Guerilla marketing tactics were introduced over 20 years ago, and though guerilla marketing has become a buzzword, a complete guerilla marketing definition is difficult to put together. Guerilla marketing strategies emphasize creativity over spending, making the concept ideal for small businesses and start-ups.

A business can benefit from guerilla marketing ideas at any stage, whether it's just launching or has been around 20 years. The key is finding effective and relevant guerilla marketing information, in addition to seeking advice and training from professionals experienced in both traditional methods and online guerilla marketing. Guerilla marketing education and training include options include:

1. Instructional products developed by the creator of guerilla marketing
2. Attendance at a workshop, seminar or other guerilla marketing event
3. One-on-one or group coaching in guerilla marketing
   

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Purchase products or services developed by the creator of guerilla marketing

If you're looking to implement guerilla marketing at your company, you may want to go straight to the source--the man who created the concept over 20 years ago.

I recommend: Jay Conrad Levinson, the originator of guerilla marketing, offers one-on-one coaching, in addition to the Guerrilla Marketing Business University, held in Florida. Or, join the Guerrilla Marketing Association for access to teleclasses, coaching forums, a monthly online report, chat sessions, marketing tips, videos and other small business tools.

Enroll in a guerilla marketing seminar or workshop

For a short-term, cost-effective way to learn guerilla marketing tactics, consider seminars and workshops. They can help you quickly learn and adopt guerilla marketing strategies, often for a price that leaves enough money for implementing your new marketing strategy.

I recommend: The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center offers seminars in guerilla marketing. The seminars cover everything from attracting new business to getting the most from marketing and e-mail. Or, you can enroll in a workshop taught by a certified guerilla marketing coach such as Tennessee-based Doc Pratt.

Get individual instruction from a guerilla marketing company

For more intensive instruction, you may prefer coaching or consulting. These consultants and coaches not only are experts in guerilla marketing strategies, they can also help you tailor them to your company, taking into account your budget, size of company and the time you have to devote to marketing.

I recommend: Consider hiring a guerilla marketing coach for one-on-one instruction, such as Al Lautenslager, who offers individual and group coaching. Mitch Myerson, through his company Guerrilla Marketing Coaching, coaches business owners and trains people to become certified Guerilla Marketing coaches.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  With the Internet becoming such an important part of everyday life, mastering online guerilla marketing is crucial to the success of your business. In fact, online marketing goes back to the principles guerilla marketing was developed around -- low cost, and heavily dependent on word-of-mouth.

Guerilla Marketing is an aggressive, unconventional way of promoting your business with a very low budget. Marketers spend time, energy and creativity rather than money to promote your product or service.

Guerilla Marketing--definition of trend setting alternative promotion--is great for small businesses. You measure your success in profits, not sales, and focus on customer loyalty and referrals.

Guerilla Marketing tactics allow you to:

1. Boost profits using creativity and imagination instead of a large amount of money.

2. Use the latest technology to connect with consumers using Guerilla Marketing online and on the street.

3. Incorporate simple strategies to make a big impact.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Hire a Guerilla Marketing company to get you started

Consider the pros of hiring someone to help you with your alternative advertising campaign: immediate results, experience and expert knowledge. Consider the cons: extra expense and reliance on outside creativity.

I recommend: Hire an agency to assist you in guerilla Internet marketing or street marketing. If you'd rather save money and advertise in-house, look at online portfolios and examples to get Guerilla Marketing ideas to incorporate into your own product campaign. Companies that engage in guerilla marketing include Street Sampling and The Michael Alan Group. To see where the idea originated, consult the bible of alternative promotion: Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson.

Learn guerilla marketing information from the professionals

Join a Guerilla Marketing group to learn tips, discuss campaigns and hear what worked and didn't work from other business colleagues and professionals. Send your staff to a seminar--they'll come back full of energy and creative ideas.

I recommend: Sign you or your staff up for a Guerilla Marketing definition class from the Guerrilla Marketing Coach. Find out how to raise your profits using simple, everyday forms of advertising. Join the Guerilla Marketing Association for access to full articles and examples you can browse at your own time, 24/7 from work or home

Use technology and viral advertising in your guerilla marketing campaign

Incorporate Guerilla Marketing tactics using technology. Along with buzz marketing--word of mouth--use Internet marketing to connect with your consumer. Create a website if you don't have one, and advertise it everywhere you can.

I recommend: Create a MySpace page. It's free, takes only a few minutes and shows you are current with trends in technology. You can link to your website, add friends and post pictures of your latest Guerilla Marketing event. Join a webring so people can find you through other websites. These suggestions are free and give you an opportunity to meet people and create relationships.

Combine advertising with guerilla marketing ideas

Go ahead and keep your traditional forms of advertising. Use Guerilla Marketing information to strengthen your campaign. Partner with other businesses to trade advertising. If you own a movie theater and your friend owns a bookstore, feature movie tie-ins at both businesses to boost sales.

I recommend: Hang fliers, have small but creative contests, add business email signatures to every personal and business email and use other Guerilla Marketing strategies to promote your product or service. Hand out business cards with your website and email address. Drive around with car magnets promoting your latest slogan or product name. Advertise in small ways every day and eventually you won't have to work to promote yourself--you'll just intuitively do it.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Meet new people and form new relationships every day. Even the best guerilla marketing agencies are only as good as the people they know. Word of mouth advertising goes a long way so don't forget about the simplicity of being helpful.
• •  Browse online blogs and post comments that show you are knowledgeable in your field. Don't just plug your business--give consumers genuinely helpful answers to their questions and leave your web address at the end of the comment. Online guerilla marketing needs to be simple and unobtrusive.

The phrase “guerilla marketing,” commonly misspelled "gorilla" marketing or sometimes referred to as Gmarketing, conjures up highly trained operatives sneaking into a high-traffic area, launching an avant-garde promotion, then melting back into the background leaving bystanders dazed and amused. While unconventional tactics that get your company noticed may catch your attention, focus your overall strategy on maximizing profit margins through building loyal repeat business rather than running a splashy campaign to capture market share. Popularized by Jay Levinson’s book in 1984, even Fortune companies embrace the concept as part of their overall strategy. So while squeezing the most out of your shoestring budget, get in the trenches and learn basic terms you’ll encounter when navigating the sites.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Viral marketing

Viral, or word-of-mouth, marketing could be considered a sub-genre of guerilla marketing; the main difference is that the consumer drives the publicity entirely. The term accurately describes people passing the word around, well, like a virus, rather than the company actively working to promote its product.

I recommend: Wilson Internet Services briefly defines and outlines six principles of viral marketing.

Buzz marketing or buzzmarketing

You want to generate buzz, or good word-of-mouth, publicity, where early adopters start encouraging friends to try a product or service based on their own positive experience. You can accomplish this with professionals who conduct buzz marketing to generate positive word of mouth and get the buzz started.

I recommend: Learn about buzz marketing, and even go to Buzz University, with the man who literally wrote the book on buzz marketing, Mark Hughes.

Brand ambassador

Another term for these professional virus spreaders, brand ambassadors can-and ideally should-be internal employees or even extremely loyal customers who talk up your company, acting as intermediaries between the public and your brand. Think of turning your customers into loyal fans, ready and willing to sing your praises, and you get the picture.

I recommend: Even the government recognizes the need for guerilla marketing in the form of brand ambassadorship, as you can see in this article from Federal Computer Week offered through 1105 Government Information Group.

Grassroots marketing

Grassroots marketing can be considered a particular campaign, or an aspect of viral or guerilla marketing, in that it delivers a picture of your advertising taking on a populist feel. Keep in mind that grassroots marketing, like all of guerilla marketing, emphasizes winning over customers one-by-one rather than as a group, connecting with individuals rather than broadcasting at a crowd.

I recommend: Inc.com offers a how-to article containing case studies of actual businesses conducting grassroots campaigns to help them grow.

Ambient marketing

Ambient marketing differs from using traditional broadcast media to get the message out, and doesn't actively push product. One example would be using buses as billboards, or even more effectively, your delivery trucks to promote a new product or service rather than just the company name. It's ambient in that it's part of the general environment consumers are walking through or operating in, rather than dedicated media one must be concentrating on to receive the message.

I recommend: Guerilla Communication provides a unique case of ambient marketing for a movie promotion that literally spilled out onto the street. Petra Consulting Group/Customers Rock! provides a brief definition and good discussion of ambient marketing’s potential impact on consumers, using a variety of examples that show how it might and might not work.

Wild postings

This is perhaps the indie granddaddy of guerilla marketing-think Andy Warhol on a rampage, plastering poster after poster of his favorite band all over a fence or construction site. While the intent is to develop a significant sense of momentum about an event, some may wonder if it's been done to death.

I recommend: Media Life provides a concise summary of wild postings, including some parameters for logistics and budget.