If you have a business with any public space are you using it to your fullest benefit?

I walk past the same businesses every day I take the train downtown. What continues to surprise me is that these businesses have great advertising real estate (front windows and doors, exterior walls, signage placards) that they are not utilizing. If you have a retail or office location that has ANY public traffic you should be utilizing it.

Digital signage displays are the easiest to maintain (no need to manually change out signs every day, week, etc) and offer a lot more attention grab for your buck. Digital signage options are varied, and include kiosks, point of sale, ambient, or informational.

Digital signage is affordable too. Considering that the images, advertisements and information can be Continue Reading »

Traditional advertising – television, news print, magazines, radio – is still heavily utilized by many large corporations.  Even small businesses can utilize these forms of advertising on a small local level.  I’ve looked into advertising my own business in a new local newspaper, The Afternoon Buzz.  However, after a Google search for SLC (Salt Lake City) Buzz turned up no immediate results I had to really dig in with my super power searching abilities before I could find their website.  It was so laborious that it actually took about 1 minute to find, versus the 5 seconds it should have taken.  Oh, pampered world that I live in…

Traditional advertising is still a great way to market your products or services, if you have a lot of money.  If your advertising budget is under $1000 a month though, then you may need to look at Guerrilla Marketing as your primary marketing source.  Guerrilla Marketing is an unconventional system of product/service promotions on a low budget.  It includes techniques such as viral or ambient distribution, text message advertising, or tissue-pack advertising – all discussed more fully below.

What is the benefit of using Guerrilla Marketing?

Simply put, the TEXT GENeration is no longer watching, listening too or reading traditional advertising.  With the advent of Tivo, internet video streaming, downloadable mp3 content, etc. there are fewer and fewer opportunities for businesses to target this age group with traditional advertising.

Guerrilla Marketing makes use of the technologies that are destroying traditional advertising in a way that covertly inundates the TEXT GENeration with even more advertisements!

Tissue-pack marketing: Some of the earliest examples of Guerrilla Marketing date back to the late 1960s, where Japanese shop keepers would distribute free tissue packs to people that passed by their store fronts.  On the tissue packs were advertisements!  Early on this received a lot of criticism for being high cost and low effect.  However, now this holds a sizable share of the advertising market in Japan, where 4 billion tissue packs are distributed annually.  Because people are out of the home more, and thus seeing less traditional advertising, tissue-pack marketing aims to fill the void of advertising in your purse or briefcase.  As such, it capitalizes on valuable advertising space that traditional advertising techniques can’t touch.

Viral Distribution: Teens are spending more time than ever away from home.  Teens don’t pick up newspapers or magazines much, and so traditional advertising is not able to target this high prized market segment.  Teens always manage to check their social networking pages, their email, and their text messages though.  Viral distribution marketing puts ads with YouTube videos that get shared on teen social networking pages and through email linkage.  Viral distribution marketing also joins forces with TEXT GEN popular social networking sites directly, to distribute ad content.

Ambient Distribution: This marketing form capitalizes on the fact that people are very visual learners.  People see things and then think about what they see.  When something they see seems out of place they think about it even more.  If a business can get prospective consumers to think about their brands, products or services then they have made a very successful advertising impression.  Lately, all the bananas at the local Smiths Marketplaces have had Jamba Juice stickers on them.  I have been used to seeing the Dole brand on them, so I thought about it!  While this was a new experience for me, it seems to be a trick utilized for quite some time.  Back in 1999 Ask Jeeves ran a huge campaign where they put their stickers on more than 15 million apples!

Text Message Advertising: Text message advertising, a favorite of Projective Marketing, the firm where I now work, is quickly catching on with the TEXT GENeration.  The TEXT GEN always has their cell phones with them and so why not capitalize on that “in the pocket” billboard space?

Some say it would lead to a barrage of unwanted SPAM being sent to phones.  This fear is warranted, but unlikely.  When Projective Marketing decided to jump into the text message marketing game it had to go straight to cell phone company aggregators (the guys who route the text messages) with very specific details about how each advertising campaign would work.  Unlike email, text messages are highly regulated and the chance that we will ever see SPAM proliferation is unlikely.

With text message advertising businesses can put a specific high powered call to action in their menus, marketing collateral, billboards, etc.  For example, one Projective Marketing client in the Seattle area wanted to advertise their coffee shop with text message advertising.  Everywhere they put an ad (billboards, etc.) they used the simple call to action “Text ‘COFFEE’ to 32075 for a 50% off coupon on your next coffee!”  When people texted in the coupon was sent to their phone.  This is a highly effective means of advertising because each time the person would scroll through their text messages they would see this ad (repeat impressions) and think about the coffee shop again!

The reason why is most eloquently illustrated by the 19th century philosopher and author, Henry David Thoreau:

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers (railroad ties) are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. We do not drive our cars; they drive us.  We do not direct the traffic of our own lives; it directs us.

Such is the case for 99% of people today.  People purchase a certain Cola over another (Coke vs. Pepsi) because it tastes better.  People purchase the more expensive milk because of the trusted label.  Some people even refuse to purchase the generic store brands (Western Family, Krogers, Safeway) because they don’t taste as good.

All of this is made possible by marketing.  When you buy the Nike shoes you are paying for the advertising and sometimes a slightly superior product quality.  Is it worth the extra money?  Usually, no.

• Double blind tests PROVE that people decide the “superior” cola based upon advertising.
• National Milk brands are often bottled in the SAME plants as the generic store brands.  No link on this one, just check it out for yourself next time you are in the dairy section.  Usually by the expiration date their will also be a “plant number”…often the same as the “plant number” on all the competitors bottles too.
• Double blind tests PROVE that people actually prefer generic store brands over national brands.

So, why do I need to know marketing?

Because if you don’t know marketing then it is riding you!  Marketing is everywhere.  Conservative sources estimate that you are inundated by marketing messages several hundred times a day.

As much as I enjoy the writings of Thoreau, I feel like he was a little bit radical in his approach to marketing.  He, like many other philosophers of our day, taught that marketing was unethical because you were teaching people to differentiate items by leading them to believe one item had more value than another, when they were often the same.  While a lot of current philosophers hold stock in this idea, I don’t.  I’m not a philosopher, I’m a marketer.

I’ve been inundated with all the same marketing messages you have, but I’ve made it appoint over the years to make marketing work for me.  I know how to ride the train…and I’m quite enjoying the smooth ride (air cushioned seats).  With the economic downturn it is important that you know how to ride the train too.

Here are a few ways you can make marketing work for you:

• Watch, read and view advertisements sceptically.  When you buy Jello brand gelatin you are buying the advertising.  The powder inside the box of the store brand is the exact same… I promise.
• Reduce your trips to the grocery store.  Make a weekly list of “to buy” items and stick to it.
• When a car leaves the lot it is worth a lot less.  So it is with almost everything.  Don’t be afraid to buy used.  Unless the item has a non-transferable warranty then it is usually worth just as much as it was new… only the price tag has changed.
• Try your own hand at marketing.  Next time your computer needs upgrading sell the old one on Craigslist or another free local classifieds website.  It’s fun, profitable and it helps save the environment.
• Don’t stay late at work.  Don’t work weekends.  If you have to work 60 hour weeks to keep up with the bills then you aren’t leaving time to enjoy the items creating the bills.  If a large house, boat, new car or cell phone is cutting into your rump (through your pocket book) then you need to downsize or eliminate.  Enjoy life.  There are a ton of jobs out there that don’t expect your heart and soul.  Get one of those.

Here are a few ways you can make marketing work for your business:

• Keep up on technology.  The only group of businesses that don’t need to worry about this are those offering services to the dead or nearly dead.  Every business (except old folk or funeral homes) sell products to people that are keeping up on technology. This is not saying you need to splurge and buy a ton of new computers or higher computer programmers.  This is saying that you need to analyze your business and market segment.  If you are relatively savvy with technology then you can self analyze your situation.  If you don’t own a computer, don’t feel comfortable managing your computer and making changes to it or if you haven’t heard of Facebook then you probably need to enlist some help in analyzing your situation.  Ask a neighbor, friend or one of your children to sit down with you and tell you how they use technology every day.  Is there some way you can key in on this to increase your business traffic?
• Get a website. If your business does not have a website then you are losing sales to your competitors who have one.  Today when people want a phone number they often turn to Google or an internet directory.  Phonebooks are dying.  If you need a website you should check out these guys.
• Read this blog.  This blog is dedicated to following and reporting on technological advances in marketing.
• Contact Projective Marketing. I’ve been working with Projective Marketing for the past six months in developing some fresh and very effective ways to market products and ideas Guerrilla style.