The term Guerrilla Marketing was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book by the same name “Guerrilla Marketing” published in 1984. The expression has become widely used since that time, and the act of guerrilla marketing has become extremely useful for many small enterprises that have low marketing budgets, and have to rely on time and ideas rather than on money for marketing. Guerrilla Marketing methods are unconventional and often interactive.
What are the most popular guerilla marketing tactics that can be used by any business, regardless of industry, location and size of marketing budget? There are 22 ideas below that are fairly easy to implement and do not cost too much money to use.
1. Use free business networking events to make as much contacts as possible. The more people who know about your products and services, the more potential clients you have.
2. Be personable so that potential customers can connect with you as a person and not just with your business. This will create trust and will help customers choose you.
3. Team up with non-competing businesses to pool resources. For example, you can order flyers or other kinds of marketing material together and you will get better prices.
4. Today almost all businesses have their own web pages and Facebook pages. You should set up a Google+ business page as well. It is not only a good place to meet people, it will also boost the organic placement of your website in Google’s search results.
5. Find Facebook pages that reach your target market and post there as your page. Submit helpful things and make a valuable contribution. People will then click over to your page to check you out. Do not put promotions on fan pages of others!
6. Write interesting guest posts on blogs of others and add a link to your website at the bottom of your post. This will introduce you to potential customers and your web page will get better ranking in the search results.
7. Setup a Twitter Account. After doing that, you also should customize the background of your Twitter profile, enter your brand name and the URL to your website.
8. Write how-to articles and submit them to various article directories.
9. Create videos and upload them to YouTube. You can also create a photo collage video and post it to YouTube. It will direct visitors to your web site and show up in Google's search results.
10. Ask people for feedback on what you are doing and publish the testimonials on your web page.
11. Setup an email newsletter and send regular emails, at least once a month. You can use free emailing software such as Mailchimp.
12. Setup a LinkedIn group for your target market, publish valuable information and start discussions there.
13. Write the domain name of your website in chalk on the pavement where many people can see it.
14. Offer free educational lectures to your clients. You also can offer these lectures to the clients of a non-competing business.
15. Put sticky notes with your messages on places where people can notice them.
16. Summarize the top 10 reasons why customers should choose your product or service and publish the list on your web page.
17. Organize a flash mob event, That is an event that takes place in a public place for the purpose of doing a short, unusual or entertaining activity.
18. Donate some of your earnings to charity. Donating is always a good thing and it may be noticed by the media as well.
19. Hold a contest. This is a good promotion for your business and you can give prizes (e.g. T-shirts printed with your logo) that remind people on you after the contest.
20. Offer free exhibition space on your premises to artists. This will attract new visitors to your office or shop.
21. Organize entertaining social events for your customers.
22. Create projections onto a blank wall at night.