May 2008
Fuel is a marketing and communications newsletter that contributes to Kiplinger Recommends each month. California-based Chris Warren covers trends in business and customer communications for a variety of publications, including Forbes and the Los Angeles Times magazine.The phrase “guerrilla marketing” may bring to mind the hysterically funny but disastrous Thanksgiving promotion thought up by the characters on the old TV show WKRP in Cincinnati: Drop live turkeys out of a helicopter to the crowd below. While attention-grabbing (but not felonious) publicity stunts are one aspect of guerrilla marketing, there are numerous other tactics businesses can use to attract notice and customers.
This month’s column from the marketing newsletter Fuel provides five guerrilla marketing tips useful to start-ups and smaller firms. “The beauty of guerrilla marketing is that it doesn’t require a huge ad buy in traditional media; it’s about creating unusual, fresh, and provocative ways to reach customers and your best prospects,” Fuel notes. “And that helps level the playing field between companies large and small.”
One effective tactic is for local or like-minded businesses to band together to get a bigger bang for their marketing buck. Special fairs where services or samples are offered free can be a big draw, for example. Another suggestion is to target influential people who could help spread the word. Fuel points to how 3M’s Post-it notes were a huge disappointment — until someone thought of giving them away to secretaries to CEOs. Their bosses loved them and sales took off.
Fuel also offers advice on what not to try that goes beyond avoiding the use of domesticated fowl. While stunts can be effective, ones that backfire can hurt a company’s brand or reputation. Remember when a several-ton frozen treat was used in New York to launch a new dessert line? It melted and created such a huge mess …
