Is grassroots marketing still effective?

This type of marketing can help you deliver your core message to a targeted audience in an extremely effective and affordable way.

Read on to discover what grassroots marketing is and how this powerful marketing tool is still effective for helping companies find new customers for their products and services.

What is grassroots marketing?

Grassroots marketing is a marketing tactic that involves purposefully targeting a niche demographic to spread a brand’s message organically, rather than launching campaigns that focus on a larger group of people.

The defining concept behind this type of marketing is based on audience and intent.

Instead of reaching out to as many people as possible, a company works from the ground up, only targeting a small segment of their audience with their message in the hopes that they will propagate the message to a larger group of people.

For instance, they might concentrate on persuading a few select influencers in their niche to share the message with their individual audiences. It doesn’t matter if these are influencers who make a living from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or another social media platform.

As long as they have the ability to spread a message to their followers, it can be a huge driver for grassroots marketing success.

In order to succeed, this type of marketing campaign relies heavily on virality and social media, which makes sense since the idea behind it is to encourage influencers to share the brand’s story.

Keep in mind that grassroots marketing can involve non-digital-marketing tactics.

This powerful marketing concept has been around since before the internet, and it offers businesses a way to grow their brands organically that has nothing to do with search engine optimisation.

As you’ll see from the examples that we’re going to discuss below, grassroots marketing is still effective and has helped many brands experience phenomenal success.

Benefits of grassroots marketing

Not everyone is the perfect client, and grassroots marketing allows you to focus your efforts only on the segment of people from whom you’re likely to get the best results. It helps you meet your marketing goals, such as customer loyalty and brand recognition in a highly effective way and allows you to grow your customer base in a very affordable way.

Grassroots marketing vs guerilla marketing

Many people mistakenly use these two marketing terms interchangeably because both involve marketing directly to consumers in creative ways that seem quite unorthodox to outsiders.

However, while grassroots marketing sometimes relies on a lot of the techniques found in guerilla marketing campaigns, these are two very different forms of marketing.

Take GoldToe’s marketing campaign, for instance:

Image source.

This is a great example of a guerilla marketing tactic, but it’s not grassroots marketing since the ad doesn’t target a niche demographic or select group of people.

Although the strategies and tactics used in both types of campaigns can be the same, the major difference between these two has to do with the specific audience being marketed to, as well as the intent behind the campaign.

Guerilla marketing campaigns try to reach the largest number of people possible while grassroots campaigns are often designed to target a niche group of people who will then spread the message further.

Grassroots marketing in a digital world

While it has always been an excellent way to get the word out about businesses both big and small, grassroots marketing has had to evolve in the digital world.

Even today, with businesses looking for more traditional techniques to generate new customers, many have had to add a digital twist to their grassroots marketing campaigns in order to transform them into powerful tools to help them meet their business objectives.

This is true even for businesses with brick and mortar locations. Marketing experts have aided the evolution of this powerful form of marketing by incorporating various techniques for optimising grassroots campaigns for the digital world.

For instance, in order to optimise campaigns, some marketers create grassroots campaign webpages, as well as mobile-friendly pages, designed with a tool like this, to boost their SEO tactics and ensure that no one is left out of the marketing experience.

They also incorporate various other SEO tactics, such as using location-based keywords, A/B Testing, and creating engaging social media content that is likely to be reshared, thereby increasing its chances of going viral and adding more exposure to the grassroots marketing campaign.

Examples of successful grassroots marketing

Here are 3 examples of companies doing grassroots marketing successfully, and how they integrated digital into their strategy:

1. WeightWatchers
This massive brand launched a tear-off flyer campaign which became a huge success thanks to their integration of digital tactics, such as creating an optimised landing page and encouraging social sharing among their audience.

2. WestJet
This video from Canadian budget airline, WestJet is a great example of the grassroots marketing principle in action. The video has racked in close to 50 million views for a campaign that was created to engage goodwill and awareness for the corporation.

3. #BostonStrong
The hashtag #BostonStrong for One Fund Boston started from a tweet sent as a show of support by a Cleveland man, Curtis Clough, after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. It resulted in over $72m dollars being raised for the victims, thanks to the virality of social media.

Will @middlebrooks has some special inspiration for tonight #BostonStrong pic.twitter.com/TO88J0lGeG

— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 16, 2013

Summary

The bottom line is grassroots marketing is still very effective. Whether you’re established or just starting out, this powerful form of marketing can help you gain tons of targeted exposure for your business without the high price tag to match.

Do you think grassroots marketing would be effective for your business? Let us know in the comments section below!