Can Guerrilla Marketing Tactics Be Used in Your Online Business?

To answer this question, you must first understand what guerrilla marketing is. Guerrilla marketing tactics consist of tactics that cost little money to implement, or are free. A guerrilla is defined in military terms as a member of a small irregular military force operating in independent groups capable of great speed and mobility. A guerrilla marketer could be defined in a similar manner as one using irregular marketing tactics and having great speed and mobility.

An ordinary marketer would probably sell on television, get ads on the Super Bowl, buy magazine ads or sponsor a big event like the Olympics, hoping to reach a very large audience. These are costly approaches that the average online business entrepreneur cannot afford. The guerrilla marketer, on the other hand knows that she must reach her audience on an individual basis and sell her product to one person at a time. She will make her advertising to rank high on impact.

Large budget marketers are satisfied if the can get a 2% conversion rate with a junk mail campaign. He will flood the postal service with thousands of catalogs, sales letters, brochures, magalogs, reportalogs, and bookalogs. A magalog is a four-color sales promotion that contains all the elements of promotion within a colorful magazine style format. It is a self mailer without an envelope. Reportalogs are usually two color and used by clients who want to sell products or services to serious business people. Bookalogs take on a similar format. These are all large budget marketing tactics and if you have the budget, they will work for you.

A guerrilla marketer with a limited budget would be satisfied with a 15% response on a personal mailing campaign. It would be more personal and might even be hand written. If he sent out 100 letters and got 15 new customers he would be thrilled.

An ordinary marketer might spend a couple of million dollars on a product but if it did not gain the response he wanted within a quarter of the calendar year, he would quickly drop it, or change his marketing approach. A guerrilla marketer is patient and may take a year at a time for a marketing campaign, reaching one customer at a time until the business was booming.

While the ordinary marketer plays it safe and does what has always worked, the guerrilla marketer takes chances, trying every marketing outlet available. Ordinary marketers perhaps think of the guerrilla marketer as one who is tiny and working out of his garage, in fact guerrilla marketers know that guerrilla marketing techniques work in any setting.

In conclusion, guerrilla marketing tactics can in fact be applied to online businesses. You should consider every option available to you in developing your online business. Don't think that you are just limited to pay per click campaign or high budget advertising. Study guerrilla marketing tactics and be creative in applying them to your online business.