An article by Stuart Elliott appeared in the online version of The New York Times on July 7, 2011, titled ‘Geico Uses Many Campaigns to Stand Out in a Crowd’.
Elliott noted “The idea behind multiple, simultaneous campaigns is to break through the proverbial clutter by attracting attention as well as avoiding the risk of wear-out — that is, boring or annoying potential customers who may get tired of seeing and hearing the same pitches again and again.”
Where large corporations may have millions to invest in advertising and marketing this isn’t the case for small businesses.
So how does a small business run “campaigns to stand out in a crowd’ on a largely reduced budget?
While social media isn’t the only answer to this question it is definitely one of them. Coupled with direct mail marketing (yes, this still has a place) and permission based email marketing, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (depending on your target audience) working together with a website, that is easy to navigate, interesting and regularly updated, for starters, will help you, when done right, “break through the proverbial clutter by attracting attention”.
And as a bonus, people on social media love to share things they like with others. In this best case scenario, your raving fans tell all their friends about your product through ‘liking’ your posts (which in effect shares it with all of their friends), sharing your stories or tweeting your tweets. All this to say, social media adds icing to the cake. At its best the ‘word of mouth’ factor takes over and what you start others carry further.