PR 101

The other day I was on the receiving end of a very smart micro-marketing effort. It impressed me and I do this for a living, so not many campaigns do that. However, many small companies can learn to use micromarketing from this effort. I suspect it didn’t cost much money and I think it will increase business.

What is micro-marketing? According to Answers.com, it’s “Designing, creating, and manufacturing products, marketing, and advertising campaigns for the benefit of very specific geographic, demographic, or psychographic segments of the consumer market.”

In other words, micromarketing means selling to your neighbors.

My exposure to micromarketing began when I came home the other day to find a plastic bag on the front steps. That’s not unusual – somebody is always leaving phone books or fliers or something else on the steps. Most of the time the bag avoids the house completely on its trip to the recycling bin in the garage.

This time the bag contained a dog food sample and two dog biscuits. As Chester the Wonder Dog has a voracious appetite, I always appreciate free food. Biscuits are good, too. He is more cooperative when he knows there’s a reward when I expect him to something.

The bag came from a local pet store called Hounds Around Town. Along with the food, there were two fliers inside the bag. On one there was an eight-paragraph explanation of the food – how it was made locally without any artificial ingredients. There were also a couple of paragraphs about Hounds Around Town, including an invitation to bring my dog whenever I wanted.

Also in the packet was a sheet from a group called the 3/50 project. This really caught my attention. I went to the group’s website and found this explanation from Consumer Reports:

“The 3/50 Project is a campaign to support local merchants. The concept has spread to communities nationwide, and its premise is simple: First, choose three local independent brick-and-mortar businesses—clothing shops, food stores and restaurants, and for the home, independent appliance retailers, hardware stores, and garden centers—that you find essential and want to keep from going under during the recession. During tight times like these, independent retailers suffer since budget-minded consumers are more inclined to shop at chain stores and big-box behemoths.

Then spend $50 or more among those places each month. If enough people in a town make the pledge, the theory goes, the pooled-together funds will prop up mom-and-pop enterprises and help sustain local business districts.”

The sheet quoted the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in noting that if just half the U.S. working population spent $50 each month in locally owned businesses, more than $42.6 billion in revenue would be generated. It also said that for every $100 spent in independently owned stories, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. When a purchase is made from a national chain, $43 stays in a local community. When an online purchase is made nothing stays behind.

Powerful arguments on both counts. In fact, it affected me and that doesn’t usually happen. After all, marketing is what I do for a living. I have seen every kind of campaign that’s ever been done. Most either make me cringe or yawn.

However, this campaign made me think. I do like to shop locally as much as possible and I like products to buy that are made locally. I firmly believe that the only way we are going to dig ourselves out of this recession is to support each other. I have no faith that the politicians who spread all this rhetoric are going to do anything that will actually solve the problem.

In this case, if Chester likes the dog food the odds are good I will shop at Hounds Around Town. This a dog who likes to eat squirrels, rabbits and other small animals, so I don’t think his palate is that discerning.

It is also an instructive example of for small businesses. Many small retailers just don’t have the budget to advertise or do much marketing. Buying a newspaper ad or producing a television commercial can be expensive. Plus, those efforts are more of a shotgun approach. A microcampaign such as the one Hounds Around Town ran can be much more effective because the market is very targeted. It is a very good idea.