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Prashant from pluggD.in - a fantastic startup blog wrote a very interesting article giving great tips on guerilla marketing, including:

1. Target those seeking jobs in your domain using online job portals using an email campaign - since they’re interested in your industy, they’ll likely be interested in using your product (especially if your product can in someway or the other help get closer to getting a job
2. MBA schools - lots of people here are interested in hearing from a ’seasoned’ entreprenuer. Just weave in your own story in the lecture about entrepreneurship.

To read more tips check out Ashish’s post. I have a few thoughts of my own: I’m sure that at some point in your school or college life you were either a part of a team putting together a student event, or you at least knew somebody that organised such an event. The budget for some of these events were absolutely tiny, but somehow or the other people managed to pull people to attend these events - how?

1. They got their friends to come along. Their friends often brought their friends along. Your startup can do the same. Get in touch with your friends - its easy these days through facebook and orkut. Invite them to check out your product.
2. They hung out near the target market’s haunts, handed out flyers, and generally spoke about the event - and there’s nothing stopping you, the entrepreneur from doing the same. If you’re starting up an online sports equipment store, then hang out near your metro’s biggest sports store and hand out flyers. Online, hang out and participate in cricket related messageboards and website. Start conversations and start talking about your product or website.
3. They tried to get stories into the local newspaper - you can do the same. You will most certainly have a friend of a friend that works in traditional media. Get in touch with them and see if you can have your story plugged. Newspapers etc. won’t be difficult to pitch to either - people enjoy reading about entrepreneurs. Online, establish relationships with bloggers, get them to talk about your product (but make sure that your product is in a halfway decent state, otherwise you’ll get slammed).
4. They got ‘guests of honour’, the premise being that if famous people are going to be there, then people are going to come along just to see them. Try and get ‘guests of honour’ using and talking about your site - these may be high profile bloggers in your domain.
5. They put up a website and stuck that URL onto every piece of marketing collateral that they had. Now if your product itself is a website, then this may sound silly. A website for a website? Yes! Its called a blog!

What do you think of this ’student event management’ analogy? Useful? Run of the mill? Bull? Let’s discuss it!

Tags: Marketing, Startup, Startup Essentials, Startups

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