You know the feeling when a great idea hits. It can be exhilarating. It can be inspiring. It can be hard to find. That’s especially true when you’re on a shoe-string marketing budget. And shoe-string budgets go hand-in-hand with small business. Still, that doesn’t mean you can forget about marketing altogether. No, it simply means you’ll have to be a little more creative to get out there.

For a while, social media was the go-to weapon of choice for leveling the playing field against big money corporations with mountainous marketing resources. Yet, while it’s still true that social media can be a great asset to your small business needs, corporations have caught on and are investing heavily into the realm of likes and tweets.

For small businesses, it’s time to go back to an old warhorse—guerrilla marketing.

Yes, guerrilla marketing. The awe-inspiring, idea-popping, light switch-flipping realm of advertising that can not only make your business the buzzword around town, but can turn your campaign into an internet sensation too.

Guerrilla marketing. This is fun stuff.

Campaigns can be low tech: as simple as a park bench that temporarily marks users legs with an imprint of your logo or an exhaust pipe promoting smoking prevention. Those will require you to buy some ad space and get your hands dirty on the arts and crafts aisle.

Campaigns can also be high tech, which brings us to the focal point of this piece—Taco Bell’s latest move. The California-based fast food chain recently partnered with Samsung to promote their new breakfast menu. Yes, it really is an curious as that sounds.

So what’s the promotion, you ask? A phone giveaway.

Taco Bell is giving away 1,000 Samsung phones to people with big influence on social media. Each day, the winners receive a phone call with various missions to complete in order to win prizes like t-shirts, hoodies and other Taco Bell branded items. Of course, they’ll tweet and share and selfie those waffle tacos along with their waffle-t’s. It’s a brilliant move for online exposure.

If that sounds like something your small business can’t afford—it isn’t. You just have to be a little creative and a little brave.

You see, the phones that Taco Bell is giving away, the Samsung T40, are not very expensive. In fact, they are basically targeted towards a teenage audience (coincidentally the same audience which might grab a waffle taco for breakfast). Taco Bell probably got them for free. But aside from the fact that Taco Bell is a giant corporation, Samsung had plenty of reasons to do business with them.

For starters, Samsung is notorious for their own guerrilla marketing efforts, like this: a truck full of rubbish parked in the middle of a city. It’s actually a Galaxy SIII advertisement.

They love local targeting. And what businesses are more local than any others? The small ones. That’s you!

Think about your customer base. What’s their age range? What do they like? What other products besides yours would benefit their life?

Have some ideas yet? Good, jot them down (seriously, we’re brain-storming).

Now, do some quick thinking and figure out which other businesses in your area would actually benefit your customers. Once you have that in mind, go approach them. Seriously, what do you think Taco Bell did?

You are not in a vacuum. You can do this! It’s shocking how many businesses are willing to lend you a helping hand for a favor in return.

Really, go do it. Find a creative partner. You never know until you try. Sure, you might get a “no.” But if you do, you’ll probably have made some good connections in the process, and if you succeed you may just find yourself riding the wave of a new guerrilla marketing hit.

If all else fails, there’s always that truck full of rubbish idea…

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