What is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla Marketing is a term that is used to describe affordable and creative marketing tactics for small businesses, start-up companies and entrepreneurs. Guerrilla marketing allows small businesses to compete with large corporations. It leverages time, creative thinking and the small business budget to effectively compete with large marketing budgets and corporate competitors. If it’s called guerrilla marketing, that implies that it can be accomplished with a small business budget. Most small businesses and start-up companies have to apply guerrilla marketing to survive. In his book, Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson suggests many strategies for effective marketing on a low budget:
Word of Mouth Marketing
Even with endless advances in technology, there is no other form of marketing that is more effective than one person giving a recommendation or a warning to another. This form of marketing has the lowest cost and garners more trust than any other form. Since this form of marketing can make or break your business, a policy of excellent customer service should be part of your marketing plan.
Internet Marketing
Internet Marketing offers many low-budget and do-it-yourself options. Even when hiring professionals to help your business, the costs of internet marketing are usually less than that of hiring a traditional marketing agency for print and broadcast marketing.
Business to Business Bartering
Bartering, or trading your goods and services with another business owner is an effective way to leverage what you should be getting wholesale to acquire something for which you’d normally have to pay retail. If you need something from a business that doesn’t want your goods or services, then try a three-way trade. Or join a business bartering network.
Co-branding or Fusion Marketing
Co-branding or fusion marketing is when you combine your marketing efforts with a complimentary business. For example, if you own a gym you might try partnering with a local health supplements store by offering a promotion to customers who try both of your services. This way you share marketing costs and you’ll potentially get more leads for less.
Promotional Products
You can order printed materials that are branded with your company logo and distribute just as many products on your own as any stream of marketing. The classic business card is one of your greatest marketing tools. Other promotional products include pens, business checks, invoices, refrigerator magnets, calendars, note pads and multiple other giveaways. Contact your Mirex Marketing representative for a more comprehensive list of items that can be branded with your logo.
Low-cost Print Advertising
Examples of low-cost print advertising include flyer distribution at local neighboring businesses, posting ads on bulletin boards on college campuses, churches and laundromats, printed classified ads in local newspapers, a free line ad in the printed Yellow Pages, bandit signs (where legal), personal letters, and small local newsletters and other local publications.
Teach at the Local Library
This one wasn’t in Levinson’s book, but it’s one he probably would have been proud to mention. When you offer to teach free classes at the local library, you gain part of their marketing budget to promote that class (which you may or may not manage). They may advertise for you in local papers, onsite in the library itself, and maybe even on local public television. This is the cute little brother of seminar marketing.
Human Billboard Advertising
When you and your business staff wear t-shirts that are branded with your logo, then you’re all advertising your business. You may meet people that you can do business with in places where you shop and play. This is a benefit that comes in addition to the polished, professional look that comes with matching uniforms.
Creative Thinking
The absolute best resource you can acquire when it comes to guerilla marketing is creative thinking. You may gain inspiration from reading books like Guerrilla Marketing and reading web pages like this one. However, your endless source of marketing for less can come from within. One of the first stories in Levinson’s book is that of a small book store owner that was located immediately between two large book store franchises. When they both had sales and banner signs on their store fronts that were bigger than his entire store, he struggled to figure out how he could compete. Then he came up with the solution. He put up a sign that said, “main entrance”.
Mirex Marketing – Marketing solutions for any business with any budget
By reading this page and multiple other pages on this site, we expect you’ll discover that Mirex Marketing lives up to the slogan. We can assist your business whether your needs include guerrilla marketing and small-budget solutions, and we have the resources to market more established businesses with larger budgets. We can even help if you’re a start-up and we’ll scale your marketing plan as your business grows. The Mirex Marketing team of experts and certified professionals can assist your business in content creation and advertising placement in any stream of marketing. If guerrilla marketing is the only form of marketing that your business can manage, then the least we could do as an authorized distributor for thousands of printing companies is get your promotional products printed at a competitive price.
Call (480) 744-5919 or use the form below to set up a free consultation.
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