~by Haley Lynn Gray~
Guerrilla marketing sounds like it should involve covert operations. It’s considerably more mundane than that: finding creative ways to get your business noticed without spending much money.
The term comes from Jay Conrad Levinson, who wrote a book called Guerrilla Marketing in 1984. His argument was that small businesses can’t win by outspending large ones, so they have to substitute something else — time, energy, imagination and a willingness to do things bigger companies won’t.
Forty years on, that’s still the situation most small businesses are in.
Why the conventional route doesn’t work for you
Most small businesses can’t afford sustained television or radio campaigns, and more importantly those channels wouldn’t work well even if they could.
The reason is repetition. People need to encounter you a number of times before they remember you at all — there’s a figure that circulates widely for how many, and nobody can actually source it, but the underlying point holds. One advertisement, once, achieves essentially nothing.
Which means broadcast advertising only works with sustained budget, and sustained budget is what you haven’t got.
So you need routes where either the repetition is cheap, or the single impression is strong enough to stick.
What actually makes something work
The tactics vary endlessly. The principles don’t.
Disproportion. The cost is small and the attention is large. That’s the whole appeal, and it’s why something slightly unexpected outperforms something expensive and conventional.
Placement where attention already is. Not interrupting people — appearing where they’re already looking. A clear sign where people are trying to find you. A noticeboard they actually read.
Being worth mentioning. The best version gets talked about, which gives you the repetition for free. A business people describe to each other is running a campaign it isn’t paying for.
And being genuinely local. A big competitor can’t know your town, sponsor the junior team, or turn up in person. You can.
Check the rules first
This is the practical warning, and I learned it the hard way.
In my town it is illegal to put flyers on cars, leave them on mailboxes, or place them on doorsteps. Residents can complain, and you’re fined for each complaint received. Neighbouring towns have no such restriction.
So before any physical campaign:
- Check local ordinances on flyers, signage and posting. They vary between towns that are ten minutes apart.
- Get permission for signs on private property, and know the rules for public land.
- Remember that mailboxes are frequently protected by regulations separate from local ones.
- And consider whether it irritates people. Legal and welcome aren’t the same thing, and a flyer under a windscreen wiper annoys a meaningful proportion of the people who find it.
A fine is bad. A reputation for being the business that litters the car park is worse, and lasts longer.
The version that scales now
Levinson was writing before the internet, and the principles transferred almost intact.
Being consistently useful in a forum where your buyers gather is guerrilla marketing. So is answering questions thoroughly in public. So is a piece of writing so specific and helpful that people send it to each other.
Same disproportion: small cost, attention that compounds. The difference is that the digital version keeps working after you stop, while a flyer is gone by Tuesday.
Where it doesn’t apply
An honest limit, because this advice gets given universally.
Guerrilla tactics suit businesses where the buyer is local, or where a broad audience contains your customers. A café, a trade, a local service — ideal.
They’re much weaker where you sell something specialised to a small number of specific buyers. If eleven companies in your region could use what you do, no amount of creative visibility beats identifying those eleven and building relationships with them.
Know which you are before deciding how to spend the effort.
The underlying point
Marketing a small business is limited mostly by imagination and willingness, not by budget. A great many owners get stuck looking for the mechanism — the right platform, the right tactic — when the actual constraint is being prepared to do something visible and slightly uncomfortable.
Pick something cheap, legal and a bit unexpected. Do it consistently. Notice what happens.
More on where to be visible and what not to spend money on.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
