When someone talks about marketing, they will think of humorous radio ads, hollywood style tv ads and 1001 colors flyers and brochures. Marketing means big budget needed. Big companies often see marketing as one of their biggest expenses every year. Does that means that for small guy like us, we could not have an effective marketing campaign because we are restricted to very low budget and I am not a marketing major?In fact marketing is very much simpler for the smaller guys. I first come to guerrilla marketing a year ago when I am searching to learn new marketing techniques beside the big budget marketing they taught in university. Guerrilla Marketing plans have or should have the following results:

Generate a lot of buzz

Maximum effect from minimal costInvest time, energy and creativity instead of money

Combine few marketing techniques to have a bigger effect instead focusing on one strategy.

Leverage technology, embrace technology!

Interestingly, the book was written way back in the 90s yet it is still relevant even today. Another more surprising thing is that my favorite marketer Seth Godin is also co-author of one of the guerrilla marketing series. If you have been a fan of Seth Godin, you will discover that purple cow is actually an extension of guerrilla marketing, which is creating something “remarkable”. When he says remarkable, he doesn’t mean it is different. Being remarkable means something worth talk about and hence the generating a lot of buzz and word of mouth.When you don’t have a marketing budget, it simply means you have to find a way around it.

This is where leverage and technology comes in. Imagine you are a salon owner, on Monday you discovered that you are only 25% booked for the week. What can you do now to get more booking? Newspaper? no way as it takes time to write an ad and advertise. Ask for referral? too much work to do.Email marketing is often a neglected tool and it is too expensive to ignore this powerful marketing weapon. Just pull out your laptop, type in “Book me for the next 24 hours and you will enjoy 20% off”. If you have 1000 email addresses ( which is not difficult if you collect them), what is the chances that 10 (1% response rate) will reply? VERY VERY likely.Oh wait, what is the cost of doing this? ZERO. What is the time needed? A cup of coffee. What is the response time? less than a day!So is marketing still the same old thing you learn from your textbooks? Not really.

For small entrepreneur, leverage and technology is your friend and you should use them well. Even Dell uses email marketing but they abuse the method so they ended up in my spam folder.Again, don’t overdo things. Combine relationship marketing with email marketing, you will have a much better result!

Your response: