When you hear the term ‘guerilla’, you may automatically think of the term as it’s used in warfare, small bands of soldiers performing surprise raids on enemy camps. The term guerilla marketing has been around since 1984, when Houghton Mifflin wrote the first book about it. Today, Jay Conrad Levinson is considered the ‘Father of Guerilla Marketing’ and has written extensively about it.
What is Guerilla Marketing?
Guerilla marketing is a mindset, a strategy of using certain techniques to achieve traditional goals, like profits for your business, with unconventional methods, like investing time, energy, and attention instead of money. It flies in the face of most traditional marketing methods and is aimed specifically at small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Its popularity is growing in quantum leaps, partially because the downsizing of so many large companies has given huge numbers of people the opportunity to pursue the dream of owning their own business. It works because it’s easy to understand, simple to use, and incredibly inexpensive compared to traditional marketing methods.
Why It’s Essential for Your Business Success
Guerilla marketing gives small business owners the power to compete with the ‘big boys’ without needing the deep pockets the big boys have for advertising and marketing their business. If you aren’t implementing guerilla marketing, you can bet your competition is, and you’d better embrace it or get swallowed by it.
In the same way those small, irregular armies of soldiers move with stealth into the enemies camps and completely take over, guerilla marketers do the same thing to their competitors’ business. They do this by thinking outside the box, no, even more than that, they throw the box away and build a trapezoid instead. Guerilla marketers are able to grab your attention in such a way that you never even see a ‘pitch’ coming.
The Differences of Guerilla Marketing
In essence, guerilla marketing takes the beliefs long held by traditional marketers and challenges them, by accomplishing the same or higher goals with what would appear to be almost effortless marketing. Traditional marketers focus their attention on the sale, thinking their job is done when the sale is made. Guerilla marketers know that 68% of all lost business is due to apathy after the sale, and that follow up with your customers is crucial to the success of your business.
When traditional marketers count money at the end of the month, guerilla marketers count new relationships, because they recognize every customer has a lifetime value that far exceeds whatever single sale he makes today.
Traditional marketing methods measure a successful campaign by responses to offers, store traffic, or web site hits. Guerilla marketers know the only numbers that really matter are in the bottom line – how profitable was it? A business can break a standing sales record and still lose money in the process.
Guerrilla marketing doesn’t rely on only one way of doing things. They have many ‘weapons’ in their arsenal and they will use them all, to gain the trust of their customers, to gather the suggestions and opinions of their customers and in almost every case, will outperform traditional marketers every time.
