For many small business owners, marketing is often seen as a costly and time-consuming process: add that to the lack of knowledge in the area of marketing, and it is then easy to understand why many small businesses fail in their early stages.
Therefore, we must all appreciate that marketing is one of the main forces that drives your business forward, and so it is important that we use it to some, effective, degree.
A form of marketing known as "Guerrilla Marketing" has been around for sometime, although its potential has only just begun to be acknowledged through the marketing of Internet businesses.
Guerrilla marketing is welcomed by small businesses as it offers a cheap, and often, more successful campaign than common marketing strategies such as newspaper adverts, mail shots and telesales. As a result, guerrilla marketing has lead to people thinking 'outside the box' to market their business more effectively with, usually, limited resources of cash flow, staff or even a real alternative marketing angle.
What is Guerrilla Marketing?
A 'Guerrilla' was the name given to an assistant that helped Wellington force back Napoleons troops during the Peninsular War using their unusual and unpredictable tactics.
This is what is being applied by 'Guerrilla marketing' - being original, breaking the rules, and looking for alternatives.
Guerrilla marketing may sound new to some people, but that may be a result of people using such marketing by another name.
Guerrilla marketing is cost effective, sometimes FREE. Along the lines of 'viral' (generally word of mouth) marketing, guerrilla marketing aims to attract customers that will refer your business to others such as friends, family and work associates. It is all about getting the maximum attention of the public by using minimal resources.
Making wild statements is probably the key to guerrilla marketing: "Looking for a quick loan? Forget us, we take 3 MONTHS to process your application". The conclusion here would be that you do not begin to take loan repayments until the 4th month.
This statement would therefore make people be intrigued to why it takes three months, and consequently use your service: the 'inverted' statement, or 'reverse psychology', was the key to getting their attention.
Although larger businesses integrate guerrilla marketing to a huge extent, it has been proven to work just as well for small businesses, and can you blame them for trying: it's cheap!
Such marketing worked best with Internet businesses (i.e. on-line businesses like credit-to-cash) and arguably, still does. However, there are certain areas of guerrilla marketing that can be adopted by off-line businesses and as you will see, are very effective. So that we include all businesses, we will cover both angles.
Guerrilla Marketing - An (Extreme!) Example
A good example of guerrilla marketing was when a leading men's magazine projected an image of Gail Porter onto the Houses of Parliament. It was a stunt that was talked about by everyone (well, nearly...certainly most men: but that was the intention anyway).
It was an attempt to get people to vote in the 'Worlds Sexiest Women' poll. The results were outstanding - all down to the stunt creating huge public awareness. For a small business, this would probably be a little too extreme, but you get the picture.
Another example occurred in August 2002 where Acclaim, a computer game company, offered people £500 plus a free gaming console to change their name to 'Turok': the title of a forthcoming computer game release. The response was massive with over 3,000 applicants. However, only five people would win the prize.
Similarly, in the early days of the Internet when there was lots of venture capital around, an on-line American company offered $5000 to those who named their child after one of their products. The scheme generated a healthy response.
Guerrilla Marketing - Examples of How NOT to do it
The following links are examples of guerrilla marketing that can give guidance on how NOT to get the attention of the public. There are many examples seen everyday but the ones that we believe will be beneficial to you, will be archived here. The links will open in a new window.
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