In the marketing field, there are thousands of different tactics, strategies, and routes you can take. Whether you’re promoting a retail business, a restaurant, a non-profit, or an event, grassroots marketing can be a powerful tool. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can maximize grassroots marketing tactics to amplify your outreach and visibility.
\1. Make the Most of Social Media
The technological revolution has brought many benefits to the world, but one of the most fascinating developments of recent years has been the advent of social media and its rise in prominence. In the past, brands needed to shell out substantial sums to gain visibility in front of an audience.
Today, smaller brands can get that same visibility on a virtual shoestring budget. The bulk majority of social media tools are free to start and maintain, making it easy and inexpensive to build an audience from your brand. While signing up for the account is free, you still need to work on building your brand image and ensuring that it adheres to the image you want to project and fills the niche you want to fill. That means cultivating your content and regularly updating all of your accounts to gain a following.
If you create content with value, your audience will be compelled to share it with their own networks, expanding your footprint and growing your reach. If you have other brands that align with your market, engaging those brands through social media can be a good way to trade on their existing audience and build a partnership that benefits both parties.
If you’re in need of some guidance to get started with your social media grassroots campaign, SocialMedia.biz has some pointers to help you out.
\2. Let Your Fans Do Your Talking: Merchandize
In the vein of letting your supporters do the outreach for you, merchandizing is a great way to increase visibility. Particularly if you’re a locally oriented business, creating custom apparel for your supporters can put your name and logo in front of an exponentially larger audience. It’s actually much easier than you might think to get branded apparel if you design custom sweatshirts, hoodies, and t-shirts from a site like RushOrderTees.com.
Perhaps the best part of merchandizing is that it does double the work. While you’re getting your name out in front of the public for free, you’re also making money on merchandise sales. People love to support their favorite brands and businesses, and there’s a virtually unlimited appetite for new apparel, so you’re giving your customers what they want and earning some extra money while you’re doing it.
\3. Promote Through Event Marketing
Another one of the best ways to promote your business by using your supporters is to organize a promotional event. While this strategy can run on the slightly more expensive side than social media and merchandizing, the rewards can be more profound as well. Sponsoring a local event with adequate promotional branding is a good way to build your brand image and establish your commitment to your local community. Planning a concert with a few local musicians, some food trucks, and maybe an informational booth or two about your products and services is a great way to foster your “cool factor”, gain the loyalty of the locals, and have some fun while you do it. At the end of the day, the goodwill you’ll have created with your event will far outweigh the costs of organizing it.
While these are only a fraction of the different ways in which people are using grassroots marketing to promote their businesses, these should help you start on the way to a successful campaign.