Marketing on a budget

At the start of the year my brother set up a Not for Profit café called Kinfolk in Melbourne’s CBD. As he was attempting to do so with almost no money I was concerned being the serious marketing student that I am : ) I was concerned about his marketing campaign.

So, how do you market an organisation for free...

The answer is actually quite simple, you let other people do it for you.

Without spending a cent on marketing Kinfolk now have roughly 6 pages of results on google full of articles, comments, blogs and news about the café.

This is intriguingly the result of individuals themselves deciding that they want to spread the news about the café, so the customer’s have been doing the marketing without Kinfolk needing to do anything except provide a good/ amazing (yes I am biased) service

In a way it seems that the meaning of the term word of the mouth marketing has changed it is no longer what we once would have imagined it to be i.e. a person simply telling their friend about a café they went to the other day. In fact it can be a friend telling their 300 friends on facebook or actually writing a blog entry about it that can be read by anyone on the web or even adding photos displaying the venue. The day that Kinfolk opened their doors they had individuals (not friends or family) blogging and getting the word out about the new space.

So I find myself questioning, in a world where anyone can be a reporter do organisations need to spend money on marketing or should they be investing more in the actual product or service and relying on it being able to sell itself over the web?

And here is my attempt at marketing…

If you feel like some amazing food and great coffee with a conscience…

Check out Kinfolk café – I’m there Thursdays : )

673 Bourke Street, Melbourne (near Spencer Street)

http://ygap.com.au/initiatives/kinfolk/