DECA Marketing Strategies (Roleplay)

Word of mouth

Whether it's online, offline, word of mouth is basically the honest opinion that people have the product. The way to get word-of-mouth is to build/provide the best product/service in the world. That's it. Which is why I always say that marketing does not start with marketing. It starts with product/operations! If you what sell is bad, no amount of marketing will save you.

Word-of-mouth is the best marketing channel for a reason.

Referral program

Reward your customers when they share your products and get new customers. Works well for B2C products, but none at all for B2B

Viral marketing

Do something crazy that people share online spontaneously.

Public relations

Reach out to news delivering services and tell them something that can be valuable to their audience. News delivering services aren't necessarily newspapers. They can be:

- Newspapers

- TV channels

- Newsletters

- Radio

- Apps

- Twitter accounts

- Youtube channels

Display Ads

-Go through an ad network (adsense is one of them, but there are many others)

-Social media

-Advertise on big websites (NYT, etc.)

Sales

It's hiring sales people. Usually, the marketing department attarcts potential customers that contact the company and are handed over to the sales department. Often though, the sales people need to go find customers themselves.

Event organization

This can be as much offline as online. The idea is to organize an event related to your product and give perks to the winner. It can be:

- A competition to see who will convince to adopt your product the fastest (Revolut's University Race)

- A competition to see who makes the best X with your product (eg: you sell guitars, organize a song-writing competition)

Product Placement

- Movies

- Music

- Video game

Stunts

- Dressing up in the street and distributing flyers

- Hot air balloon

- Free giveaways at train stations

Sponsoring

You can sponsor pretty much anything nowadays:

- Summits, conferences

- Festivals (movie, music, etc)

- Charity events

- Athletes, cyclist teams, formula 1 teams, football teams (eg: Red Bull)

- Movies, through product placement

- A star so they wear/use/talk about your product

- An influencer (see below)

Merchandising

Several ways to go about it:

1. Sell it: some merchandising not only make money, but they advertise your company for free.

2. Give it for free so people advertise your company (eg: I got a free t-shirt from a company named Bondora)

3. Give them to your early customers for free so they're happy and talk about your company to everyone.