How I Started To Improve My Street-Level Marketing Strategies

For most small businesses, tackling street-level marketing isn’t always the easiest task. After all, this is a practice that requires you to hit the streets and get the word out about your company, which can be discouraging if you get little traction or face rejections.

However, as someone who was in the same boat and needed an effective street-level strategy for my business to survive, I took on a few different routes that helped improve my efforts tremendously. Here’s what I learned:

Have Captivating Branding

One of the first steps you should take if you’re looking to improve your street-level marketing is by having a brand that makes people feel empowered. This can be much harder than it appears, as you’re asking people to become evangelists for you. However, getting to that point requires knowing the fundamentals of branding, which is an art as much as it is science.

Constructing your brand is all about the overall message or ethos you’re trying to convey, which requires looking into the details of what compiles a brand. For example, as noted by Curatti, color increases brand recognition by 80 percent, which is why when I say “Ford Blue” you probably have a good idea of what that means.

Furthermore, you need to think about the type of personality or image this brand is looking to showcase as something inviting (especially if you’re expecting people to be willing to walk up to you on the street). I’ll note this most likely won’t be something solved overnight, but getting in the habit of envisioning will be beneficial in seeing how things will look on a street-level.

Finally, if your brand is going to focus on street-level marketing, think about what your t-shirt mockups are going to look like and what it would be like to approach your brand in person. Why would someone want to walk up to your tent or table? What type of giveaways makes sense for you? The goal is to construct an image worth forming a community around, which should be your primary mission day-in and day-out.

Get Great With Social

Another important aspect of street-level marketing is how your skills are with social media. No matter if your business is currently using social or not, this is a primary way to put both metrics and awareness to your street-level campaigns. To master this comes with a level of understanding of who your audience is and how you can engage with them.

For street-level work, you’re most likely going to be utilizing more visual platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The demographics for these can range tremendously, for example, as noted by Pew Internet, 71 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds are on Instagram, which out of that group, 60 percent use the platform daily (according to Hootsuite).

A good strategy for Instagram here would be to have a quid-pro-quo agreement, such as a follow or post for a giveaway (i.e., sticker or t-shirt). With giveaways, the goal is to find a sweet spot on what your ROI is, as that can be somewhat difficult when it comes to free stuff.

Try to look through either your free takeaways or perhaps a discount code on trying to garner more follows. A smart rule of thumb is to start small; while it would be great for others to post about your company or product, that’s asking someone to advertise a brand they just met, which not everyone will be comfortable doing.

Going after a follow or adding to a story might be more their speed. Social media can be hard to get used to from a business perspective, so don’t get discouraged if things aren’t perfect at first; it’s a practice well worth the patience.

Consistency Is Key

Finally, as you start to garner what works for your street-level campaigns, keeping your output consistent will be crucial. Not only is this smart for visibility, but to begin planting reminders to your potential customer base, because as noted by Zimmer Communications, consistent presentation of brand increases revenues by 23 percent. If you’re looking for numbers like that, mapping out a schedule is crucial.

Make a list of events you’re trying to have your street marketing team at, as well as any potential applications you might need to knock out beforehand. Furthermore, take a look back and estimate what the best days and locations were for your day-to-day efforts and how that’s going to play a role moving forward in trying to establish a pattern.

The overarching mission here is to come up with a schedule that will maximize your efforts for increasing awareness and traffic, so make that your primary goal as you establish a consistent schedule for street-level marketing.

What are some strategies you’ve found useful for your street-level marketing? Comment with your answers below!