The term Guerrilla Marketing was coined in the year 1984. The then published book called "Guerrilla Marketing" authored by Levinson described it as an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. However today, this term also describes aggressive, unconventional marketing methods generically. Viral marketing which can be said to be just a part of guerilla marketing is a marketing technique that uses pre-existing social networks to achieve marketing objectives through a self-replicating viral process.
What are the principles of guerilla marketing? Levinson identifies the following principles as the foundation of guerrilla marketing:
Guerrilla marketing is specifically geared for the small business and entrepreneur.
It should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgment, and guesswork.
Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.
The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.
The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.
Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering too many diverse products and services.
Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.
Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.
Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign.
Use current technology as a tool.
Guerilla marketing is today associated and used as a substitute term for many non-traditional marketing media including viral marketing, buzz marketing, ambient marketing, undercover marketing, presence marketing. Online viral marketing campaign is concerned with marketing techniques that use preexisting Internet based social networks.
Some of the highly successful websites that use viral marketing tactics include PayPal, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Flickr. Basically in viral marketing, people are encouraged to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Here promotions are done using video clips, interactive Flash games, advertisement-games, e-books, software, images, or text messages.
for clients across the US.
