The Latest Marketing Trend - Non-Marketing

Anti-Marketing Practice Is Much Like Grassroots Marketing

Marketing has a well defined theoretical meaning. When it comes to implementation, marketing is achieved using very different means by very different people. Regardless of the techniques used, it is one of those activities that every business has to implement in one way or another.
The latest trend is to appear not to be doing marketing in any form. Antipreneurs (a growing group of small business owners that believe in connecting with the community and shrugging off traditional big business practices, were profiled and defined in Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine, June/July 2008) are testing the non-advertising, non-marketing waters. Big corporations are not far behind in creating countercultural environments for their products and services.
There is a name for this type of non-marketing, non-advertising practice - it’s called grassroots marketing.

Grassroots Marketing

Grassroots marketing is accomplished mainly by generating word-of-mouth support and promotion. It is achieved by developing a group of supporters for a company or organization who can promote the benefits of buying or using a product or service. Upside is there is little or no money spent on marketing or advertising. The biggest downside is that it is time and energy intensive.
Grassroots marketing requires developing strong relationships with customers, clients, small businesses or organizations. If it works right, it can be highly successful and satisfying.

Three Fs of Grassroots Marketing
Kyle Potvin of Splash Communications, LLC wrote about the three Fs of grassroots marketing in aboutpublicrelations.net. She defines the Fs as Feel-good, Frequent, and Free.
The first F of a grassroots marketing campaign makes customers feel good and motivates people to bring out their passion for a company. Frequent means to build many strong relationships within the community on several levels so that the buzz created within the community grows and grows. The final F, is to give free samples which always seems to get people excited about a product or service.
Grassroots Marketing - Building, Growing and Sustaining
According to the SmallBiz article, the anitpreneurs support each other. They also focus on the importance of buying from small companies with social responsibility and sustainability at their core.
To build their networks of supporters, these companies depend on the most powerful tool in the marketing arsenal – word-of-mouth - which is at the heart of grassroots marketing.
Whether a business considers itself part of the antipreneur crowd or whether it embraces marketing as one of the unequivocal factors of success, grassroots marketing can be the best marketing or non-marketing technique of choice.

source: http://corporate-marketing-branding.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_latest_marketing_trend_nonmarketing