Greathouse of Marketing

Guerrilla Marketing: Offbeat tactics geared to generate buzz and are a lot of fun.  From walking around town, handing out free samples of your Italian restaurant’s meatballs, to leaving a sidewalk spray chalk trail leading to your business.  Sidewalk spray chalk; a washable spray paint, that when joined with a stencil, can deliver a message displayed in high-foot-traffic areas. Possible uses: roads, sidewalks, parking lots, side of buildings or even in sand and snow.  Some ideas for the message: arrows pointing to your business or leaving a trail, a memorable rhyme or simple marketing message advertising your biz.

Another example: do something a bit outrageous, but simple: watch some of the vid below: too many colons.  That is pretty cool.  An iphone is glued to the pavement!  Now that is definitely different and gets people to stop.  You could even make your own video, documenting your guerrilla marketing and develop a viral aspect and put it your Facebook, site, blog, YouTube.  This is particularly risky, considering someone could easily trip over the glued phone.  I would recommend a less risky alternative, like gluing the phone to a counter, wall or ceiling.  Just an example to get you thinking about some guerrilla tactics your business could try out.

Referral Engine: Get people to refer your business.  First, by caring; providing great customer service and that extra bit of effort, because you genuinely want to help people, creates authenticity or trustworthiness.  People remember and will openly refer remarkable, honest businesses. Going through the motions benefits no one.  I’m looking at you, boring hostess at Olive Garden. Rally the troops, everyone in the business has to be in on the plan, Olive Garden manager. (I’m just using OG as an example, I haven’t witnessed any underperforming staff).  Remember this: a friend’s recommendation carries much more credibility than any advertisement or TV commercial. 

Word of mouth is the most powerful of all the marketing tools, that’s why referral is so important. Plus, the result of a implementing a notable business is you have in turn tuned your business to run at optimal levels of performance.  When this happens “a prospect is presold by a happy customer, the process of making a deal and deciding on a price is a pretty short one”- Referral Engine by John Jantsch. 

Second, it’s okay to express to customers you welcome referrals. In fact, you should build a system of processes into your business.  This is actually a good litmus test in confirming whether or not the products/services that a business provides is worth recommending.  Why?  Because if the business owner does not have the faith to do so then why would anyone else.  Make some changes if necessary.

We'll elaborate on referral techniques in a later post, because there is so much a business can do to generate referrals.