13 Super Simple & Awesomely Effective Guerilla Marketing Tips!
Did that headline grab your attention? That is the whole point of guerilla marketing. It’s a type of marketing that showcases your brand’s messaging in a way that is generally unexpected and engaging to your desired audience. What a great way to showcase your business to potential clients on a budget!
Here is a list of marketing ideas that you can use for your business today – simple but creative ideas to spice up things you are ALREADY doing in your business. Now let’s just make ’em BETTER!
1 – Add a Personal touch to Invoices or Marketing
Take a few minutes to write a brief personal note to each of your clients and prospects on a Post-It Note or small memo pad. Attach it to your business card and mail it off. Make it short, but personal and friendly. Thank them for their business or interest in your company or products. Mention a new product that might suit them, or a upcoming sale. And then ask them to give call or offer to call them to talk soon. Short on time? Send only 10 or so notes a month.
2 – Make your Business Card Stand up for You
Make your business card fold over like a sandwich board sign so that it can stand on a desk and advertise your services when left behind. The front contains your logo and business information, the back can advertise a special or something that differentiates your business. Inside list your services and/or free resource information. When you leave your card, it will do more hard marketing work for the extra cost.
3 – A Little Label goes a Long Way
Use a sheet of return address labels to drum up business. Get business cards of companies that you refer to your clients on a regular basis. Create a sticker that says “Referred by YOUR COMPANY NAME” and place them on the back of the cards. When you refer your client, provide them with the appropriate card. Your customer is reminded of your business and the company they connect with is reminded of you also!
4 – Being More Professional adds Punch
Enhance your small business by making it appear a little larger. On the phone front: get an 800 number, set-up voicemail boxes on your computer or with your phone company. For your office: use a suite address rather than a PO box.About your stationery: spend more on your business cards and list list your title as Sales Manager or Director. All these subtle image boosters are inexpensive fixes to a small problem.
5 – Go Overboard on the Stamps
Sending your business package to potential clients in the mail can have you end up in the bin of other businesses trying to pitch their ideas, but what if you used more stamps? If you have 39 of the 1 penny stamps on the envelope, what are the chances that it catches the potential clients eye when they’re shuffling through their mail?
6 – Mail an Empty Envelope
Trouble getting good direct mail response on small mailings with short messages? Put a very short sales offer on your envelopes and ensure that your business phone number is in the return address. Then mail out the envelopes EMPTY. You will find that most people will call back to let you know that your envelope was missing something, and often this leads to a conversation about the sales offer on the envelope.
7 – Leave a Trail of Sticky Notes
Hand write your sales message on Post-It notes, or for a little more have some custom printed if you don’t have time. Design them to look handwritten if you want them to have that bespoke look and paste them everywhere people will see them. Create a COUPON for more impact, because people will pick them up and USE them! Ask a friend of the opposite sex to post the notes in targeted bathrooms at restaurants, parks and pools. Leave your notes in fitting rooms at clothing stores. Nowhere is off limits – the idea is to get noticed!
8 – Drive your Message Home
Put your advertising on your vehicles. You can paint or stencil your logo on, or buy vinyl decals from the pros for the cost of a newspaper ad. With your company logo and other information on your vehicle you’ll have a travelling billboard, with a one-time cost.
9 – Walk your Talk around the Block
It’s old, tried but true. But it does not have to be boring, and it IS successful. Buy a half dozen T-shirts, or more if you can afford them, and have them imprinted with your company name. Make sure you include your phone number, street address and website address. Be creative, make them desirable and fun to wear and then give them away to people as a way to create a walking advertisement for your company.
10 – Pay for Word of Mouth
Spend a bit of cash, hire some people to help promote your business and let them hit the pavement (so to speak). When someone has a cash incentive to talk about a company, they are much more open to promoting them to their friends. Usually when someone refers a company to their friend, the friend is much more likely to use that company. It’s a win/win for you and the person doing the promotion for you. A lot of bands have street teams, why can’t you?
11 – Get Others to Promote for You
Find companies with your target market and non-competing services. Offer advertising space on your building to the local radio station in exchange for some radio promotion. Ask another business to distribute your flyers if you distribute theirs in your store. Perhaps offer to pay a small fee to put an advertising label inside delivery pizza boxes, or on the back of Frequent Buyer program cards for another business. Get creative and think of an interesting place your logo could really work for you. And for a small cost, you can others to distribute your message for you.
12 – Flyers in Strategic Places
Print an affordable number of single-sheet flyers and leave them in strategic locales. For auto repair shops, leave flyers at a towing company. Places for restaurants might be commuter areas like train stations or ferries might be a productive place. Always get permission before leaving flyers, because if they work – you’ll want to do it again. Go really Guerilla and make them interesting. Check out some samples here: www.facebook.com/ImagineThatGraphics in our Guerilla Ideas Photo Album.
13 – Hold a Contest with FREE prizes
OR Donate for Publicity
Build an online contest page on your company website to increase traffic and engage more customers. Offer free advertising or promotional space for other companies products on your contest page in exchange for free sample products or services from them. Or offer your company’s products or services as a prize to a local charity, hi-profile event, or media outlet that reaches your target market in exchange for some great promotional messaging.
Of course social media and the internet offer great guerilla opportunities, but we’ll write more about that in an upcoming article.
About the Author
Tina Kempling, the Lean Green Team Leader at Imagine That with over 35 years of experience in the print industry, newspaper and magazine advertising.
As an industry-certified designer since 1991, Tina knows her stuff when it comes to marketing vision. But what sets her apart is her understanding of advertising and marketing in today’s digital and print market. She can help companies tap into the incredible marketing power in new and creative ways. Ready to take your marketing game to the next level? Give Tina a shout!