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Ask HN: Creative Marketing Ideas

6 points by greenxc ↗ HN
As a startup, we are brainstorming creative marketing ideas that will cost us as little as possible. What are some of the MOST creative ideas other startups/marketers have done for little or no cost that generated the most results? Please share :)

7 comments

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[dead] RoastBeats
I up-voted this because... well... I'd be curious to read the answers as well.

As for my two cents, one of the most creative PR stunts I've seen was a bit of a controversial website a buddy of mine runs announcing the development of an iPhone app. Mind you, all they did was announce the development of an app, but the tech press ate it up, claiming the Apple App Store had OK'd this controversial app. Again, while neither things were true (either that an app was done or the app store had approved it) the tech press ate it up and they got some huge traffic.

Peroni
Context is everything in these situations. A little info on what your start-up does, who you intend to target, etc would help.
JulianMiller520
I agree completely. I've worked on some fairly cool projects with regard to guerrilla marketing and I'd be happy to help out once you post more info.
greenxc
Thanks for the response. We are a online travel company targeting students/young professionals. General ideas we already have are online/social media marketing as well as partnerships (whether on campus or that already reach this group). We would like to think of some creative ideas to reach this market. Something outside of the box that could potentially go viral.
noahc
Please post at least your target market and what you hope to achieve or what your objective is. Do you want mindshare or do you want to convert to sales? What is your product or service?
greenxc
Initially mindshare is most important. Share of mind = share of market :) Sales will come once we have a big enough audience/knowledge of our brand.
aorshan
Well if you are a travel company targeting students, I have a few pieces of advice for you. Students travel for two reasons, either going to sports or going home. So if you can reach them in one of those situations, you're filling a need.

As you may be aware, the college football season is winding down and it is almost time for the bowl season (college football playoffs). What that means is that you will have a lot of schools travelling all over the country to play their bowl game and a lot of students trying to figure out how to get there. If you put together some sort of special for students who are travelling to those games, you could reach a pretty sizable market. I would recommend picking some of the larger bowl games (Sugar bowl, fiesta bowl, rose bowl, orange bowl) and as soon as they announce who will be going to which bowls, doing promotions at the schools that will be travelling to those bowls.