Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Broaden Your Marketing Reach: Use Bumper Stickers

By Buck Thompson

Using bumper stickers is one of the easiest and most inexpensive marketing tactics. Specially, if you want to go local (i.e. target customers at a location) or target a niche segment (like moms in 25-35 range), this can really work out well. It can cost you as little as 25 cents per sticker and give you lot of mileage! Want to know more? Read on.

Before we move on, let's understand what bumper stickers are. A bumper sticker is an adhesive label or sticker with a message, intended to be attached to the bumper of an automobile and to be read by the occupants of other vehicles - although they are often stuck onto other objects.

Bumper stickers help spread your word because people observe bumper stickers when they go to a parking lot, when they follow another car or when they are on the road and your car is passing by! In all these cases, your bumper sticker can create a 'touch point' without you being there.

You can make a bumper sticker as per your taste and needs. There just are no rules about how to make your own bumper sticker. So long as the sticker is not too big that people refuse to put it on their cars or too small for anyone to notice it, it's ok. It's just completely flexible and just up to you.

However, in that flexibility lie pitfalls as well. If you design a bumper sticker with just your logo, with too much text or oversell your product, it may not have the desired impact. For it to generate sales for you, it has to connect with your audience. It must help them in someway, have some humor or connect with their ideas, or better still, help THEM express themselves.

Imagine how wonderful your customers would feel that by just putting your sticker on their bumper, they are actually expressing themselves. Innovation is the secret for success here. Let your customer use your bumper sticker and do the marketing for you.

Use tips (beauty tips if you are a beautician) or corroborate your other marketing message using bumper stickers. You can also ride on other trends and fads. E.g. it could be about support to a sports group or various sports groups. You can make a sticker for each of the rival sports group! The same applies to politics as well (like a presidential election) though it's a little more risky.

You can use some other techniques to make your sticker more viral. Making it in less quantity and designing it as a status symbol would increase its popularity. Everyone would like to have it to show it off. As the number of people noticing it increases, so would the demand for them. Wouldn't it be just wonderful!

One must use bumper sticker with great responsibility and of course smartly. Get bumper sticker and watch your customers increasing along with the increase in profits.

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