Here are the first 2 of 24 tips that can propel spring growth in 2017.
When it comes to marketing the game seems to have shifted almost exclusively online. However even with the best website ranking naturally is going to take some time. Buying clicks, whether it is Adwords, Facebook, or Yelp, gets expensive fast for many startups. One often over looked solution for startup companies is Guerrilla Marketing. Guerrilla Marketing is when you use your passion, creativity, and time to generate business.
One of my favorite forms of Guerrilla Marketing was to form partnerships with non-compete businesses that service the same clients. I would look for other places that basically sell free time for money. Some examples are meal preparation services, day cares, dog day cares, dry cleaners, and lawn care companies. All of these are businesses that serve the same client that has more money than free time, but they are not direct competitors. For example, I do an annual Mother’s Day promotion with a local meal preparation service. For $150, consumers can buy $150 of home cleaning and a pre-made Raspberry French Toast, which just needs to be put into the oven for 10 minutes. The local meal preparation service provides these to me for free. The only catch is the customers have to pick them up from the meal preparation service, which works for me since I am low on freezer space in my office. This gives this company a way to show what they do to new consumers; it gives me a free premium to make my gift certificates more than just a card. It is a win/win for both businesses. We both promote it to our email lists, so I also get exposure to their consumers. We have done this same promotion for 5 years and we always sell a ton of these. In other cases we just trade our services. We had a local dry cleaner that attached a coupon for our service on every article of clothing that left his business. In return we cleaned his home once a month.
These are just a couple of examples of how Guerrilla Marketing can grow your business. There are many more ways. I am going to share 24 more at the Spring Growth 2017 conference in Indianapolis on Saturday, April 8th.
Derek Christian is founder and owner of My Maid Service, Cincinnati’s largest, independent professional cleaning company. Prior to that, he spent twelve years at P&G working on household cleaning products. Derek is Co-publisher and Director of Business Development & Sales for Cleaning Business Today, and a partner in Cleaning Business Builders.
