Guerilla Marketing Ideas
Written By Tom Howard.
After buying a company, usually you would love to have more leads at low to no cost. When I first bought Lee’s, I had almost no marketing budget and had to figure out a way to make things work. That drove me to figure out creative marketing ideas. Here are a few of them that helped me:
Facebook Hack - I noticed that one of the local high school girls softball teams was sitting in the dugout while their team was up to bat. A few were on their phones during the inning. I looked around and many of the parents were as well. I didn’t know for sure but I imagined that they were most likely on Facebook. I talked to the coach and said that I would donate a dollar or two (I can’t remember how much it was) to the softball team for every like we got on our facebook page in a given month. Granted, we would have gotten a few likes without them but I was willing to take that as part of the cost because I couldn’t track where the likes came from. The girls and their parents went nuts telling all their friends and coworkers and everyone else about it. We got several hundred likes in a matter of days. I do remember that the donation to the team was around 700 dollars. We were also able to secure a suite at the local triple A ballpark that we donated to them for a night to use for their team to watch some baseball and they all took pics and posted them while thanking us. It worked out for them and worked out for us.
Yard sign drawing - I went to a conference and met a guy that claimed that he had several hundred yard signs out in his neighborhood. I was highly skeptical because when we would install an AC unit at a home, the homeowner would keep it out there during the install but then take it down and throw it away a day or two later. How could he possibly get them to keep the signs out there? He gave me this brilliant idea. He has a drawing every month to win 100 dollars. When he is out on an install or a service call, he would ask them if they would like to put a yard sign in their yard in order to get entered into a drawing for 100 dollars. Many would do it. Then, at the end of the month, he would draw a few names and drive around to check on them. If the yard sign was still in the yard, they would win the 100 dollars. If not, then he would drive to the next one. I thought it was brilliant. We added one critical piece which was that we post a picture of us awarding the check every month so they can see on our facebook page that we are legitimately giving the money out. We also added a 5 dollar spiff for the tech for every yard sign they put out. We made a 0 dollar task in ServiceTitan that said “Yard Sign Drawing” that they would put on the invoice for anyone that took a yard sign. You can also add a form in ServiceTitan that requires a picture of the yard sign to prove that it happened. In our first month doing this, we put out 120 yard signs and generated 24,000 dollars in revenue from them. I was shocked.
Social Media Posts - Do NOT post random pictures of installs that you have done and how nice that they look to you. No one wants to see that except maybe people that are in the trades and most of the time, if they are looking at it, its to see if you did your job properly. Post things that are relevant to them and their community. Remember that on social media, its generally about getting brand recognition and usually not about trying to get a sale right then. So, as long as you can gain positive interest and have your logo on it somewhere, then you are accomplishing your goal. Our most viral post got millions of views. It was a video that we posted on instagram and facebook. It simply had someone walking around the office asking people what they like to set their thermostat to. It sparked a big debate on what it should be set to. There were thousands of comments saying 68 or 72 but then there were a ton of jokes being made about those set points. Almost every shot in the video had someone in an employee uniform with our logo and obviously our logo is on the profile picture as well. Posting things about local events such as soccer games, half marathon fundraisers, or something at the local dog shelter are all things that people are interested in and will like and share.
