Grassroots marketing ideas are creative, outside-of-the-box ideas that are cheaper than traditional marketing techniques. It is also fairly easy to craft a grassroots marketing campaign that can go a long way in helping your business gain recognition, branding and new customers. There are a lot of grassroots marketing ideas out there and even more that haven't been discovered yet.
What is Grassroots Marketing?
Grassroots marketing is a technique that utilizes word of mouth and untraditional ways of marketing a product. In grassroots marketing, you target an audience made up of ordinary people by bringing them to a close level with your product, brand and business. You give your target audience a voice and make them your prime decision makers.
Recruit Influential Followers
Grassroots marketing depends on word of mouth. The best way to start this is to appeal to a few highly influential people such as celebrities and athletes, or on a smaller level by appealing to influential people in your local community. Get them on board with your product or brand by giving them your product, or providing them with a sneak preview. Try basically anything to get them trying your product. Ordinary people will trust these influential people and pretty soon you will have people talking about your business or product.
Good examples of this technique are presidential campaigns. Celebrities will jump on board and support a candidate and all of a sudden, ordinary people are sitting up and taking notice.
Utilize Free Media
Start a blog that informs about topics that would be of interest to your audience. If you talk about topics that interest people, they will start to trust you and your products. You will gain recognition in your area of expertise and you will watch your profits increase as you gain trust.
Another option is to create a YouTube video or an online newsletter. Make it informative and appealing and email it to your current clients, or your influential followers from above. These are free forms of advertising, take advantage of them.
Put Your Product Everywhere
Make your product visible to your audience. Think about making fliers and asking other businesses that have a similar target audience but are not competitors to put them at their cash registers. A good example of this would be a gym asking a sporting goods store to place their fliers at their checkout and vice versa.
Sponsor local events that target your audience, too. Again, if you are marketing a gym, think about sponsoring a local 5k run and hang your sign where all of the runners will see it. Using these techniques will gain you recognition and branding.
Use Your Imagination
When you are brainstorming grassroots marketing ideas, think outside the box. Really strive to use your imagination and see what you can come up with. There are really no limits on how far grassroots marketing campaigns can take you, your product and your business.
Tags: your product, gain recognition, influential people, marketing ideas, target audience