In the hit TV show Mad Men, a company low on marketing funds, but with a great marketing strategy, stages a fight between two shoppers, keen to get their hands on the last tinned ham in the store. The ruse is a success and sales sky rocket.
You don’t need to spend a fortune to make a marketing splash
At the same time, a millionaire playboy with seemingly unlimited funds throws money at marketing a sport called jai alai. This marketing strategy involves TV specials and mass marketing in print, radio and TV. The strategy is a disaster and the playboy winds up taking his business elsewhere to try again.
The message that is clear from those two examples, though they are largely fictional, is that you do not need an astronomic marketing budget to make a splash. What you do need is clever and innovative marketing strategies that will appeal to your target audience.
One method that you could explore is utilising the internet. After all, costs can be low, there are no leaflets and flyers to reproduce and the market is potentially global. Email campaigns, social media presence and online special offers are all things that you should consider.
The main downside of an internet marketing strategy is also one of the main plus points; that is, that the internet is global. While it is exciting that you can potentially reach customers all over the world, with so much information being shared online every day, you may find that you are missing your key target audience.
In that case, a more focused campaign is needed. A tight, sharp marketing campaign involves a lot of planning, but it is the planning that will save you money and bring in the customers. Subscribe to industry newsletters, attend every event that you can, look at what your direct and indirect competitors are doing and spend as much time as is practical thinking about who you want as your customer and how you are going to target them.
Using corporate promotional gifts to reach your potential customers is a clever marketing strategy to operate on a restrained budget. Gifts can be sent directly to the potential customers, they can be left behind by your representatives after meetings and they can be given away as free gifts at exhibitions. Think about the type of corporate promotional gifts you think best suits your business (for example, if your business is in the IT sector, you should consider promotional USB flash drives) and choose gifts that allow space for branding.
So, as you can see, you don’t need to spend a fortune on a specific marketing strategy. Jai Alai was in fact a real sport, which was televised heavily in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite the marketing dollars that were directed towards it, the sport’s popularity waned to the point that many people have never even heard of it!
photo by: markanos
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