Digital is for Everyone.

Mmm... Breakfast makes me hungry for adventure.

Most marketers have at least some smaller clients that don’t have a multi-million dollar budget to blow on stuff their agency ‘thinks’ will work. Even my large clients don’t want to waste money. They need results, and they can’t afford to throw their money away. So, anything out of the ordinary media mix is discounted as ‘new media’ and thrown away. Leave the innovating to the big boys. That kind of thinking is total, ‘Grade-A’ crap.

If anything, smaller companies have more reason to use involvement marketing, digital media and other new ideas because it turns every customer in to your own private pitch man. Think of a campaign for say, a small restaurant chain.

First, you use some traditional media to advertise an event, a web promotion, and the great food this place has given the local area for the past 20 years. This local advertising is backed up by a website for the restaurant that includes a menu, and the ability to comment on each thing on the menu like a blog posting. You encourage people to review everything on the menu and let others know what is good about it. You promote it to everyone that comes in the restaurant and even make a mobile version so people can review stuff on their smart phones while they eat.

Next, we get people excited about the event coming up by announcing that it’s a cook off. You can enter for free and bring something that you think should be added to the menu. There will be local celebrities as judges, along with the restaurant owner and the winning dish will be added to the menu. You promote this event with folksy flyer’s around the area the restaurant is in, as well as at other local businesses, Facebook users in the area and Youtube videos. Make a big day of it, hold it in the parking lot (during a warmer month than February I hope) and you will end up getting local media coverage, a ton of free publicity, a now stable web presence, and a devoted following for something that has connected on a local level. This could even be a big national chain, but taking an approach that individualizes a market and involves individuals in a discussion makes sense. Everyone that participated in the event will tell their friends, and hundreds or even thousands could show up for a cook-off.

This is not traditional advertising. Sure, it included some traditional media, because let’s face it, there is a long history of that kind of media working. This is not the only way to use different kinds of marketing, but this is one example of how even a small business can benefit by looking to get people involved with their brand and participate in the process in multiple ways.

This post originally appeared on the now defunct blog FryThoseEggs.com. It can also be found on the Star Moose Blog.