More Guerilla Marketing Tricks for Small Businesses

Our original Great Guerilla Marketing Tricks for Small Businesses article was so popular that you asked for even more. The good news is we’ve agreed to publish another five. Use these great tips and tricks to help your business survive and thrive through the credit crunch.

1. Publicity Stunt

There are few better ways to attract free publicity and media coverage than a really creative public stunt or activity. The rule here is to make sure it is interesting, original and attention-grabbing. Then, make sure you let everyone you can think of know about it before it happens. Tell them exactly where and when it’s happening and make sure your branding, telephone number or website address is clearly visible throughout the event.

2. Run a Competition

Everyone loves to win stuff! Why not get together with a popular website like, say, inplymouth.com and offer a prize or two in exchange for some free publicity? It’s a great way to promote your products to a wide local audience and surprisingly easy. Prizes can be anything from an object to an experience or service. Hotels, why not offer an off-season weekend break for two? Shops, you could put up almost anything: DVDs, gadgets and kitchenware are just some ideas that will get attention.

3. Run a Series of Lightning Sales

This is a great guerilla marketing technique for retailers. It can be a really powerful way to drive sales of specific items. It can also be used to excite interest in new lines. Announce 20% off everything for the next hour only and see how quickly a queue forms at your till! Stand outside the shop and shout out “50% off plasma screen TVs for the next 20 minutes!!” and find out how quickly your shop fills up. The customers you attract will stay for longer than 20 minutes and if you’ve any sales technique at all, you’ll up-sell to most of them. This technique can be used really effectively online too.

4. Optimise Your Website

It’s no good having a website if no-one knows it’s there. If the key search engines don’t have it listed, or don’t rank it high enough in their listings, you will definitely be losing out on business. You can cure this by talking to your web designers and asking them about Search Engine Optimisation. But here’s a warning: to do it well can cost a bit. Yet if you don’t do it, what’s the point of having a website at all? If you do it well, the new business it attracts could pay for it several times over. The rule? Don’t be too cheap to do it properly.

5. Improve Your Website

Your website is not just something that you can build and forget about. There are a millions of websites on the internet and the vast majority are at best mediocre. Only the best and worst stand out these days. All websites benefit from regular review and updating, yet so few get this treatment. Here are some guidelines to improving your site. Firstly, improve and simplify the navigation,  review your copywriting, and then maybe ask Design Inspiration for some recommendations that you can take to your web designer.