Guerilla Marketing – Competitions and Postcards
Postcards
The success of this approach will vary depending on your location and your target audience. Ok, people may not have a habit of sending postcards to friends and family that advertise finance or bread cakes: instead, they often turn to humour or scenery, so why not give it to them.
If your business is situated in/near tourist locations such as London, Coastal areas, etc, you could sell postcards at local shops that advertise your business. The postcard may have a humorous picture/message or scenery, but at the same time acknowledge your business by including your details in the corner or on the back, etc.
At the same time, you have to think whether the people receiving the postcard are part of your target audience.
For example, somebody receiving a postcard living 100 miles away would not be beneficial to a local baker. On the other hand, on-line businesses may have an advantage as they can be accessed from any location.
Competitions
Similar to freebies, competitions can attract a large response (depending on the prize) and can get yourself talked about. Offer them something that they would want, obviously not a £30,000 sports car or luxury Spanish villa, but something along the lines of a weekend break for two in London, £100 voucher, family ticket to Alton towers, etc.
Offer a prize draw, or make it fun by getting them to answer a few simple (or hard) questions, etc: making your competition original or fun is more likely to get a higher response.
You may decide to make the competition available to all or alternatively, only to those that spend, say, more than £50 in your shop, sign up for an account, subscribe to your on-line newsletter, etc.
However you decide to offer the competition, anticipate the likely response as the administration could be enough to affect your business performance during the time.
Pubs, Clubs and Restaurants
If you are good friends with the people that own the local pub, restaurant, social club, hotel, etc, would they do you a favour by allowing you to leave your business cards/leaflets for people to take at will. If the function has relevance to your business, they may even allow poster advertising, but don’t be surprised if they ask for some sort of fee.
Courtesy and Follow Up Calls
It is a fact that businesses lose customers because they do not pay them enough attention. Once a customer has made a purchase from your business, the aim is to get them back again and again. Research has shown that the cost of selling to a new customer is five times more th an selling to an existing customer.
It’s fair to say that it is hard to track all customers because you may not have their contact details. For those that you do have contact details, send them a compliments slip or give them a phone call asking them if they are happy with their purchase and if you can offer any further assistance. This should be done within, say, the first 30 days after the sale and then perhaps every 60 days after, until you have reason to believe that the customer has no real intentions of making a repeat sale.
The idea is to develop a relationship that will make the customer feel valued and consequently, start to make repeat sales with your business: gaining their trust and respect is very important. Your image for good customer care will soon be absor bed into the public.
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