History is full of guerrilla war stories where tiny, unadvanced armies handily defeat much larger and more heavily armed opponents. 

There are similar stories in business when some starry-eyed start-up shocks the world with an highly creative, surprise-style marketing  campaign that runs on a very low budget. It is called guerrilla marketing: a concept that revolutionized the world of marketing by revealing how small business owners  can garner as much attention as the big players  playing the advertising game in a novel  and cheap way, by being "unconventional, non-traditional, not by-the-book, and extremely flexible".

Guerrilla marketing focuses efforts on low cost creative strategies to reach target customers. The approach was first  coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson following his success in changing the image of Marlboro cigarettes from a women's product into the now famous 'Marlboro Man' approach. According to Levinson, guerrilla marketing is designed to obtain instant results with limited resources using tactics that rely on creativity, good relationship, and willingness to try different approaches.   

Is guerrilla marketing effective? Let's go back again to Conrad Levinson who introduced this novel concept in his 1984 book 'Guerrilla Marketing'. After the publication of the book, the concept became so successful that Jay Conrad later wrote more than two dozen guerrilla marketing books which are today required reading in the most respected MBA programs in the world. And he did all this "from scratch"  to become a testament to the very principles he himself teaches. Before Levinson introduced this magic bullet of marketing, it had been  a jealously kept secret known only to a select few people in the world of business. After the publication of  'Guerrilla Marketing', numerous small businesses went into 'guerrilla mode' to earn amazing success.

So, guerrilla marketing is cheap, unconventional and highly effective. It is  unconventional and aggressive and relies on imagination to target customer most where they would not be expecting. Guerrilla marketing is not so much a method of marketing as a approach to marketing. It looks at ways of reaching target customers with a unique message that will cause them to take notice. Most SMEs usually do not have the money to send a marketing message to millions of potential customers. Therefore, they must look for cheap but effective ways for locating potential customers. Now that the global economy is on the verge of a doom and that our SMEs need to squeeze their marketing expenses  without minimizing their advertising efforts, what could be a better solution then going guerrilla!

But how can a 'guerrilla attack' be launched ? As guerrilla marketing is 'unconventional, non-traditional, not by-the-book, and extremely flexible', it is not an easy task to explain what guerrilla marketing is  all about. According to Levinson, some of the principles upon which the concept of guerrilla marketing is based include the following -

• This marketing tactic is  specifically geared for the small business es to enable them obtain publicity more easily than large companies.
• Guerrilla marketing is primarily based on human psychology and not on experience, judgment, and guesswork.  
• Money is not the primary investment in guerrilla marketing; the basic requirements are  time, energy, and imagination.
• In guerrilla marketing, sales is not the primary statistic to measure a business; amount of profit is the primary statistic.
• Guerrilla marketing is not to to sell diverse products and services; a marketer must  create a standard of excellence with an acute focus.
• Guerrilla marketing is less about getting new customers and more about getting more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.
• Competition is not the key in guerrilla marketing, instead it suggests cooperating with other businesses and grab benefit.
• In guerrilla marketing, a combination of marketing methods should be used for a campaign.
• In guerrilla marketing, current technology is used as a tool to empower a business.
  

Let's look at some examples to have a clear idea about how guerrilla marketing tactics are used to send a marketing message. A few years back, a franchise store in New York, USA advertised a "cat shoot" to be held at the store. The advertisement created a storm as local police and animal welfare activists all oppose the programme. It generated front page stories for three straight days in local newspapers. But later found that the "cat shoot" was nothing but a three-for-a-dollar (paintball) shoot at a 6-foot high cartoon cat. While bizarre, it was a tremendous success in helping customers find their way to the store.
 
Find below some other guerrilla marketing examples  in (1) an advertisement of a particular brand conditioner as the solution for tangled hair, and (2) a public service advertisement:

Small businesses can use the following tools and implement their own guerrilla tactics into them -

• Trade shows
• Sponsorship programs
• Public relations programs  
• Alternative media.
  

Guerrilla marketing may mean giving lectures about your product, technology or area of expertise in a trade show. It may also mean writing a newsletter, distributing business cards with a link to your website on them, or any new and unconventional ways to that surprise your consumers. The internet can also be  the ultimate guerrilla battlefield as it offers unlimited opportunities for businesses to reach target customers in with a unique message that will cause them to take notice. In addition, small businesses can also consider subscribing to B2B (Business to Business) portals as these websites usually come with a number of useful features like discussion forums, businesses news, newsletters, etc. that can be used and actively participated by small businesses to grab the attention of target customers.

In the past, when you had something to sell, you put ads in newspapers or magazines, made up flyers and hung a sign in your shop window. But today, you need to forgo traditional advertising and sales promotion methods  and connect with customers in different and more effective ways. As a small business, you need some cheap but highly effective ways to 'strike' your target market, To do that you must be a guerrilla marketer with a creative and courageous bent of mind.