Essentials of Guerrilla Marketing

[KristineS]

According to Entrepreneur Magazine and Jay Conrad Levinson there are 18 essential secrets to success in Guerrilla Marketing. You can read about them here.

I think this article is right on the money. I especially like what it says about marketing being an investment and that it should be consistent not changing all the time.

[vangogh]

Interesting. Guerrilla Marketing was the first marketing book I ever read too. One thing they didn't list, which I'd say is essential to all marketing is creativity. So much can be had by being creative and doing things differently than everyone else says to do them.

[Spider]

So many small businesses seem to want to appear to be big businesses and that seems to turn them away from guerrilla marketing tactics - you'll never see a McDonalds flyer under the windshield wipers of your car! But, it seems to me that pretending to be something you are not can be damaging when discovered.

Why not play up the uniqueness of your ultra-small business? The personal touch. The devotion and focus on a single project. That customers deal with the owner, not an employee.

Guerrilla Marketing, it seems to me, involves a lot of walking (good for the health) putting flyers on people's front doors, pinning business cards to the noticeboards in laundry rooms at apartment buildings, notices placed on windshilds of cars in a parking lot. But that's where you reach people who want to deal with a small caring business rather than a big impersonal business.

[vangogh]

It's been awhile since I read the book, but if memory serves the concept is about more than the walking tour. That would be part of it, but I think it's more about being smarter with your marketing and also being more creative.

It's about focusing your efforts and paying attention to details larger companies might miss. It's placing a small add in the right newspaper consistently instead of placing the full page ad in the paper with the largest circulation.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by vangogh

Interesting. Guerrilla Marketing was the first marketing book I ever read too. One thing they didn't list, which I'd say is essential to all marketing is creativity. So much can be had by being creative and doing things differently than everyone else says to do them.

Steve, it boils down to knowing your market and your customers, then, reaching them in creative ways, as you point out. It then behooves one to continue the process of relationship developing with that customer once reached.

I don't recall that Levinson ever emphasized the relationship part originally. Perhaps he does so now.

Paul

[RadioGirl]

I really don't know why people associate Guerrilla with flyers in windshields...guerrilla marketing is about much more than that. It's just effective marketing dressed up in a fancy name. I've really found very little difference between the guerrilla approach and other approaches that focus on saving marketing dollars by narrowing down what works with your target market.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by RadioGirl

I really don't know why people associate Guerrilla with flyers in windshields...guerrilla marketing is about much more than that. It's just effective marketing dressed up in a fancy name. I've really found very little difference between the guerrilla approach and other approaches that focus on saving marketing dollars by narrowing down what works with your target market.

You're very correct, Patrysha. Fliers under windshield wipers are being outlawed by more and more municipalities and are probably a medium that has seen its best days.

GM is simply a group of creative techniques of direct marketing. Testing and tracking designed into the methods is certainly essential to their best deployment.

I'll wager that with the downturn in the economy we all see more efforts at testing and tracking in areas in which it has been essentially unknown.

Paul

[vangogh]

I think people want to see guerrilla marketing as cheap marketing instead of seeing it as the creative and effective marketing it really is.

it boils down to knowing your market and your customers, then, reaching them in creative ways, as you point out. It then behooves one to continue the process of relationship developing with that customer once reached.

Paul, I agree completely. You have to figure out who your market is and understand them as best you can in order to give them what they want and need. Then you want to make sure they know about what you have to offer and why you're the choice to purchase from.

[Paul Elliott]

Originally Posted by vangogh

I think people want to see guerrilla marketing as cheap marketing instead of seeing it as the creative and effective marketing it really is.

That is an unfortunate perception I've run into. Perhaps it would have been better to call it Stealth Marketing. But the stealth concept was not in the lexicon at the time Jay came up with his ideas and brand.

[KristineS]

I think it is still presented as the "flyer on the windshield" marketing by some people. In reality Guerrilla marketing is about getting the word out about your product or service in a new or unique way. What is kind of ironic is the fact that this technique, which was really about being grassroots and independent, has now become kind of mainstream. There are books written about it and videos on how to guerrilla market and even a Guerrilla Marketing Association.