2014 October 11 Archive - EXEIdeas – Let's Your Mind Rock

What’s a business to do when they have a small budget, limited resources and a high level of ambition? Brands, firms and individuals everywhere are accelerating their marketing strategy by uncovering little known, under the radar tactics. But it’s not just with content marketing and the humdrum social media posts. Companies are thinking far outside the box, leveraging social media and other channels with innovative guerrilla marketing strategies.Guerrilla Marketing:Guerrilla marketing is especially becoming more commonplace in today’s business market. A large reason is the looming “content shock” that both threatens and damages a brand’s ability to make a notable impact to their audience. Mark Schaefer, an excellent marketing blogger/author/podcaster is very concerned about content production overload. Even those who genuinely care about marketing are feeling the heat.In a series of posts at his highly popular Grow blog, he forecasts the tipping point is closer than what we think: a point where the demand of content is met with an overwhelming supply of words being shoved in front of a consumer’s face. With so much content available, what kind of impact will it truly make? If content creators aren’t as effective as before, it becomes more expensive for them to produce better content.Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns:Enter guerrilla marketing campaigns. More and more small businesses are finding success by creatively engaging their audience with creative coupons, contests and purely entertaining offers. Before the iPhone 6 was launched worldwide, Smart Company told us about Australian e-commerce business Alphatise already attracting worldwide headlines by scoring the first two spots in the queue for the new gadget. Coincidence or publicity? Paul Pearson, chief executive of Alphatise says that joining the queue is “a publicity stunt at the end of the day”Honest Tea launched a guerrilla marketing campaign highlighting its annual “Most Honest Cities” list. The criteria? Post hundreds of Honest Tea bottles on unmanned kiosks in a high trafficked area in major cities. Through digital tracking, Honest Tea monitors who is actually paying for the beverages and who isn’t. Is this a reliable study on national honesty? Not quite. To many marketing insiders, this is a shrewd piece of marketing aimed to get attention on a national level.Getting Started With A Guerrilla Marketing:Getting started with a guerrilla marketing campaign doesn’t have to include unmanned kiosks and hacking a queue. But you will need to amplify your content if you wish to stand a chance in the guerrilla marketing jungle. Savvy companies are reworking their content marketing strategies and ensuring that every piece of content – whether it’s a tweet, a blog or a video – is timely, and attracts engagement.Thinking about your brand/company/product and what you want it to be linked to is a critical step to take when entering the guerrilla marketing zone. Don’t settle on just one platform, but integrate a number of platforms to allow your consumer to interact with you through social media, and other mediums. And of course, make sure you measure your marketing with numbers. Because as marketing expert Dan Zarella always says, “Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”About the Author:Russel Cooke is a business writer and consultant who lives in Los Angeles, CA. You can read more of his work HERE.Find Me On GooglePlus | Facebook | Twitter