Grassroots Marketing Tips - An Overview

This overview was orginally prepared to assist the grassroots orgranization Single Payer New York.  It is our intention to expand on each of the ideas of this summary to further assist them and you!   If you want to know when those additions are made, add yourself Free Reports Mailing List below.

Don’t Be afraid of Selling

• Selling is just the Transfer of Enthusiasm from one person to another.
• Everyone sells to everyone else all the of time, often without even knowing it.
  • Have you ever recommended a good book, website, movie or restaurant?
  • Have you ever tried to win an argument or persuade someone?

Say more with less words

• Don’t be afraid of “white space”.
• Make the format easy to read.

Write at a 6^th Grade level

• You want things to be easy to read and remember.
• You’re not writing a novel, you’re just trying to communicate.

Study Selling and Marketing • Recommended Reading

• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins – written 1923, a classic marketing primer
• The True Believer by Eric Hoffer – written in 1951, explores the behavior of mass movements
• Cracking the Code by Thom Hartmann – written 2007, the art and science of political persuasion

Use Direct Response Campaigns and Avoid Branding Campaigns

• Direct Response means that you ask people to do something with a “call to action” 
  • i.e. “call this number”,  “visit this website”,  “send an e-mail to”,  etc. 
  • Direct Response Campaigns will help build your list 
  • Focus only on what you want them to do next, not the end result 
    • Only “sell” the next step
    • Only use Branding Campaigns if you can afford to not know the effects of your marketing or if you are simply distributing information and there is no next step you want the receiver to take.
    • Always remember that the person reading your ad is asking, “What’s in it for me?”

Test and Measure Response to Your Message… Don’t quit to soon!

• Assume a response rate of 10% for every step in your “sales funnel” to start with until you know what your real numbers are.   (Assume 0.5% if you’re mailing with the USPS.) 
  • Example:  Put out 100 flyers X 10% = 10 people visit your website
                        10 people on your website X 10%  = 1 person opts into your mailing list.  
  • Don’t Quit (or change your message) until you have put out at least 1,000 pieces. 

Have a consistent message that matches the conversation in your prospect’s mind

• Your prospect is thinking, “I want X.” 
• Your ad says, “If you want X, then do this and we’ll show you how to get X.” 
• They do whatever you told them to do, and they discover a new message that says,
  “You want X, we have X, this is how you get X.” 
• Example: 
  • You put out a flyer asking people, "Do you want to learn what Single Payer Healthcare really is?" with a call to action to go your website. 
  • You make sure that when they get to your website, they can Quickly and Easily learn what Single Payer Healthcare really is on the very first page without searching for it. 

 Flyering Tips:

• Be consistent!  Commit to a daily number as part of a 30 day plan.  Then evaluate and do it again. 
• Use the smallest message possible on the least amount of paper to get people to do the next thing you want them to do.  This will cut your costs and maximize your results. 
• If flyering cars: 
  • Put flyers on driver's side door (above the door handle) in between the window glass and the weather stripping. 
  • Never touch a car’s windshield wipers or put flyers under them.  People hate getting into a car only to discover that something is under their wiper.  They may also accuse you of breaking them. 
  • Don’t flyer cars in private parking lots, because you risk getting charged for trespassing. 
  • Making Flyers 
    • Call around local office supply stores to get best price for copies.  The more you make, the better the price.  This is almost always cheaper than printing with your computer printer at home.  Ask if they offer a price break for supplying your own paper. 
    • Use card stock if you are making flyers for cars 
    • Use light colored papers.
      
    • Most office supply stores have paper cutters in the copy center that you can use or you can pay them to cut for you (around $1 per cut).  Having them make the cuts for you is HIGHLY recommended! 
    • If you make a flyer to distribute to other people, send it to them in as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file.  This will make sure all of your hard work in formatting stays intact and you don’t have to worry about whether someone is on a PC or Mac or doesn’t have the neat font that you used. 

Online Marketing Tips:

Register for and use Social Media 

• Facebook.com
  • Huge online community where you can
    • Connecting with old and new friends
    • Share with like-minded people in groups
• Twitter.com
  • Allows you to put in up to 140 characters messages to your followers
  • Can be used for real time broadcast communications to cell phones
• Digg.com, Reddit.com,
  • See the websites chosen by others
  • Drive group-think
• Technorati.com 
  • Search Engine for Blogs
• Del.icio.us
  • Social bookmarking tool
  • Allows people to see what others are bookmarking and what’s popular
  • Drives new trends, awareness, and group-think
• HubPages.com, Sqidoo.com, Gather.com
  • Share your knowledge/thoughts with others by contributing articles
• YouTube.com
  • Gather and show user-generated video
  • Allows you to put videos on other websites

Start a blog

• Allows “Normal people” can easily communicate through the web
• You can find several sources for hosting free blogs