Marketing Lingo Defined: Guerilla Marketing

January 8th, 2008 by Cristina Favreau

Guerrilla marketing is a term coined in the early ’80’s by marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular book Guerrilla Marketing (already on it’s 4th edition).

This term refers to unconventional, innovative, flexible, simple, fun, highly targeted marketing strategies intended to get maximum results using minimal resources (time, money, energy).

Guerrilla marketing encourages implementing strategies that cost little to nothing. Anything is permitted — If it works, it counts as guerrilla marketing. If it makes you memorable, it counts.

Guerrilla Marketing website:

It is a body of unconventional ways of pursuing conventional goals. It is a proven method of achieving profits with minimum money.

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 marketing.

Hungry for more? Check out Management Consulting News’ interview with Jay Conrad Levinson.

Interested in applying guerrilla marketing strategies in your business? Skip over to your favorite bookstore and search for the term guerrilla marketing for all of Jay’s products as well as “copycat” products.

If you need ideas to get your creative guerrilla juices flowing, hop on to Bootstrapping Blog’s posts 24 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using and 26 MORE Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using.

Let me know how your guerrilla tactics work!

Category Guerrilla Marketing, Marketing Lingo Defined | Comments

  • Thanks for reminding me of how well unconventional approaches work, if they are well thought out.
    I'm always evangelizing the sites I work for and with - sometimes I forget to color outside the lines. This morning you inspired me to write an email to an organization looking for a new convention venue. I have nothing to do with tourism in my community, Gulfport, MS, but I have a deep respect for the recovery here and think it's a great venue. So I extolled its virtues to the organization in question and ended with a tiny little sentence about my writing at DemystifyingDigital.com, and included my v-card contact info.
    An opportunity to support my community and make a new contact. You made me do it. Thanks!
  • Thanks for the link :) I am working on some more Guerrilla Marketing articles soon as well. The Guerrilla Marketing book is on my desk at all times. Definitely a reference book in many situations.
  • I followed through on the links that you provided and am finding the information very much resourceful!

    I enjoyed this bullet point in particular:
    *"The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month."

    Along the lines of this bullet point, I'm currently reading Seth Godin's "Permission Marketing" and I find it very relevant to what some of us are trying to achieve (this of course from a business perspective).
  • Maryan, thanks for joining us. I'm glad my description of Guerrilla Marketing inspired you to "color outside the lines."

    Please let us know how the rest of your marketing efforts go. I'm always interested in finding what strategies work for what types of businesses.

    All the best!
  • Mike, I'm so glad to have found your blog. In researching my article, I searched the internet for hours to find sites sharing actual Guerrilla strategies. Thanks for giving so much information on your blog. I look forward to your future articles, so I can link them back to here!
  • Ricardo, anything written by Seth Godin, in my humble opinion, is a must read if you want to learn how to market your business effectively.

    Marketing really is about building relationships and nothing about making a sale. The sooner entrepreneurs realize that fact, the better!

    Please let us know how your marketing efforts go!
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