Guerrilla Marketing

by Charles Rubin

Guerrilla marketers know that smaller organizations can defeat larger and better-financed competitors by putting more time, energy, and imagination into their marketing programs. Large companies often treat marketing as a function assigned to a particular group of people (as in, "See what marketing thinks of this..."). Guerrillas treat marketing as a key business function that encompasses everything the company does, from the way it makes and packages products to the look and attitude of its employees. Marketing is one thing many companies do; Guerrilla Marketing is an approach to everything a company does.

I'm constantly amazed at people who think the Net offers some kind of shortcut to marketing, as if computers and networks will handle the marketing for you. Many people think that putting up a Web site is the beginning and ending of their Net marketing job. When I explain that a company must create visibility for its Web site by participating in discussion groups, posting announcements, publishing electronic documents, and creating directory listings and links back to the Web site, people tell me they want to hire it all out, as in, "Couldn't we just get somebody to handle this for us?"

An effective presence on the Net is not something you can buy off the shelf. The Net is not magic. Hiring an outsider to handle all your Net marketing tasks for you is like handling all your telephone marketing with a recorded message and an auto-dialer. (Anyone who has ever gotten a call from an auto-dialing system knows just how effective that is!) Unless you do the work yourself, you have no chance of developing the personal relationships that will ultimately produce long-term customers. Only you and your employees can properly represent your company, because only you and your team know your business.

Here are some ways to involve your own people in your Net marketing program:

• Assign responsibility for Net marketing to people inside your company, and make sure they gain personal experience with using the Net. Establish some Internet accounts or get your company network connected to the Net.
• Give your employees time to learn about navigating, sending and receiving e-mail, reading online publications, and exploring discussion groups, mailing lists, Gopher and Web sites.
• Start an in-house Net user group and hold weekly meetings to discuss progress and answer questions.
• If you're planning a Web site of your own, appoint a company webmaster. Give him or her the time and resources to learn just what your options are for doing this. Even if you end up hiring out the Web site construction and server space, you should have someone in-house who knows enough about it to make sure it's being done properly.
• Make sure one or more of your employees spends time doing specific things on the Net every day, such as checking e-mail, participating in one or more discussions, checking or updating your Web site, or looking for Net-based resources that can aid your Net presence.

Effective marketing is work. Net marketing is no different. But hard work and planning pay off handsomely.