Can you increase your sales without spending MONEY?
It’s amazing to see the results of your own work. I’ve always told my customers and anyone who will listen that “Marketing is hard, but advertising is easy”. Many people don’t understand what I mean when I say that. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen business owners opt for buying advertising on mass media that they shouldn’t buy (because their budget is too small) and then wonder why nothing happened. Well for the past few months I’ve been working with a great new client, The Golf Exchange in Florence Kentucky. The owners Jason and Mark are hungry, aggressive and they understand that their biggest strength is running their golf store and not marketing. The first time I met them, I knew we would do some great things together. They’ve entrusted the marketing to me. And things are rocking. October and November have been record months and it’s not a coincidence that those are the 2 months we’ve been working together (FYI, October & November are typically slow months in the golf business in our area for obvious reasons). Now, my head is not big enough to believe that’s all to the marketing plan we’ve put in place, but I know we are moving the needle.
What have we done? Have we bought a bunch of media and let the reps write our commercials (like many business owners do). Did we put an ad in the paper and watch the door? Or did we create a really clever direct mail piece with a terrible offer and blanked Northern Kentuck… NO!
We rolled up our sleeves and put in place a Grass Roots Guerrilla Marketing Campaign. We used something better than cash, we used our team of employees.
First we hit Social Media with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and You Tube. Next we created an 8-week series of in-store golf seminars. We also filmed the seminars and created short videos to post on YouTube, their website and facebook. We re-branded the website and made it easier to use. Then we launched our E-Newsletter to help promote the above items. Plus we started capturing all of our customers contact information and put in place a Customer Follow-Up Program through F.U.$.$. And, last but not least, we’ve started trained the employees about all these new marketing programs, how they can help and guess what…they are helping drive the machine that we’ve created.
THE RESULTS
- 1. As mentioned the best October & November EVER!
- 2. A Social Media Following upwards of 700 in under 6 weeks
- 3. Seminar attendance of the following
- a. Week 1 = 30
- b. Week 2 = 43
- c. Week 3 = 50
- d. Week 4 = 64
- e. Week 5 = 83
- 4. Email Newsletter opened by over 1,000 customers over 3 emails
- 5. 17 You Tube Videos viewed over 350 times.
- 6. Website Traffic up 33.29% in October & 37.92% in November.
- 7. Some great PR by the local press about 1 of our events.
Guess how much we’ve spent to do all of this? Aprox $500 (a banner, few signs and fliers). Yes, we fought the urge to buy advertising, put our feet up and wait for customers to come to us. We put a true, HARD CORE, Guerrilla Marketing plan in place and WE made it happen. The owners and employees all bought into the system and took this to a whole new level. This is why I always say “Marketing is hard, but advertising is easy!” Now keep in mind, all of this was done in the OFF SEASON. Just wait until we get some sun and temperatures in the 80’s !!!
Matt Plapp is a the President of Driven Media Solutions, a Full Service Marketing Firm in the Cincinnati Northern Kentucky area specializing in small business marketing via grass-roots, events, Guerrilla, online and social media marketing. You can contact him at matt@mattplapp.wpengine.com or www.mattplapp.com.
