When you must win a war but lack the troops you borrow an army. You are a small business with a limited number of hands and marketing budget but you need a huge sales force. What can you do? Leverage the power of someone else’s community.
Benefit days are promotional marketing strategies that engage the word-of-mouth and marketing force of the members of an outside community. You can build a lot of business and create a ton of brand awareness of someone else’s team is doing all the leg work.
Here is how it all works:
- Identify a local organization to work with.
- Designate a week of service for the benefit of that organization.
- Pledge to donate a portion of every haircut that week to the organization.
- Create all the needed marketing materials and pass them off to the key contact and influencer within the beneficiary organization.
- Sit back and let their community rabidly promote your business and offering.
- Make a big event of making the donation at the end of the promotion.
- Look to anniversary the event next year
You can target the organizations you partner with based on the market you wish to reach. Want teens in your chairs? Work with the local high school marching band booster club. Want seniors? Target a senior center or nursing home operation. Want business people? Partner up with a large local employer.
If the partner organization is a charitable entity the donation can be a tax deduction, too. An added bonus.
The members of these organization are helping themselves. They are also helping you. Everyone wins.
