Jay Conrad Levinson, father of Guerilla Marketing defines it very simply as going after conventional goals with unconventional means! When you are a product startup, trying to build a business on little to zero money, you need plenty of unconventional means. With the rise of social media, viral word-of-mouth options with web and mobile global connectivity, it has never been easier to do guerilla marketing! As you will see in the rest of this article, social media can be a part of guerilla marketing and that makes it 2.0!
However, guerilla marketing requires lots of time, energy, imagination and information on your part rather than money (in Jay Conrad Levinson’s words again!)
First, it is worth watching him describe guerilla marketing in his own words! It is worthwhile to remember that he invented this way before we had social media but since then they have made what he was trying to do a lot easier!
Time, energy, imagination and information are not easy to muster or master easily when you are short of money, trying to get to the next level of getting angel funding or venture funding or just trying to keep your business afloat! But that’s when guerilla marketing could provide the big breaks you may be looking for in terms of customer adoption!
Here’s a video of the Unidesk CEO talking about how they performed guerilla marketing and the tools they used throughout the lifecycle of their product. Right from inception, when they did not have a product to when they had a product and trying to get repeat customers! They used different tools, some of them social media, at various stages of the product development lifecycle and for different purposes. For example, their use of SurveyMonkey to survey potential users of their product BEFORE they had a product is remarkable. Unidesk is in the business of desktop virtualization. All they had to do was ask potential users what they needed using a survey and seems like they got MORE than what they needed by way of inputs on what was needed in their product. This ties in with the Lean Startup movement where you get out of the office and talk to potential prospects before implementing anything.
Very interesting to see the variety of tools used during different stages of the lifecycle of their product (inception to repeat customers). Most importantly, their use of measurement of everything is key in seeing what works and changing tools or approaches quickly! After all, time, energy, imagination and information is not easy to come by, and cannot be wasted even if you can do many things for free these days!
Here’s another YouTube video about understanding the Chain of Conversion. Software product founders may also know this as the Funnel. This video makes a very important point about understanding the way your own funnel works, pinpointing the weaknesses in your funnel, working backwards from any point in the funnel, and fixing these weaknesses systematically. This is where you may need to employ different guerilla marketing approaches depending upon what is suitable at the different stages of the funnel.
Finally, here’s a stunning YouTube video. I don’t want to say anything more since that anything would be a spoiler! Watch it for yourself! All I want to say is that this one has 43 million views as of this writing! Rest assured that this Guerilla Marketing effort was highly successful!
Many users on twitter, facebook and instagram believe they are the star of their very own reality show when they are stalked by a mellow mushroom! – Entrepreneur Magazine talking about Mellow Mushroom’s (restaurant) guerilla marketing effort.