Jan
04
Gorilla Marketing: What You Need To Know
In some sneaky, dirty circles, people misspell words in their websites to take advantage of search engine traffic from people who can’t spell. I find this hilarious and am thus parodying that behavior here. No, I don’t endorse it. I just think it’s funny. Relax.
Unless you have been living under a rock for decades or do not live in an English speaking country, you’ve heard of Guerilla Marketing. You might think it’s something worthwhile trying for your home business. It would probably be a good idea for you to know what the hell it is before you embark.
If you go to Google and type in “define: Guerrilla Marketing” you will get these two responses:
1.) using unconventional methods to make sales.
2.) unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.
While both seem right, they’re not. (If you happen to be Jay Conrad Levinson, the creator of the concept, and I’m wrong, please feel free to leave a comment.) The first definition is wrong because it does not address a crucial factor – resources. The second definition is wrong because it does not define resources.
Guerilla marketing is, at it’s heart, marketing on the cheap. It’s doing stuff – sometimes some pretty crazy shit – to make sales with minimal money. If you’ve ever read a book on the subject, you’ll know that Guerilla Marketing tends to be fairly resource intensive, although the resources are generally time and energy and creativity as opposed to the almighty peso.
A few things to consider:
What’s your definition of success with your marketing initiative?
If you want to make $100 million by Christmas, Guerilla Marketing is probably not your best choice.
How much time do you have?
If you’re hand-writing flyers to save on printing costs, it’s going to take some time. If you don’t have time, this is not for you.
How creative are you?
If you can’t brainstorm your way out of a wet paper bag, you might want to just take an ad out instead.
How good are you?
A little hard to be objective on this one, but it’s an important factor. If you can do a mean chicken dance, dressing up as poultry to hand out your coupons might be a good idea. If not, then, well, not.
Who is Guerilla Marketing for?
If you are energetic and creative and have more time than money and are interested in getting knee-deep into the marketing trenches, GM is bloody brilliant.
If you want to know more about Jay and his boyz and feel like reading one of his books, click here to read my review.
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Overwhelmed? Freaking out? Borderline hysterical? Click here to get your own micro-business marketing plan. It’s not scary, I promise.
Sometimes I accidentally misspell words. A few weeks later I’ll start seeing traffic from search engines for words that I’m surprised I would rank. Then I notice that it’s for a misspelling and when I check I’ll find that I did misspell it.
It’s weird how that happens! One of my commenters said she received six separate visitors who were Googling “are hydrid cars worth it?” and they found her, although she hadn’t initially misspelled the word.
I’m reading Guerrilla Publicity right now… awesome book! But some of the ideas in there are for people that have bucks, not bootstrappers. I still think the original Guerrilla Marketing was the best fo sho.
I’m reading Buzz Marketing now, Buzz being a close sibling of Guerrilla. I think don’t Guerrilla can be defined by how much time and money is spent on an unconventional marketing idea. Any amount of time and money can be put into a idea – its the degree of unconventional-ness that makes it guerrilla.
@ Christine and Michael – I’m of two minds on the purpose of Guerilla tactics. I think that literally, it has nothing to do with money. It’s just unconventional techniques. I think that those techniques were so much more frequently implemented by those with no cash that lack of cash became what it was colloquially about.
I also think that, generally speaking, the more cash a company has, the more conservative they are about how they spend it. The amount of money and willingness to take risks seem to be inversely proportional.
Interestingly enough, “Gorilla Marketing” is not necessarily a misspelling of Guerilla marketing (also spelled Guerrilla marketing :p). Gorilla marketing is when you use a *big* name to sell a product or service and as such Gorilla Marketing is usually very expensive, this is the opposite of Guerilla Marketing which is marketing on a very low budget. So while the word could be a misspelling, intentional or not, it’s also true that the reader could just be misinformed.
I’m not sure what you think is misspelt. ‘Guerrilla’ is a correctly spelt word, meaning “a member of a band of irregular soldiers that uses guerrilla warfare, harassing the enemy by surprise raids, sabotaging communication and supply lines, etc.” It can also be spelt “Guerilla”, according to dictionary.com. I have a feeling that the use of the single ‘r’ is an american spelling alteration from the original English.
However it’s spelt, I love this book!
I read the original book back in the late ’80’s, early ’90’s. I glanced at it, along with a number of other “marketing” books. I found it less than useful, and more than a little derogatory towards customers. Like Dan Kennedy of Glazer-Kennedy, who refers to his list members as “the herd.” Maybe I’m old-fashioned, in that I believe in building trust with my customers.
To my way of thinking, like Bill Glazers “outrageous” advertising, much of it is good, but some skates close to not very good. I’ve spent time selling face to face, where sales determined if you paid the bills. You learn real quickly to respect both the buyer, and potential buyer. Something I don’t see reflected in the talk/actions of a lot of IM Gurus. Yes, they’re successful, but not as much as they could have been.:-)