Guerilla marketing is an unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, Guerilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.The term has since entered the popular vocabulary to also describe aggressive, unconventional marketing methods generically.

Levinson identifies the following principles as the foundation of guerrilla marketing:

  • Guerrilla Marketing is specifically geared for the small business and entrepreneur.
  • It should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgment, and guesswork.
  • Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.
  • the primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.
  • The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.
  • Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering too many diverse products and services.
  • Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.
  • Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.
  • Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign.
  • Use current technology as a tool to empower your business.
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.

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