Best Guerrilla Marketing and The Three Ideas You Had Wrong!

If you’re an entrepreneur looking to attract more clients, then you’ve probably come across Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, or any of his more than two dozen different ‘Guerrilla’ marketing books.

The best Guerrilla Marketing is low-cost, high-impact, in-the-trenches marketing. It’s designed for the “little guy” to be able to even the playing field with the “big boys”. Instead of spending money, the Guerrilla Marketer uses his or her time, energy and creativity to get results.

Of course getting more clients without spending more money sounds pretty darn appealing – who wouldn’t want this, right? So, Guerrilla Marketing has become one of the best selling small businesses marketing series’ of all time.  Countless entrepreneurs have bought it, hungrily devoured it, and eagerly implemented the “guerrilla” tactics that’ll get them all the new clients they need.

Or so they hope.

In our experience, most people come away with three misunderstood ideas about all of the best Guerrilla Marketing that unfortunately, can cost them thousands in lost sales when they try to apply its principles.

Here they are and what to do about them:

Misunderstood Idea #1: Guerrilla Marketing is About Clever Tactics. All I Need To Do Is Apply Them, and I’m Aet!

Reality: Guerrilla Marketing is About Being Smart With Your Strategy.

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Tactics are the specific actions you will take, that altogether make up that plan. For example, if the strategy is to increase repeat sales by 15%, then sending out an offer letter to existing clients is a tactic.

Because Guerrilla Marketing tactics are clever, people get excited and come away thinking that the real value is in implementing quirky ideas. They believe that marketing success is as simple as stringing together a few clever tactics and voila! – they’ll get more clients and more sales!

That’s a problem.

Most business owners tend to start with tactics. They’ll say, “Hey, let’s have a mascot!” “Hey! Let’s run this ad!” “Hey, let’s make a brochure!” But tactics without strategy is just random action.  Trust us, we know – tactics are cool. After all, who doesn’t like the idea of a clever and effective tactic? But you know what’s cooler than clever tactics? Profits.

You need to understand what you want to achieve first, and then choose the tactics to achieve it.

Misunderstood Idea #2: Guerrilla Marketing is About “Killing” Your Competition In Combat.

Reality: Guerrilla Marketing is About Focusing On Your Customer.

You can be excused if you got caught up in the idea that the best Guerrilla Marketing is all about surviving against the competition. After all, “guerrilla” conjures up images of rebel tactics, combat and face paint. And the use of terms like weapons and arsenal probably don’t help, either.

Unfortunately, this leads to an inadvertent and unhealthy obsession over the competition, when really, the only one you should be obsessing over is your customer. Keep an eye on your competitor, sure, but as Guerrilla Marketing stresses: it’s all about the customer. So when was the last time you spoke with yours?

Misunderstood Idea #3: Guerrilla Marketing is About Being Better.

Reality: Guerrilla Marketing is About Being Different.

Perhaps a holdover from that whole “warfare” thing, readers tend to equate achieving marketing success to achieving superiority and that to be successful they need to be better in some way.

The truth is you don’t have to be “better”. You just need to be “different”.

“Better” is an extremely subjective concept. Better in what way? Quality? There are a gazillion burger joints that make a better hamburger than the Big Mac, but I don’t see McDonald’s going out of business anytime soon, do you?  Price? There is always a “better” price, but is that all everyone cares about? Of course not.

The point is that one person’s better is another person’s worse.  All you need to be is different in a way that your customer cares about.