As a SME owner myself, I know how important it is to make every penny stretch to it’s limit in building your business. With a limited budget if any at all its important to focus on alternative, unconventional ways on how to engage your targeted audience. Traditional advertising like TV Ads, Billboards, and Radio are too expensive for most SMEs, so here comes guerilla marketing ideas to grow your business.
When you type in the words “Guerrilla Marketing” at dictionary.com here is the definition you receive:
Any of a number of unconventional methods of marketing with minimal resources for maximum results; any marketing campaign that use non-mainstream tactics and locations.
That pretty much sums it up. This is the answer to the small business owners continuing dilemma of a small advertising budget. A lot of creativity can outweigh the problem of not enough cash. Your understanding of guerilla marketing tactics is key on how you will reach out to your potential customers.
Examples
Here are 10 unconventional/guerilla marketing ideas to get you started:
- Give your product away. When Mrs. Fields couldn’t sell any cookies, she loaded up trays of the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and walked through the mall giving them away. Once people tried one, they had to go back for more.
- Create your own competition. Start a friendly rivalry with another business. Harry Houdini did this with his own brother. He got tired of competitors making money with his ideas, so he set his own brother up with a competing act, Hardeen, and they had a publicity fed rivalry for years.
- Host an event for a local charity. Have a car show or a chili-cook-off. It will show you’re community minded and care about people as well as business.
- Print flyers that tell about a great offer. Put them in every restaurant, coffee shop, grocery store, bar, and beauty shop in town. Don’t just tell about your business, though. Make sure you’re offering a valuable discount or grand opening special.
- Write a column for your local newspaper offering tips and advice regarding your industry. This will brand you as the local “expert”.
- Give presentations to local schools, service clubs, libraries, and churches. Always have your name and webpage address on the worksheets you hand out. Have plenty of business cards, also.
- Write press releases for every thing you do that’s community minded and gives back to the local economy. Host a blood drive or toy give-a-way for children at Christmas time. Donate books to the local library. Let your name and your business name be synonymous with community spirit.
- Pay it forward – when you’re heading into the movie theatre, pay the person’s way behind you and tell the cashier to give them your business card. You’re not guaranteed that the person will become a client but I bet the word of mouth on that one would be pretty big.
- Use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to make business announcements. Let everyone know when you publish a new article, make a new blog post, or launch a new product.
- Post video’s on YouTube. Google Gary Vaynerchuk and see how this worked out for him. Be passionate about your business and let it show in your videos. They don’t have to professionally done, but they do need to offer concise information and have decent sound quality.
Concluding, SMEs need to create a high-impact and low budget marketing plan and optimise their limited fund and other resources. However, it does not mean that you should be naive in setting high goals. Only, the objectives should be realistic; there should a proper strategy and a right set of tactics. Guerilla marketing is one of the ways you can be creative in how you market your business and at the same time save money.
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