Quite often, an SMB merchant faces a challenge in their marketing strategy. It is to decide how much effort is required for their grassroots marketing strategy. As an approach, it is diametrically opposite to placing Facebook and LinkedIn ads. And it involves creating and maintaining sustainable campaigns that help in building a core base of loyal customers.
What is Grassroots Marketing?
Grassroots marketing purposefully targets a niche group of people and disseminates your marketing messaging organically to them. It persuades them in turn to further propagate it to their corresponding extensive networks.
This is, in fact, the most ancient way of marketing and, in some ways, still one of the most effective methods of converting a target audience directly into consumers. Believe it or not, people still purchase a lot through word of mouth.
Big brands like McDonald’s and KFC have the best marketing options available in the world. Yet, they invest in grassroots marketing networks. There is no need for them to do it. But they do it anyway. And that is the undeniable fact behind grassroots marketing. It works!
For starters, it is the most cost effective way of engaging with your customers directly.
Secondly, it makes it possible for smaller and more effective campaigns to convert more. Finally, it gives your brand the opportunity to use current social trends and create an enticing marketing campaign.
Engage Big, Deploy Small, and Stay Abreast with Social Trends
The power of grassroots marketing can be easily seen in the return of investment on your marketing spend. Ten out of ten times, it beats other modes of marketing hands down in terms of sheer cost effectiveness.
In its simplest form, the marketing strategy involves erecting stalls in a crowded area, and engaging passers-by in a one-on-one conversation. It explores the need of the prospect directly and offers a solution that is viable in the immediacy of the moment. It reaches a few people at a time who need your solution at the very least. And converts them into lifelong consumers at their very best.
With grassroots marketing, you can think big and start small. With it you have the opportunity to create smaller and more effective campaigns that you cannot achieve through print and media advertising. Advertising in general is like fishing in the dark, whereas a focused grassroots campaign throws light on your customer in the most direct fashion.
The direct connection with your audience also helps you build the profile of your most viable prospect. Another aspect of grassroots marketing is how quick and easy it is to make use of current social trends.
Since it is designed and deployed in the short term, it is far easier to jump onto the trendiest bandwagon in the marketing space. An idea that trends always sells. With this mantra, grassroots marketing is an essential spoke in your marketing wheel.
Move your Customers Emotionally
Grassroots marketing networks engage with people at an emotional and personal level that is not as viable with other methods of sharing your brand’s core concepts with your audience. A person in a stall in the middle of Times Square is going to engage more with a single target audience than the thousand-dollar billboard ad on the big screen behind it. And most brands that understand this take the effort to invest in grassroots marketing operations.
A great example of good grassroots marketing is what the Canadian airline WestJet did with their passengers on Christmas Eve. They surveyed their passengers on social media on what they would like as a Christmas gift from a list of options. Once the plane was in the air, they made arrangements for the gifts to be delivered at checkout. A video of the passengers receiving the gifts was watched more than 49 million times on YouTube. Such is the power of grassroots marketing.
Grassroots marketing affects people emotionally and pushes them to make positive buying choices. It not only sells, but creates loyal customers out of prospects. It helps you stay abreast with current industry trends. It thinks big but starts small. And it has the highest conversion rates from prospects to customers.