Guerrilla Marketing: step one

successful marketing in a recession often relies more on hard work and wits than a big advertising budget. You can build sales, despite the recession, if you start by paying attention to the people most likely to shop at your store. And, for many businesses, those people are the ones who live within a mile or so of your store.

In nearly every neighborhood, there are hundreds of opportunities to generate low cost or no cost sales promotions. All it take is a little time to get out of your store and circulate in your community. By focusing your efforts in the geographic area from which you pull the vast majority of your customers, you can zero in on potentially overlooked customers right in your own back yard.

But, don't just casually stroll through your neighborhood. Take time to observe and really study the geographic landscape of your surroundings. Whether you are the owner or manager of a single store, or supervise several locations, you can benefit from mapping out the area around your stores to make informed decisions about your local sales promotion strategies.

Start by creating a map of your store's geographic location. Include all main arterials, surface streets, businesses, schools, churches, retail centers, civic offices and so on. Work to create an intimate understanding of what's in your community. How many banks are there, how many schools? How many ice cream shops, how many places serve lunch? Study the landscape and see what you can learn about where people are going and at what time. Are there potential cross-promotion partners out there? Perhaps an auto body shop, post office or transit center would make sense. Or perhaps a local video store or dry cleaner. These are the observations you can use as a means of sculpting a plan. The better you know your neighborhood, the better you'll be equipped to spot opportunities.

Getting involved in your community and getting to know the various business owners out there will make it much easier to develop relationships that can take on many forms. As you survey the territory around you, stop in and say hello to the managers and operators in your community. Introduce yourself, stay for coffee, share a little about your current business and ask them about their recent hurdles or successes. In all, develop a rapport so that you can use this network to further your local store marketing efforts. The following ideas are just some of the possibilities.

Develop a promotion involving a local school or college. Demonstrate your product for a class or offer a discount to students through their campus newspaper.

Establish tie-ins with community stores. Offer to distribute their brochures if they'll distribute your brochures or coupons.

Provide a special "discount card" for employees of large-size businesses in your area.

Post your own sign or circular on local bulletin boards at supermarkets, schools, churches, businesses and clubs.

Offer your product, if it fits, to local charities as part of their fund-raising efforts.

Distribute or display your product at a high profile community events, such as concerts, street fairs or sporting events.

Make special offers with mailings to clubs or organizations in the area.

Create a special offer during narrow times of the day when you notice increased traffic, and promote it with window signs or sandwich boards.

The more people who get to know you personally, the more loyal customers you will see. Your community will appreciate any support you can give, and will extend their loyalty to your business relative to the time you devote to cultivating your community relations.

Increasing sales in a recession

It's true that some business categories and products actually experience an increase in sales during a recession. Those products usually represent a lower cost alternative to an otherwise routine buying decision. Some examples include beer as opposed to wine and spirits, fast food as opposed to sit down dining and second hand store sales as opposed to new products whose usefulness isn't significantly reduced by being used, such as books.

On the other hand, the harsh reality for most businesses today is that creating sales is a bona fide problem, requiring all the resourcefulness and ingenuity the entrepreneur can muster. It has been said that the new "up" is "flat".

There is actually some truth to that. But, a businessman should not aim for flat, even in a devastating economy such as we are experiencing.

Today, businesses have more marketing tools in their tool box than ever before. Of course, there are two sides to that coin. On one hand, more options means you can customize a plan more accurately than ever before. On the other hand, there are so many choices and combinations, it could take months or years and untold thousands of dollars before you figure it out.

Here are a few tips to help narrow your decisions.

1. MEDIA IS A GENUINE BARGAIN RIGHT NOW. Media is priced as a result of two factors: number the people reached and demand. Here is the paradox of a recession. There are more people home watching TV, listening to the radio and paying attention to media because they are not going out as often. Yet, advertisers have cut back so much that the media is in the midst of a discounting war just to get advertisers. The result is that you get more viewers for less money.

Our agency has been able to negotiate huge discounts and other added value for clients who use TV, radio and print. These days, you can even snag some prime time slots that normally sell for thousands for as little as a few hundred dollars.

This takes more money than time. But, the rewards can be great, and the value will never be better.

2. Interactive and social marketing is relatively inexpensive and highly targeted. Coordinating your e-mail program with your web site, optimization, blog, twitter, You Tube, Facebook and other applications can have a measurable impact on sales.

This takes more time than money. And, the learning curve will be a quite a bit longer to get it right, both technically and strategically. It's tempting to try this stuff yourself, but if you want to jump start your results, hire someone who knows what they're doing to do it for you.

3. Good old fashioned guerrilla marketing has not and will never become extinct. It has been our experience that the most successful businesses are those who layer on a guerrilla marketing strategy to whatever else they might be doing. There are hundreds of tactics from cross promoting with another business to neighborhood door hangers to tricks with signage that can increase foot traffic as much as 30%.

This takes more time than money. And, you probably already know some of the things you can do. It will take longer to drive sales if this is the only strategy you use.

Figuring out the right strategic mix and what message resonates best with your target audience can and will drive sales. One of our clients, a Sacramento sit down restaurant chain, saw a 24.5% increase in sales this January as a direct result of marketing. A recession is not the end of the world. Business is still out there. You just have to work a little more strategically to increase your share.