Mindshare Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is the wave of the future.  I have given you information about what it is and even showed you a video about how effective it can be.  I do know, however, that you are waiting for my explanation of why guerrilla marketing is so important.

Customers seek out your advertisements

Think about that for a minute.  The old (and still existing) paradigm is that marketers must study their target segments and work tirelessly to find their customers.  With guerrilla marketing, the customers are coming to you - the quarry searches for the hunter.  How effective is your advertising when your customers want to see it?  How much more effective is it when they seek it out in the first place?

Take the recent movie release of Cloverfield.  Months before the title was even public, there was a limited-release teaser trailer.  The cryptic nature of the trailer drove people to the even more cryptic website.  Immediately, web surfers across the planet began scouring the Internet looking for more clues.  There were a few additional websites around that became viral - one person viewed the site and encouraged his/her friends to view it, in turn influencing their friends, and snowballing after that.  These viral MySpace pages, blogs, and websites are still active and continue driving an under-the-radar campaign to publicize the low-budget movie.

Imagine if your customers devoted this much energy to your product offering and your corporate website.  How much money would you save by not advertising your materials?  How much more popular would your message be if the consumer were your spokesman rather than your sales manager?

Guerrilla marketing is using consumer curiosity to drive sales and communications.  Blogs are one media that consumers frequently come to on their own.  Streaming online video is another.  Anything updated often that carries at least a hint of mystery will drive recognition among consumers.  What ideas do you have to utilize guerrilla marketing in your industry?

Last Thursday, in partnership with Career Managment Solutions, I taught a beginning blogging class for many professionals.  The goal of the course was to teach people how to build their first blog and then maintain it with appropraite content.  You can listen to a podcast of the course here, although it is an incomplete account of our course.

Click here to download the Podcast

We hope to follow this up with a short ebook on blogging and branding.  I will provide more details on this publication as we complete it.

A friend forwarded me this fantastic video that discusses both blogging and guerrilla marketing.  The speaker, Will Pate, has some great things to say, both about the importance of blogging and the ethical problems involved with trying to force your advertising.

The video is about 7 minutes long.  Please take some time to watch it and add your comments below.