) racy image on a flyer and juxtapose it next to a headline that says something like “This image is offensive … but our prices aren’t.” Example, GoDaddy, Carl Jr’s.
Okay, it’s a little clichéd. Seemingly everyone has done it and sometimes it falls flat. But when it works … it’s an extremely effective guerilla marketing technique. It’s also a great way to reach a younger audience who expect to see a sharp edge..
Surprise Your Audience
Target Corp. spends millions of dollars a year on advertising. They buy time on television. They buy space in magazines and newspapers. And they’re online and on billboards across the country.
They’re also in other, less expected places, like spray painted on the wall of an old warehouse in downtown Minneapolis.
They know that having people see their logo in unexpected places is an effective way to build brand recognition. That’s why they pay a few hundred dollars to the building’s owner to let them have a graffiti artist paint their bullseye on the wall.
You can do the same thing. Have some branded T-shirts made (and in this case “some” means as many as you can find bodies to put them on, or more) and have your employees and their families where them to an outdoor festival and walk around together.
People won’t expect it, but they’ll remember it.
Use What You Have
You’ve got a building, right? Why not have a big banner printed and hang it off the roof? You print flyers, right? Why not take a chance and put a personal note on the back of one or two, telling whoever receives them that if they call you, you’ll buy them a burger?
Heck, you can even do something like that on your website or your Facebook page. Give something away to the first person who finds a typo on any of your sites. You’ll build some excitement and awareness — and get a little free proofreading done!