Regardless of size, marketing is an essential activity that a company must do to remain competitive and productive. Pursuing these promotional tactics is not only impractical for a small company but can also hurt its earning potential. Then again, a marketing campaign does not have to be capital-intensive to be effective. All it needs is a bountiful amount of creativity and resourcefulness. This is the idea behind guerrilla marketing.
This marketing tactic promotes a good or service by infusing their campaigns with the element of surprise or make use of interactions that consumers might think is unconventional. The main disparity between guerilla marketing to its more traditional counterparts is that it is not capital-intensive. Instead, it puts emphasis on investing time, energy, and imagination. Guerrilla marketing has a high level of interactivity, and campaigns designed in such methodology are often aimed at individuals or small groups. Guerilla marketing cannot be applied to all products though. In general, such strategy is used for “edgier” goods and services, and usually with younger consumers in mind since the said cohort is more likely to respond positively.
There are various guerrilla marketing techniques you can employ for your own small-scale company. One would be viral marketing which takes advantage of the high traffic and pass-along rate of social networking platforms to introduce or bring attention to a particular product or business. Advertising material using this technique can be delivered via word-of-mouth communication or through sharing of different media, like video clips, online.
Some small companies may benefit from doing live-in marketing campaigns as well. This activity involves handing out samplers of your store’s offerings to old and new customers with the intent of establishing or strengthening client’s relationship to the brand. One could think of this tactic as similar to product placement in film and TV, only it is done in real life. This tactic draws heavily from researches which assert that allowing consumers to experience a product beforehand will leave them with a positive impression and make them more likely to purchase it in the future as well as tell their friends and family about the encounter.
Another inexpensive guerrilla marketing technique you can employ is tissue-pack or napkins to promote a product. As the term suggests, it makes use of personalized napkins to deliver advertising material. The use of customized napkins for marketing purposes started in Japan, and promoters usually hand out these customized napkins in high-traffic areas, the subway station for instance.
One of the great things about using customized napkins is that they are more effective at delivering the message. Unlike flyers which are tossed into the nearest trash bin most of the time, personalized napkins are kept by consumers. By keeping the napkin, the one who has them will have continued exposure to the advertising material printed on them, consequently improving brand retention.