20 Guerilla Online Marketing Ideas for Your Small Organization

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This is a dynamically growing list of marketing tips you can use to grow your business with online marketing techniques.

Search Engine Optimization

  • Write Blog Articles: Write blog articles in your field that are optimized for specific keywords. For example, if you are a singer in New York, write blog articles such as “10 Best Concerts in New York” or “How to Train Your Voice” or “Great Experiences in New York”. Give a lot of value and satisfy the information needs of your blog visitors. At the end of a blog article pitch your product. You have to wait for a few months until your blog article starts ranking on a search engine like Google. Probably, you even have to tweak and improve your article to be able to rank #1 on Google. However, the payoff is great: if you rank #1 on Google, Google will send lots of free traffic your way month after month after month. Blogging is a powerful wheel in your marketing machine — especially if you’re interested in building a long-term sustainable business or organization.
  • Optimize your existing blog articles. Visit the Google Search Console and check which of your blog articles already rank and for which keywords. Then rewrite your articles to deliver the information in a much better and faster way. Use other blog articles that rank above your article to get ideas about what people may be looking for. Over time, your articles will “bubble up” the search results and your traffic will greatly increase.
  • Write guest posts. Contact popular blog owners and ask them whether they would like you to contribute guest posts to their great blog. They will often agree because they love free content. Write a new guest article and link back to your own blog.
  • Add video content. Google measures the stay time on your page. If you add videos to your highest ranking blog articles, they will start ranking even higher because the average stay time increases if you embed videos to your blog articles. In the 21st century, this one is huge!

Instagram Marketing

  • Influencer marketing: Ask influencers to post your content (maybe even in exchange for posting theirs). Don’t be cheap and give value to the influencer. If you partner up with someone, both of you will usually benefit a lot.
  • Non-influencer marketing: Oftentimes, influencers are hard to convince to post your content — they are very protective about their own community. Only if they see a clear benefit, they will allow you to leverage their community. A huge opportunity is to “ladder up”: partner up with people that have approximately the same number of subscribers you have. For those people, you are a respectable source of new traffic — and they are for you. Over time, you can repeatedly push your subscriber count upwards. It’s a very effective and scalable use of your time because you’ll always increase your subscriber count by a number proportional to your current subscriber count — by repeating this procedure, you’ll experience exponential growth!
  • Use Hashtags: Don’t just post on your timeline. Search for the most popular “hashtags” in your field and post your content there so that people can actually see your content that would otherwise not be able to see it. You can use the “Jab, jab, jab, right hook” formula from Gary V: post three (or even ten) pieces of educational and informational content and then pitch them to subscribe to your channel (or even buy your product). Don’t be afraid to pitch your service or product — if you truly believe in your product, it’s the right thing to do.

Facebook Marketing

  • Post in groups. If you just post on your timeline, only a small fraction of your subscribers will see it. This is ensured by the Facebook algorithm who needs to manage the fact that there’s too much content competing for people’s attention. If you want to increase your reach, you need to go out there: find large groups with thousands of members and actively participate in the communication. From time to time, you can also send them a link to a blog article where you ask them to subscribe or even buy your services or products. This expansive strategy is a must if you need to grow organically (without paying for ads).
  • Ask influencers to post your content. It’s a similar strategy to Instagram marketing — but probably less efficient because of the limited scope of organic visibility (posts on your timeline).

General Social Network

  • Use your hive mind. If your organization consists of more than one person, ask all of them to write about your organization. And they should not only post on their timeline but post in groups where a lot of other people are gathering. This is one of the most valuable tips on this list — there’s nothing as powerful as a group of committed persons pushing towards one common objective. And it doesn’t have to be spammy — they should just communicate truthfully about the organization — it’s the lack of attention that’s the most challenging problem to overcome!

Email Marketing

  • Start now. If you don’t have it, create your email list now. It’s the one marketing channel that has the highest return on investment because it allows you to create a sustainable long-term relationship with your community. The most popular email marketing service provider is MailChimp (less than 2000 subscribers is free).
  • Create a clear content strategy such as “write one email per week with news in my field” or “write a daily email with tips in my field” or “write a monthly email with interesting concerts in New York”, etc. Then stick to your plan and adapt to the feedback of your subscribers.
  • Create an autoresponder series. If your subscribers first subscribe to your email list, you can send them several pre-generated emails. For example, give them a piece of content (for example a free report) in the first email, tell them your story in the second email, and ask them to buy your product or service in the third email.
  • Split test your landing page. The landing page is the page where a potential subscriber is asked to input their email address. They will only give it to you if they see a clear benefit and the landing page communicates this benefit clearly. Therefore, you must split test different variants of your landing page. Test different button colors (red vs orange), different calls-to-action (“Subscribe Now” vs “Download Your Free Report”), different headlines (“Free Report” vs “Shatter Your Fat”), or different lead magnets (“Download free report” vs “5-Day Email Course”). An easy and cheap way of creating split tests on your WordPress blog is the tool “Thrive Leads”. 
  • Create a better lead magnet. Subscribers will only subscribe if they get things they want in exchange for their email address. So think about what they want (or, better yet, ask them) and invest time to create this thing. Think in terms of “quick wins” such as a downloadable report, cheat sheet, booklet, or music video. 
  • Implement a growth motor. If you’re an artist or a local business, collect email addresses on your life events. Give people a discount when they give you their email address. With a growing email list, it’ll become easier over time to fill your concert room, store, or gallery. And customers who bought once (even for a discount) are much more likely to buy again — if you’ve not lost the contact by not collecting the email address! This tip is huge and you can build your whole thriving business around this one tip — so don’t ignore it just because it’s a long-term strategy.

Quora

  • Write answer wikis. This is one of my favorite hacks. Popular questions get millions of views. Oftentimes, there are hundreds of answers and even if you write a great answer, you won’t get any visibility. That’s where answer wikis come into play. Create an answer wiki and collect the best wisdom from all the answers. Include your resource if it’s relevant. Submit the answer wiki. After a short review period, the answer wiki will be published above the fold — for everyone to see. Your resource will have gained a level of attention which it would never have received otherwise.
  • Reuse your blog articles. Oftentimes, you’ve already written blog articles that answer the question of Quora users. For existing blog articles of yours, search Quora and copy&paste your blog article as a Quora answer. Then link back to your blog article.

YouTube

  • Record parts of your daily life. If you’re a music artist, record your concerts and even your training sessions. Then post those videos to YouTube. You can even embed them on your blog to attract more visitors. You don’t have to be perfect — people love to see the whole story unfold: from zero to hero. Always remember: they love the story more than they love the final outcome. So give it to them!
  • Ask customers to create small selfie videos. This type of content will convince others to try out your business. If you’ve already engaged fans, this tip is a great way of generating exciting content quickly (without investing a dime) that instantly improves your credibility and visibility. This content can then be posted on social networks and on your own blog.

If you’ve got more ideas of how to extend this online marketing list, send them to me (chris (at) finxter.com).

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