The only thing new about guerilla marketing is the name. It's also called buzz marketing, viral marketing, sticker marketing and stealth marketing. The main idea behind guerilla marketing is to raise awareness, create a buzz and build brand identity by bypassing the defenses that people generally use when reading or viewing advertising. Promotional items are one of the oldest forms of guerilla marketing in existence. The idea behind any type of promotional items is the same as that behind guerilla marketing - to create a buzz about your product or service. Here are a number of ways to use promotional items to create a buzz, some of them old hat, and a few of them quite non-traditional.

Sticker marketing campaign

Sticker marketing is a very common way to do street level marketing with promotional items, especially by local bands. It employs flyers, leaflets and car stickers posted up round the town to promote show dates and build name awareness for the bands. Sticker marketing campaigns can also work for other types of companies. The key is a well-designed sticker or flyer that stands out against a background of drab.

Thank you takeaway packages

Thanking customers for their business is not only good manners, it's good business. No customer should ever leave your place of business without taking your name home with them. You can use professionally designed flyers to tuck into bags at the till (and your bags DO carry your store name, yes?). Put a coupon in one of the corners offering free promotional items (a branded calculator? A printed coffee mug?) when the customer makes another purchases within 90 days. Use your contact with your customers to deepen your relationship with them by offering them something they can use again and again.

Leave-behinds

When you're doing business to business selling, you need to use every possible advantage to your benefit. Your introduction and presentation are important, but what you leave behind is what makes the lasting impression. Be certain that any informational and promotional materials are well designed and convey your brand image as well as all the information that you want your customers to remember. Creative use of leave-behinds can score you big points when you're trying to create new business relationships. Putting your business presentation on a thumb drive printed with your company logo and leave it with your prospective client is just one example of a way to use promotional items to make an impression.

T-shirt marketing

Like sticker marketing, t-shirt marketing is a technique that is often used by bands to promote their label. Wearable promotional items are high on the list of effective marketing tools. But just handing out t-shirts with the name of your company on them isn't always the best way to do things. If you want to get your brand noticed, you have to mount a coordinated campaign to dress your market in your promotional items. T-shirts make a great tool in peer-to-peer marketing schemes, for example. Distribute the first wave of t-shirts to peer leaders along with information about your new product, and let them do the selling for you.