Guerrilla Marketing: Your First 90 Days

While bigger companies (like Coke, Pepsi, Nike, etc.) can afford to "buy" brand name awareness, a home inventory service can get started with high impact, low cost marketing ideas. Slow and steady wins the race ... a couple of paid gigs will get you going and start to produce referrals. You don't need to spend hundreds -- or thousands -- of dollars to generate that new business, however.

Your best investment to start (best place to spend your startup marketing money):

• Car magnets
• Business cards (most use Vistaprint [Click here for 50% OFF Premium Business Cards & FREE Return Address Labels], at least to start)
• A Chamber of Commerce membership
• A phone book listing (not necessarily a Yellow Pages ad, because most directories don't have a specific "Home Inventory Services" category, but having a business line that will get you in the white pages is important).
• A web site (professionally designed if you can afford it, but clean, simple, well-thought out, and error-free, at a minimum). Invest in a service like Constant Contact to start building your mailing list. Click here to try their Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing for free!
• Door hangers (200-500 of them to start -- can print your own or order online from NEBS.com or one of the other door hanger-specific web sites out there). Simple is still effective.

Your 90-day game plan:

1. Attend all the Chamber of Commerce events you can (especially the networking ones). Don't just focus on getting YOUR name out there -- instead, collect the business cards of the people you meet and send them a "nice to meet you" letter. Then add them to your database. Keep in mind that small business owners are also a good prospect for non-revenue inventory services (that is, inventories of their office excluding any inventory of product that is for sale).
2. Join a local tips group if there's one in your network (BNI is a nationally known one). Find one that has lots of business-to-consumer members
3. Make a list and contact at least 2-3 insurance agents in your area per week. Draft up an introductory letter and then followup with a call and ask if you can take them to breakfast or lunch to introduce yourself and find out more about their specialties. You are a prospective referral source for them too! (Start with your own insurance agent, and then ask for referrals out from there).
4. Research and see if there is a local branch of the Independent Insurance Agents of America in your area, and find out if they have a newsletter or meetings. Sponsor one of *those* instead of doing consumer marketing.
5. Follow the lead of real estate agents and "farm" an area -- preferably your neighborhood. Is there a neigborhood association? Do they have a newsletter? Contribute an article on conducting a home inventory (I'll try to put together some samples of this type of stuff and post it later). Do they have meetings? Offer to come and speak to them. Take door hangers door-to-door in the area. Put a time-limited offer on the door hanger (i.e., 15% off your inventory if you book your appointment in the next 30 days.)
6. Plan and execute your public relations campaign. (Here's another whole separate article with examples from me...) You're a new business. That's a news release. There's a disaster in your area (flooding, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, major housefire) -- that's another news release (with tips on conducting your own inventory). Send an announcement to your alma mater for their magazine or newsletter (especially if it's in the same town you live in now).

That's your first 90 days.

If you are buying a TV or radio or newspaper ad over $50 in your first 90 days of business, you're wasting your valuable start-up money. The real problem you have is not a lack of name awareness of YOUR business, it's a lack of awareness of the WHOLE INDUSTRY at this point. Do some guerrilla marketing first to seed the market before buying awareness. (I recommend any of Jay Conrad Levinson's "Guerrilla Marketing" books -- available online (used or new), at your local bookstore, or your local library).