And just like any other creative small business owners, you need to do creative budgeting, too (read: guerrilla marketing, frugal marketing, and bootstrapping.)
Now, to deliver the most cost-effective advertising campaign for your small business, you need to do something with a punch; something with a wow factor – in your limited budget. Of course, if you are Nike, you could just launch a big interactive advertising campaign in Times Square and any other popular location, but if you are like the rest of us, we must play our game in different ways.
How far would you go to promote your business?
If your business brand awareness is high, all you need to do is probably slap your logo on a large billboard with nothing else on it. But if you are a small business competing for a portion of your niche pie, you might want to do thing differently – even bizarre or odd – with one purpose in mind: To turn heads and create buzz on your business brand.
Let’s take one example of how far a business can go with its advertising campaign.
Hostgator web hosting: Make an agreement with a man to change his name to “Hostgator Dotcom”
The press release says it all.
HostGator.com, one of the leading web hosting service providers, are making an advertising partnership with Billy Gibby (a.k.a. Billy the Human billboard) that requires him to legally change his name to “Hostgator Dotcom.”
So, yes – his Hostgator Dotcom will be registered and made accessible to all organisations doing identity check – credit card issuers, business memberships, etc.
And the buzz itself has probably push HostGator brand image up a few spots in webmasters and business owners’ list of go-to business services. I personally can’t stop talking about this to any people I know. That’s what I call advertising campaign!
Let’s go further with our advertising efforts, shall we?
Of course, I imagine paying someone to change his name to, say, “Noobpreneur Dotcom” would cost me dearly. There are actually plenty of alternative in doing creative advertising.
Just try Fiverr and many others doing similar things. In Fiverr case, just for USD 5 (a fiver – hence the site name: Fiverr) you can ask service providers (“sellers”) to do almost anything – even those unimaginable – just for five dollars.
Just visit Fiverr’s Advertising section (or even Silly Stuff section, if you would like to do something bizarre.) You can then view “gigs” – the services people offer for a fiver – and just place your order.
What kind of services? You can go creative, from “I will permanently write your name or advertisement on my jeans and wear them around college for $5” to “I will do anything within reason in a Greenman suit for $5.” Pretty bizarre and quirky, I suppose?
You can also do any other creative-advertising-on-a-budget campaigns, such as offering freebies on a certain time of the day and a certain date of the month – freebies always draw crowds! Be sure to convert visitors into returning customers in the process.
Any other idea to share? Please do so by commenting on this article.
Ivan Widjaya
Creative small business advertising