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I have seen so many ways and to me, one of the coolest ways is using customized Post It Notes to promote. Have anybody seen anything else unique (that's not expensive) to do?
And for those who may have (a problem with) this idea; it works for many people and it is a godsend. So, some people will ball it up and toss/throw it away..but it keeps you from feeling rejection (trying to awkwardly hand info directly to someone) and it weeds out the ones who want what you have to sell from the one's who don't. I'd personally rather spend 2 hours in a mall parking lot doing this (and getting hits to my site and sales) than seeing a flyer laying on the ground or tossed into the trash.
I have seen so many ways and to me, one of the coolest ways is using customized Post It Notes to promote. Have anybody seen anything else unique (that's not expensive) to do?
And for those who may have (a problem with) this idea; it works for many people and it is a godsend. So, some people will ball it up and toss/throw it away..but it keeps you from feeling rejection (trying to awkwardly hand info directly to someone) and it weeds out the ones who want what you have to sell from the one's who don't. I'd personally rather spend 2 hours in a mall parking lot doing this (and getting hits to my site and sales) than seeing a flyer laying on the ground or tossed into the trash.
Our business is very geographically dependent so many forms of advertising does not work. We have not had much luck with traditional forms of advertising. Most of our customers drive by our location so we have found that good signage is extremely important, as well as banners to catch people's eye. Other than that, word of mouth and referrals is our bread and butter, which of course, comes from providing the most incredible customer service imaginable.
Our business is very geographically dependent so many forms of advertising does not work. We have not had much luck with traditional forms of advertising. Most of our customers drive by our location so we have found that good signage is extremely important, as well as banners to catch people's eye. Other than that, word of mouth and referrals is our bread and butter, which of course, comes from providing the most incredible customer service imaginable.
20yrsinbranson
Have you tried getting FREE advertising? Having a local media story done? They reach a ton of people who would never know about your business! The news stations love coming out and doing stories on local businesses, letting their viewers know about a business they never knew existed! And you'll find potential new customers calling in to inquire, going to your website to buy or coming through your door to meet you!
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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It depends on the type of business. When I had my graphics/sign business I discovered that the yellow pages ads were a total waste of money, and was spending close to $1,500 a month on them. Back then in the early 90s people actually used the book, but businesses would always ask around and 80% of my new customers were from referrals. The other things that worked well were lettering on the shop truck, parked on the street in front or at location on installations, and the website after I built up the hits on search engines. I always asked a new customer how they found out about me, which is a great way to see if your advertising is working.
I have seen so many ways and to me, one of the coolest ways is using customized Post It Notes to promote. Have anybody seen anything else unique (that's not expensive) to do?
Good topic! I vote for using anything that gets the word out. A great thing to remember when trying to come up with innovative advertising methods is to try and make it automated. So that you can invest your time once and it keeps working for you when you move on to something else.
Have you tried getting FREE advertising? Having a local media story done? They reach a ton of people who would never know about your business! The news stations love coming out and doing stories on local businesses, letting their viewers know about a business they never knew existed! And you'll find potential new customers calling in to inquire, going to your website to buy or coming through your door to meet you!
There's no such thing as free. Yes, the local news outlet will come out and do a story for you. Once. But if you're not buying air time, sponsorships and the whatnot, their enthusiasm will want pretty quickly.
The other thing is that you actually have to have a product or service or angle that's interesting enough for them to want to cover it. News departments are inundated with seriously lame press releases and flooded with phone calls by people wanting exactly the kind of coverage you want. 95% of these get ignored.
Best bet for this kind of publicity? Hire a decent public relations person to pitch your story.
I have seen so many ways and to me, one of the coolest ways is using customized Post It Notes to promote. Have anybody seen anything else unique (that's not expensive) to do?
And for those who may have (a problem with) this idea; it works for many people and it is a godsend. So, some people will ball it up and toss/throw it away..but it keeps you from feeling rejection (trying to awkwardly hand info directly to someone) and it weeds out the ones who want what you have to sell from the one's who don't. I'd personally rather spend 2 hours in a mall parking lot doing this (and getting hits to my site and sales) than seeing a flyer laying on the ground or tossed into the trash.
First thing's first. There are a zillion variables to consider based on what you sell, who is your likely buyer, and what your budget is. You wouldn't use Post-It notes to market a funeral home. And you wouldn't use a television campaign to market a very B2B product, for 99.9% of your advertising dollar would be wasted.
Second, it is crucial to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. Developing a unique positioning for your company and consistently flogging that message through deliberately chosen media choices over a prolonged period of time is a strategy. Arbitrarily picking one tactic such as a post-it and pinning all your hopes on that is a tactic. For repetition of message matters a great deal.
Third, you want to make sure that a) you understand what your sales objectives are and b) you develop a realistic marketing budget based on that. If you are aiming for $1,000,000 in sales and randomly allotted a $500 budget, then I would advise you to take that money to Vegas and put it all on noir at the craps table. Your odds will be significantly better. And when you look at costs, think in terms of number of prospects and potential dollar sale for each customer. For example, I'm working on a project where the total national market for this product is roughly 500 decision makers. Yet the dollar sale for each is in the hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of dollars. Think I'm going to send those prospects a post card? Hell no. We're going to do a customized mailer that's going to knock their socks off. The unit cost will be roughly $200 per impression. But one new client will pay the cost of this hundreds of times over.
Fourth, have a detailed plan. Know in February what messages will be hitting the market in October. Having a full-blown plan confers enormous benefits in terms of enjoying economies of scale on your media buy and not being caught by surprise in terms of budgeting.
Fifth, have a true brand. The best definition of a brand I've heard is that it is "A promise to the marketplace." What do you promise your market that no one else can? If you have fifty competitors saying about the same thing, then you really don't have a unique brand. You're just another person saying Me Too.
The worst example of this on the small-business end of things are real estate agents. It's as if they all went to the same basic seminar on marketing themselves. So they hustle down to some place that specialize in glamour shots and then plaster their images on bus stops and billboards, never realizing how creepy it makes them look. So rather than looking like trained professionals able to help someone complete a very important transaction, they come off looking like an escort trolling for convention goers. Think about that for a second. If someone is hiring you because of your photo, what kind of client do you have on your hands?
Sixth, think programmatically. Don't just have an ad. Think about the entire customer experience from the time they pick up the phone to their experience with the product or service long after the transaction is complete. How do you keep up this dialog on an ongoing basis? If you were selling something as basic as window washing, how do you incentivize the customer to keep coming back to you month after month?
Seventh, realize that it's a shifting landscape at all times. By and large, the Yellow Pages are picked up and immediately tossed into the recycling bin by anyone under age 50. They are the most useless form of advertising around today. The phone companies would have long ago stopped printing them if state government's public service commissions didn't require them to do so. Outside of national papers such as USA Today or the Wall Street Journal, newspapers are on the respirator. Pandora and iPods have pretty much ruined local radio unless it's talk radio or a station with some really boffo programming. Televisions have DVRs that allow you to burn past the TV spots, so unless you're on programs that people want to watch live such as sports or something like Dancing With The Stars, you could wind up being the victim of the fast forward button. So you really need to think in terms of raw effectiveness, not just blithely call up the newspaper and put your ad in.
Eighth, don't make people mad. Flyers on windshields is a guaranteed way to tick people off. Telemarketing is another. Sketchy claims are another. And, for God's sake, deliver what you promise. There's an adage in the business: "Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising."
This post could literally go on for 20,000 words and still not scratch the surface. But I hope it helps you.
Ours is a b2b venture in a very small segment/niche of our industry. Most traditional marketing methods would be a waste of money. The only paid advertising we do is with google adwords, and the rest of our new business comes by word of mouth.
We're fortunate that we can do well with doing very little in the way of marketing - our budget (adwords) is $30-60/month, and we get that back many times over.
Ours is a b2b venture in a very small segment/niche of our industry. Most traditional marketing methods would be a waste of money. The only paid advertising we do is with google adwords, and the rest of our new business comes by word of mouth.
We're fortunate that we can do well with doing very little in the way of marketing - our budget (adwords) is $30-60/month, and we get that back many times over.
Here's another tactic to consider, given what a small universe of prospects you have. I think with content becoming so vital, LinkedIn and its various discussion groups is a very powerful tool. I have some B2B clients with whom I have developed programs that allow its various reps to respond to questions posed in industry-centered groups. This allows them to position themselves as authorities in their industry, and provides the potential for future dialog. Small investment of time, often with very large returns.
This post could literally go on for 20,000 words and still not scratch the surface. But I hope it helps you.
Yes it could but still it was a good one. Thanks.
One thing I want to mention is that your post talks to bigger budgets and more mature businesses. A start up might pivot three times in five years. Many times after three years it isn't even doing anything near what it started out doing.
So investing a big budget in analysis for tweaking out another 1% response isn't for the start up. A start up needs to be very creative just like the OP was with her post it notes idea. When a biz grows it begins to find that some advertising techniques can provide "low cost" leads. In other words it's much better to have a different person personally handle every single account. But it comes down to what you can afford.
Nice post and this is a nice discussion. Good to see!
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Have anybody seen anything else unique (that's not expensive) to do? 
