Guerilla Marketing Strategies: 5 no-cost or low-cost sales and marketing ideas

A common complaint we hear is “Budgets are tight and we’re searching for every penny of cost savings. How do we grow without spending money on marketing and sales promotion?”

It got us to thinking about budget friendly ideas that can be implemented at no -cost, or very little cost. We quickly came up with a list of 25 suggestions before deciding to start writing them down in more detail.

Here are the first 5 – with more to come. We’ll plan on publishing these on a regular basis. But we’d like your input
- if we can come up with 25, why not make it 50? Or 100? Please share your suggestions, ideas and best practices.

1.  Turn Your Branch Into A Billboard by Leaving the Lights On

You have a big investment in your branch – turn it into a billboard by leaving the lights on a few hours longer. This is especially impactful during winter hours (when it gets dark earlier) or if your branch is near restaurants or other retailers that are open later than you are. You can leverage the impact by placing brightly lit merchandising, or promotional displays, near the windows where they can be easily read. You may want to pay attention to your interior branch signage to make sure they are large and visible.

Think about the times you’ve window shopped and perhaps returned another day to buy — because the displays were lit up, even if the store was closed. You can make the same dynamic work for you with only a small increase in your electricity bill.

2.  Make Your Branch More Interesting By Re-arranging Your Posters and Merchandising

My father owned a small chain of retail shoe stores. One of his mantra’s was “The customer wants to see something new.” He didn’t always have new merchandise, but he could display it differently. Every week something was changed. One week it would be the window display. The next week it would be the position of merchandise in the store: the display in the back would move to the front, the front display would move to the side
- you get the idea.

How often do you change your branch merchandising? For most banks it is 3 times a year, and that means your regular customers are seeing the same displays and major product promotions for at least four months. After a few times, it is just like wallpaper.

Think about a typical retailer you visit  or even your local supermarket. What if they only changed their merchandising every 12-16 weeks? What would happen to their sales?

Resolve to give your branch a merchandising makeover at least once a month. It will cause your customers to take notice, and it will give your staff something new to talk with customers about. It won’t necessarily cost you anything
- in most cases it will be as simple as moving and refreshing what you already have.

3.  Create Excitement – Hold a BBQ in the Parking Lot

Create excitement around your branch by holding a cookout in the parking lot or drive-up. Bring a charcoal grill from home, and for the price of a few pounds of hamburgers or hot dogs you can generate curiosity and interest. Don’t lose the opportunity to promote the event through signage at the branch in advance. Give the event a reason: “We just wanted to let you know about the great new rates.” or “We wanted to celebrate the branch achieving.”.

It doesn’t need to be expensive. Buy the food in bulk at your local wholesale club. Or ask the neighborhood supermarket to contribute part of the food in exchange for signage promoting their market.

4.  Have Every Branch Employee Give Away Business Cards

I had a young branch associate who always scored near the top of our sales contests. Unlike many of her outgoing peers, she seemed more reserved, even shy. When I asked how she achieved such high sales results, she told me this story:

“I don’t feel comfortable ‘selling’ but I am comfortable helping customers. Whenever I work with a customer, I always hand them 3 business cards: one for them so they’ll have my name, and two to give to any friends who they think I might be able to help. Then I call them back a few days later to ask if everything was OK with their account, and remind them that I’d be glad to help any friends of theirs. People often come into the branch telling me that Mr. or Mrs. X gave them my card. For me, it’s like helping a friend.”

For the small amount of money it costs to print business cards, you can improve the sales of every branch employee. To keep your cost down, you can even print them with blank spaces to write in their names.

5.  Ask Your Best Salesperson to Create the Next Marketing Presentation

I learned this when my wife was a pharmaceutical sales rep for Warner-Lambert. They would find a top performing sales associate, figure out what they were doing differently, and then work with them to help create the next sales presentation (and internal sales training). It’s just modeling best practices.