30 Guerrilla Marketing tactics for freelancers

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What better way to really kick off our restart of content posting than to give out 30 kick ass guerrilla marketing tactics that freelancers can use! It’s great to be back posting again and I want to thank all of our loyal monthly readers who continue to stick by us and love the content we publish. We do it for you.

We’ve published a couple articles on guerrilla marketing for designers and guerrilla marketing for illustrators before, but we’ve never done a guerrilla marketing post of this size – until today. Go big or go home! I hope you find some of these ideas useful and if you put any of them to use, I’d love to hear about it.

1. Street Stencils – Pick up a few cans of the Rustoleum landscape chalk spray from Amazon and create a stencil out of a cardboard box with your website URL on it. Grab an orange worker vest and hit the streets, putting your box with your website url cut out of the bottom onto the ground and then spraying it with the landscape chalk, leaving behind your website url (and maybe a funny saying or image if you want). The spray lasts for 15-30 days on grass when exposed to traffic and weather, so it should last around the same amount of time on the street.
2. Let the balloons do the talking – Place your business card (or a hand written note) inside of a bunch of balloons and then let them go into the air – between 50 and 100 balloons should do the trick. Then, when your balloons bust, or fall to the ground, people will find the cards/notes. You could also get your logo printed on the balloons.
3. Writing on a dirty car – We’ve seen the cars that say “Wash Me” written by someones finger, but what if you purposely got your car muddy from top to bottom and placed it in a well trafficked area (shopping center parking lot maybe?) and wrote something along the lines of “We like getting dirty” and have a website link to a community driven website that caters to mud bogging.
4. Washable Glow in the Dark Paint – This is another one you can use your car for. Find a parking lot that’s busy at night (movie theater or something similar) and put some writing on your car advertising your business/website/ect. The next time it rains, it washes off and you’re good to go. You could even get an old beat up car and completely fill the inside of the car with words and writing – grabbing the persons attention and having them up close to the car, which will cause a scene and get even more people to check it out.
5. Hunting for Freebies – If your target market is females, why not spend a few hundred dollars and buy a couple designer purses. Once you’ve got the purses, put your business card inside of them and place them in various areas around your city – in the open, so people can see that they’re there. Then, put a sign up at a store where people frequently shop (a purse shop would be perfect) and let people know that there’s X amount of purses spread across town with a few hints. If you got together with the store owner ahead of time and bought the purses from them, I’m sure they’d give you as much promo as possible with their store visitors ahead of time too.
6. Stretching your dollars – Print a custom design on a piece of spandex material that has a dollar bill design on one side and your website link and the words “We’re helping you stretch the dollars your business spends”. You can leave these on counters like you would normally do business card marketing or you could even mail the pieces of material to businesses you’d like to do business with.
7. Koozies at a street fair – In the summer, it’s hard to keep beverages cold, so why not get some custom printed koozies to pass out to the people walking around wishing their beer was still cold? It’s a long lasting piece of advertising and at places like street fairs, you’re bound to find a business owner or two who’s running a booth and needs what you’ve got.
8. Lose your wallet on purpose – You can generally find a wallet at any dollar store, so load up on 20-30 of them, put a business card or two in, with a custom printed business card that is made to look like a coupon, giving the person a 20% discount on your services if they return the wallet (or keep the wallet and lose out on your awesome services).
9. Custom Toilet Paper – Get some custom printed toilet paper done and head to a store that has public restrooms. Add your rolls in and know that people will see your advertising at all times of the day. Writing the words “Here when you need it most” with a link to your website, you’re sure to get a few laughs and some traffic to your business.
10. Put a P.O.S. car to good use – Do you own or know where you can buy a P.O.S. car for a few hundred dollars? If so, get it ready and find classic car shows in your area, drive your car right into the middle of it all and park it. Then, ensure you’ve got a sign or a sticker (or 10) on your car with your website and the words “We help you stand out from the crowd online too”.
11. Testimonials in the wild – Do you have satisfied customers? You should. If you do, ask them for permission to use a testimonial they write for you as a way of advertising. Where do you advertise the testimonials? On your site? Sure, but why not think outside of the box. Print out a simple piece of paper from your printer with their testimonial on it in large letters, with your url under it. Make 100+ copies and put them up around town.
12. Power Wash Stencils – Are you a green supporting company who is a bit too scared to try the #1 guerrilla marketing tactic on this list? Well then, get a custom stencil created with a few words promoting you as a green company, with a link to your website and power wash the dirt off of a wall or the concrete on the sidewalk. The world is a bit cleaner, and you’ve got ad space for as long as that area stays dirty around it.
13. Send potential clients a birthday card – By finding out the birthdays of your potential clients (either via online channels like facebook & myspace or flat out asking them what their birthday is), you’re able to send them a birthday card to them on their birthday – surprising them and letting them know that you’re not just after their cash; you want to be their friend too. Where you write your name on the envelope, just include your website url as well and make sure the card itself is ad-free so they put the card up and see it for as long as they have it on their shelf, fridge, entertainment center, ect.
14. Print your own newspaper – If you run a blog, why not take 10-20 of your best articles and turn them into an actual newspaper? You could get 1,000 newspapers printed for around $390, placing them around the city in areas where your potential clients/reader travel. Make the front page headline catchy and inviting, ensuring that people will pick them up – make sure the word “FREE” is printed in large bold text as well so people know to pick them up. Put a coupon or two inside for your business as well – maybe even use a whole page to give out coupons so they can share the coupons with friends.
15. Bikini Car Wash – If your target market is males, why not hold a free bikini car wash and have a large banner behind the area you’re washing the cars with your business information on it? You could also pass out business cards or other promo material – they’ll be thankful to take whatever you give them if their car is being washed by girls in bikinis.
16. Custom Pizza Box Printing – For around $500 you can have 1,500 pizza boxes created with your logo and design on them. Find a locally owned pizza place in your city and offer them the boxes, which is something they’ll gladly do since the money that the boxes cost will not come from their own pockets.
17. Take a photo for free – If you’re a photographer (or even halfway decent with a camera), head out to festivals and other areas where families gather together and ask people walking with their children if they’d like a no questions asked photo to be taken & emailed to them. In turn for giving them a free photo, you’re also marketing your services (as well as building up an email list – when you send the photo, ask if they’d like to be added to your email list for discounts and other information).
18. Take free ice cream to their offices – Is there a client you’d love to land? If so, find out how many people are in their offices on any given day and buy enough ice cream to give everyone in the building a free ice cream cone. Hire a vendor or borrow someones movable ice cream stand and take it right to their office as a surprise – nobody can resist free ice cream.
19. Custom printed coasters – Hit up bars, restaurants and other areas of dining that you think your target market will frequent and get permission from the owners to leave your custom printed coasters on their tables. They’re reusable and they’re going to help keep the tables a bit cleaner for the people who have to clean up at the end of the night – win/win situation.
20. Free water bottles on hot days – Find a downtown area with a lot of foot traffic (maybe even in front of a business that you’d like as a client) and have coolers full of custom printed water bottles. You can get 200 for around $200 and you’re able to have a lasting impression on everyone who takes the water bottle – it’s reusable and it’s sure to cause some word of mouth marketing every time someone asks where they got the water bottle from.
21. Pay for the initial meeting – No, I don’t mean to buy the potential client coffee (although you should if you’re meeting somewhere that sells coffee, beer or any other type of drink). What I am saying is to tear a $20, $50 or $100 bill in half, attach it to your mailing items and tell the potential client that you’ll give them the other half if they have a 30 minute meeting with you. It’ll grab attention and is definitely a guerrilla marketing tactic your competition isn’t doing.
22. Let your customer set the price – Try this out every once in a while – let your customer pick what they pay you. Don’t give them a guideline of normal rates, just let them pay what they think your services are worth. If you’re able to detect if the client is a good person during your meetings, then odds are they’re going to either pay very close to what your rates are or sometimes they’ll even pay more. This works best with repeat customers since they know your rates and you already know how they are as a person from your first job.
23. Get a street team – A simple way to get 10-20 people to promote your business for you is to offer each of them something for free (free t-shirts, exposure on your website, ect). Get them together, give them some flyers and let them hit the streets, wearing your company t-shirts and passing out your flyers.
24. Give away good fortune – Have you ever thought about using a guerrilla marketing tactic that utilizes good fortune as gifts to potential clients? Why not get 100 custom fortune cookies to send to the office building of a potential client – with up to 5 custom messages & dipped in chocolate, you can’t go wrong.
25. The perfect match – For this guerrilla marketing tactic, you’re going to purchase custom match boxes (32 matches in each box – $44 for 50 match boxes) and get the words “The perfect match for your business” printed on it, with your website link. Find out if bars or other areas where people are smoking would mind if you had them there for their patrons to use for free & you’ve got instant, in-your-face advertisements.
26. Being cool only lasts so long – This summer, on any hot day, why not get an ice sculpture created to look like a business man/woman and have it standing in the middle of a crowded area in your city with a scarf & winter hat, along with a sign in front of it that says “Being cool only lasts so long – we’ll prolong your coolness” and a link to your website.
27. One giant snowman – Keeping up with the idea from the previous guerrilla marketing tip, why not take some time and build a gigantic snowman (10 feet tall or larger) in a high traffic area with a sign in front of it promoting your company. A catchy tag line on the poster in front of the snowman would work well. You could also build any other kind of snow sculpture and use a stencil to spray words directly on it.
28. Mouse pad advertisements – If you’re marketing yourself as a web designer or a copywriter for the web, why not get some custom printed mouse pads and send them out to potential customers? Send 10 to each office with a note that says something along the lines of “…Just wanted to say hello”. Make sure the design for the mouse pads are great (preferably targeted towards the type of business you’re sending them to) and they’ll be sure to use them – while staring at your design and website url every day while at their computer.
29. The writing is on the wall – Grab some good old fashioned chalk (and a store owners permission) and write “The less we spend in advertising, the less our _____ have to cost”. It shows that your ad is free and it will also get peoples mind wondering what it is you’re selling (make sure your domain is written somewhere on there).
30. Extra large laptop – This is one you’ll either have to break out your own power tools for, or hire a company to build it. What you’re going to do is create a large 20′x20′ laptop, equip with lights inside of it to light the screen and keys up at night – with a projector playing an ad video for you, or just have your website up with your url large at the bottom.

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We released this post, along with 20 additional Guerrilla Marketing tactics in an ebook that you’re able to download by visiting this link: 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics For Freelancers!

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