IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE: Guerrilla marketing emerges as an effective sales tactic

From Incentive magazine, January 2000
by Don Mogelefsky 

If marketing can be compared to war, “guerrilla marketing” is probably like being on the front line—with a bayonet.

“Guerrilla means unconventional—using your head rather than the brawn of big marketing bucks,” says Bill Gallagher, head of the Diamond Springs, Calif.-based Guerrilla Sales and Marketing.

What is Gallagher’s assessment from the professional trenches? “Somebody needs to be responsible for marketing. Companies need to have a marketing calendar—which means 52 weeks—of what they’re going to do,” he says. “Marketing is everybody’s mission; otherwise, the company is doomed.”

In order to avoid doom, part of the guerrilla marketing strategy is to use innovative techniques and incentives to spark sales. This usually takes place on a grass-roots level. “We have techniques that get phones ringing off the hooks,” says Gallagher. “It’s effective because we’re using the same techniques and tools that are being used by the Madison Avenue big shots, but they’re not techniques that the young, new entrepreneur is generally aware of.”

Taking a company’s message directly to the public is a key objective for most guerrilla marketers. This can be done in all sorts of ways—from staffers going door-to-door to crashing events. The word “free” is also a cornerstone of guerrilla marketing. “‘Call for a free brochure’—we insist that goes into every ad, with ‘free’ in capital letters,” says Gallagher. “You get someone’s name and address, and then can call later to make sure they got [the brochure].”

Guerrilla marketing outfits have given away free merchandise ranging from CDs to food. Gallagher tells of one client, a furniture store in Manhattan, that gave away free T-shirts emblazoned with the company’s logo and the slogan “Why Pay More?” to homeless people in the area. The promotion not only provided the homeless with clean clothing, but it also generated advertising for the store.

“We take ‘guerrilla’ to mean people like George Washington’s soldiers, who were the first guerrillas on this continent. They’d hide behind trees and put mud on their faces while wearing civilian clothes. They used the phrase, ‘Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes’ because they didn’t have as much ammunition,” says Gallagher.

How Coffee News Can Help . . .
Coffee News is a valuable weapon in your arsenal of guerrilla weapons.  Advertising legend John Caples said that the two most important factors in advertising are what you say in your ads and where you say it.  Where you say it means putting your message where it will get into the minds of the largest number of prospects—not people, but prospects—at the lowest cost.

In the CoffeeFax "Selecting an Advertising Media", we discussed the selection of advertising media and how Coffee News meets the "cost per prospect" criteria as defined by Mr. Caples and Jay Levinson, author of the Guerrilla series of books on marketing and advertising.

One last thing. Your advertising campaign must also have continuity to do the persuading job well. In advertising, intermittent communication is no communication at all. Your plan must have consistency built right into it. The idea is not to flirt with your public but to convince them. There is a huge difference between the two. Any true advertising expert will tell you that frequency and persistence are the secrets of success in advertising. A major commitment to one or a few of the media will work better in most cases than an across-the-board plan with a variety of media but a short insertion schedule.¹

And Coffee News is there, in front of your prospects, three meals a day, seven days a week!

¹Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin. 1994.