By Any Means Necessary: Using Guerilla Marketing

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If you want to reach customers that you never would have imagined, then your ingredient is to look into guerilla marketing. Guerilla marketing is a concept introduced in the early eighties; it advocates the use of effective and unconventional methods of marketing and promotion to get the word out. As the more traditional methods of advertising are often cost-prohibitive and inaccessible, these new methods are more adaptive to agile and responsive small businesses.

The primary investments in a guerilla marketing campaign are time, energy and imagination. The target population for each campaign must be identified, and the focus directed in a highly specific manner towards this audience. One recommended technique is to reach the consumers through their daily routine. Marketing the company’s visual identity using the logo or brand name on household items such as matches, pens, t-shirts, coffee mugs and calendars creates a memorable impression upon a customer. Distribution of free samples is another low-cost way to promote what your business has to offer.

Direct mail campaigns are another method of reaching your targeted audience. Distribution of flyers or brochures in parking lots, homes, offices and malls provide a chance to interact in person as well as leave a lasting impression with a potential customer. The offer of free information to the customer helps the business become a resource and not simply a vendor to them, and encourages a symbiotic relationship between company and customer.

Word of mouth campaigns cost practically nothing to the company and are the number one way to help you begin to get the word out. These can be started during personal interactions of support or sales with the customer. Encourage customers to share the news of a purchase with their family and friends. Participation in public services or events is charitable and reinforces the positive influence that your small business can have in the community.

The Internet is one of the most powerful and least expensive ways today to get the word out. Target audiences can be easily identified as consumers tend to form pockets of online communities based on specific interests. A simple website is able to reach a high volume of people. It is important that a means of contact be available on the website, either an email address, contact form or phone number. Advertising and listing in a search engine’s directory is imperative to aiding customers find the company’s site.

Guerilla marketing is only as effective as the company’s creativity and responsiveness. The marketing budget is not a factor in the planning; rather it is the facilitator for unorthodox marketing tactics. Small businesses thus have the advantage of agility and energy to pull off such campaigns and reap its profits. If you want to find potential customers in the opposite corners from what you would have considered before, then mixing in guerilla marketing is an effective way to approach growth of your company.

Want to know more about guerilla marketing? Contact Mark Bove for more tips and tricks to using this marketing for your business.

Guerrilla Marketing Yourself: Becoming Your Own Market

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There are a large majority of people who will stop and think about what their business needs. For most, this becomes a long list of marketing opportunities, advertising and even new neon signs. The result is a snowball effect. It may begin with one idea of how to present your business or market to others. This expands into the thousands of dollars that have to be poured into what you are going to potentially market.

Marketing is not a complex formula, as most have been taught. You can simply market by being yourself. When you go somewhere, talk to someone, or even scan the Internet, you are marketing. You market yourself every day to everyone that you meet. In order for this to work; however, you have to begin looking at yourself as the neon sign.

You are doing more than getting daily tasks out of the way when you go into public. You are sending messages about who you are and what you do. What does this mean? You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on marketing your business. In fact, you don’t have to spend a penny on marketing your business. Instead, you can change your mindset and make you your business. This is the easiest way to get the word out.

What you do and who you meet is a market. Even if this means going to a grocery store, you can still present yourself in a way that gives you opportunities. You are an image and impression that those you meet will either remember or forget. You can use this to your advantage, especially as a business owner. All you have to do is begin presenting yourself in the places that you usually go to as a business.

By transforming yourself into your business, you will slowly begin to see that people will respond. You may be the person that they were looking for in order to get a service or product that they needed. Like magic, you will begin to find that there is a distinct image that you carry and that people are attracted to or that they need.

You don’t need a million dollars or a snowball effect in order to be successful at what you are doing. You don’t even need a neon sign! By beginning to look at yourself as your own market, you can overcome the traditions that have lectured you on believing that the only way to succeed is to invest with money or into material things. Instead, invest in yourself. Building your business and your market is about getting the word out on you!

For more information and tips about how to be your own market, contact Mark Bove’.