Guerrilla Marketing (Part 1)

The term "guerrilla marketing", originally coined by the author Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular book published in 1984 and by the same name, is an unconventional process that relies on a very low budget, using time, energy and imagination to make up what would otherwise be lacking in funds. The term has entered the popular vocabulary and applies directly to aggressive, unconventional, marketing methods for e-commerce on the Internet.

This series is going to examine both traditional and guerrilla marketing concepts that you can apply to your own e-commeerce business. Both theory and real examples will be used to provide an in-depth look at how you can promote your business and be found by those looking for the products and/or services you offer.

I recall the story of a man who was sitting at the end of the counter in a diner drinking coffee one day when a boy, probably in his late teens, came running in to use the pay phone on the wall near where the man was sitting. The boy dialed a number and then asked whoever answered if he could speak to the "boss". The boy waited a few moments and when the "boss" apparently came on line he began asking about getting a job as an office assistant. It became obvious from what the boy was saying that the company wasn't hiring but the boy persisted anyway. He asked more about the job and stated that he had heard the person they had wasn't doing so well and that the position would soon be open. He listened to the reply for a minute or so and said, "Oh, I see. Well, thank you anyway," and hung up the phone.

As the boy turned away from the phone the man with the coffee looked up and said, "Sorry you didn't get the job, son."

The boy replied, "Oh, that's alright, mister, I've already got the job. I am the office assistant over there. I was just checking to see that everything was ok."

It is a cute story. And it's a valid point. We should check from time to time to see that everything in our job -- our business -- is ok. The thing that concerns me is that sometimes we check too much. We get all tangled up in numbers, and spreadsheets, and hit counters, and tracking sites, and other gizmos that monitor what's happening. But do they really tell us how we are doing? We sometimes become so expert at measuring the numbers that we watch our business slide into mediocre, if not down-right dismal, performance. We begin to wonder why our business has been open for so long but we are not seeing the profit we expected.

If we have a product or service that should sell AND we have priced it right, then the only thing left is to get people -- real, live, people -- to our site in order that they may see our stuff and decide to buy it. And that is what marketing is all about: getting the people to your site.

Marketing is a little like belly buttons. There is "outy" marketing; the out reach we need to do to be seen where people already go, and there is "inny" marketting; the things we do to our selling site so that when people ultimately do find us they will want to say long enough (called "dwell time") to come to the buying decision.

Most people don't do either of these things well and it is why most online businesses fail. Unlike brick and mortar businesses, because of the low cost of operation, online e-commerce businesses can acctually fail and still keep running month after month. Many people fail to succeed with their online enterprise and never even know it.