As the market changes, so do the marketing tools used by professionals for promotion. And it is necessary in many ways to re-explore the details, the site and the way it’s optimized, as well as the rules of working with content and neural networks.
Guerrilla marketing
It is a set of creative psychological techniques and methods to promote goods and services with minimal overall costs. The term itself was introduced by Jay Conrad Levinson, the author of the book named – you guessed it – “Guerrilla Marketing.” It outlines the principles that allow you to maximize the effect of cheap forms of advertising: business cards, leaflets, signs, etc.
Despite the relative cheapness of guerrilla marketing, it is far from easy to execute. The whole thing requires a large investment of time, deep market analysis, balanced approach and courage to take risks.
And, of course, guerrilla marketing has different types:
- Viral (gifts)
- Hidden (special projects)
- Word of mouth (loyalty programs, affiliate program)
- Shocking (business game)
Comments in the media, participation in webinars and conferences, playing an active part in the business community, clubs or associations – these are the most effective tools for cost-effective promotion. Use these tools – as simple as they sound, ignoring them is not an option.
Corporate website
Website optimization is an effective and low-budget way of promotion, especially for medium and small businesses, such as bike and scooter rentals. The most important thing when a person comes to a website is that the information they encounter is useful to them. Later on, the company’s image, positioning and expertise will be formed through this usefulness. And through the expertise the sales shall come as well.
It is also important to consider the website as an independent channel of communication with the client. By visiting a web page, a person should learn the information he or she needs and quickly get feedback from the company. The main goal of a person who works in rental business is to provide the client with a vehicle they need when they need it, so it is important to have accessible ways of communication with the audience and to reply quickly – yourself or after redirecting the question to your employee. With all of that in mind, it’s important to use active marketing tools for feedback:
- Chatbot – it shows openness to dialog;
- Tour booking form for a visitor to fill;
- Simple and understandable statements regarding the cost of the service.
To maximize benefits and reduce costs, business owners often resort to internal and external SEO-optimization. The goal is to create an ideal resource from the point of view of search engine robots. This can help any sort of business, actually. Also, SEO impacts visitors too, not only engines. People who look for a bike end up on, for example, fancyapple.com. They are eager to rent a bike and are also capable of appreciating a well-optimized site, even if they don’t know exactly how this has been achieved.
If earlier search engines were interested in Internet resources with good external optimization (purchasing of links), today the focus is on the internal improvement of the site. This includes quality content, user-friendly structure, harmonious distribution of queries from the point of view of search engines, good mobile version, etc. As far as external optimization is concerned, the focus is now on how much the visitor likes the site. These parameters are going to be taken into account:
- time spent on the site and clicks to other pages;
- filling out contact forms, downloads, clicks on phone numbers (conversion);
- repeat visits (behavioral factors).
Social media
To grow, a business owner needs to track, analyze, and feel trends. To successfully promote services on social networks, it is worth testing video as a format for interacting with the audience. And not just to run video ads in Reels, Stories and feeds, but to create useful and engaging content in the community.
If the videos are relevant and the audience likes them, the social network’s algorithms will notice this while tracking the reaction of users, and will help the community to grow organically – by recommending it to users with similar interests.
Artificial intelligence
There is a lot of talk about whether artificial intelligence will be able to replace some services. Even if such a scenario indeed becomes a reality, it will still take quite a long time to materialize. Therefore, for the time being, neural networks can be applied in the development of your business.
For example, ChatGPT can create technical tasks for contractors. It can also create a content plan, write texts for posts, letters for mailing lists, and so on. Of course, the AI lacks individuality in its work, but this can be remedied by making competent requests. When working with ChatGPT, use these tips:
- Formulate the question clearly and precisely – preferably in English. It is better to specify the format of the answer.
- Get ready not for a monologue, but a dialog with clarifying questions that will help to get a complete answer.
- State the purpose of the question.
- In addition to ChatGPT, YouChat and Bing AI Chat neural networks are actively being tested and utilized right now.
For image generation, experts recommend using the Lexica.art neural network. Midjourney’s Discord.gg and Dall-E-2 by Open AI are also suitable.
Conclusion
Adaptation is key in the newly changed marketing business industry. Using guerrilla marketing, re-optimizing corporate websites, pushing social media and integrating artificial intelligence are essential strategies for cost-effective promotion, particularly for small businesses such as bike rentals.
And while uncertainty increases in times of change, so do the opportunities – the potential for innovative marketing is enormous. To stay competitive and effectively reach your target audience, you and your company will need to explore new tools and new approaches to old methods.
