160740 Resource 149176 155860 149257 1173116752976 1173285844200 Controlled Guerilla Marketing and Small Business, Part 4

Use unique marketing techniques to improve company visibility, gain customers and increase profits

In this series we’re taking a look at the ways you, as a small business, might use guerilla marketing tactics to work in your favor. In the final part of this series, we’ll take a look at more specific examples that might be appropriate for your business. You might want to: Consider website co-branding. Identifying your professional and personal network of other businesses is the first part of figuring out who you might partner with on your website. For example, if you are in the sporting goods industry and you work continuously with special events firms or equipment manufacturers, then their websites would be excellent links for your website. You can identify a group of businesses to link together in a way that would focus on providing value, not just advertisements. This could be in the form of suggestions, tips or customer success stories that reflect the value of your business, industry or field of expertise. Organize lunch and learns. No matter what kind of business you have, you offer some type of value that others could benefit from. On top of that, it’s hard to find a business with employees that don’t love to eat. So combine the two, and you have a lunch and learn. It’s a simple, effective way to share your area of expertise with a captive audience. You will need to approach this from an educational perspective, and not as a chance to sell something - save that for follow-up conversations. Your best contact at your targeted business is the office manager. Many times the office will actually provide the lunch if you provide the presentation. You can work in some signage during the event, have take-home packets at hand, and collect business cards at the end of the session from anyone with further questions. Guarantee a personal callback or follow-up of information, and hopefully walk away with good leads and potential business. Volunteer for dirty jobs. Consider participating in local meetings, trade groups and community events by doing what no one else wants to do. Volunteer on committees, and dedicate yourself to digging in, even if you’re stuck on the clean-up committee. You’ll gain a reputation as being reliable and dedicated, and you will increase your visibility. Once you get your foot in the door with the right group of people, you will develop relationships and find opportunities to work with these professionals in other capacities. This can all lead to better business for you. Guerilla marketing techniques are sometimes simple, and they usually just take some creative time and energy on your part. If done well, these techniques can help solidify your professional image and lead to bigger things for your business and yourself. 10 application/xml false company visibility gain customers guerilla marketing improve company visibility increase profits marketing techniques small business unique marketing techniques Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 cmalmstrom false true false false true 189572 false false true false false false true 149176 blog blogsite/FreedomVoice/web