Gabetti, a Real Estate giant using Guerrilla techniques

Subject: Targeted direct mail hand delivered
Principle: Analyze where your target audience is. Reaching it can be simple and low cost.
Who should be read on: Every (new) business with a geographically defined customer-base

Large companies can be surprisingly nimble at times: it is refreshing for a guerrilla marketer like me to see huge corporations running low cost, highly effective initiatives, far away from the regular “institutional” advertising.

The example we check out today comes from Italy: Gabetti is a nationwide Real Estate company, similar to Century 21 or ReMax.

My mom (ehi, she is becoming the co-star of this blog… she brings so many interesting example to my attention…) passed me the attached flyer.

For our non-Italian speaking audience (this must be a rare blog: English language with reference to Italian stuff :) ), here’s the translation verbatim “Gabetti is looking for houses here. We have several potential customers in this area. If you have a house to sell in this building or around here, get in contact with us right away!”

I love it: the idea is crisp and simple, the delivery effective and to the point. The flyer was hand-delivered in the mail box, probably by a cash-strapped student working for 10 Euro/Dollars an hour or so.

This technique can be easily used for any business that wants to kick start revenues or revitalize a flagging season: imagine a local restaurant offering a special discount to the neighbors (maybe on a rotating basis: one block this week, one block next week), or a copy center or a dry cleaning company.

Adding a personal touch in the text of the message would make it even more effective: something sincere and wholehearted about the business and the desire to serve the neighbors in the community would strike the right chord in the bulk of the recipients.

And what’s the investment? Maybe 100$ of cash for the student working 10 straight hours delivering hundreds of perfectly targeted messages… Even less if the astute entrepreneur can use the century-old (but still very modern) art of bartering… (more on this in the future)

Mau in China