Guerrilla Marketing

by Bill Gallagher Ph. D.

"Life Styles of the Rich and Famous," what a great title for a TV show. Want to be rich and famous or just one of these two? For a small investment, yes investment, you can soon be both rich and famous. How? Cable TV advertising. How much? Under $6000. per year. Wow!
I believe that television must have been invented by marketing people, if it wasn't it easily could have been. My reasoning is not based on science, it's based on television's marketing effectiveness. TV is, by far, the best and most effective media to get any marketing message to potential customers.

In marketing we know that no one ever made a conscious buying decision. All of our purchase decisions are made by sub-conscious buying motivates.

As it turns out, the human mind is like an onion. It has many layers. In order to get to the sub-conscious decision making areas we marketers must penetrate the sub-conscious.

The only way to do this is to:

1. Relax the potential customer.
2. Make our message interesting or intriguing.
3. Repeat the message over and over again so that it penetrates the relaxed sub-conscious mind. And,
4. Not turn the potential customer off with poor or distasteful images.

Properly planned, television advertising can do all of these. Inexpensively. Do you believe that I just said "inexpensively?" Well, I did. Let me tell you how. If you set out to advertise in the national market on major network TV, it'll cost you an arm and a leg plus your firstborn child. Remember the last Super Bowl half-time and those damn frogs croaking out the name of a popular beer ? $7.5 million. (And I said TV was inexpensive.) Hold on. What if I could put your TV spot next to the croaking frogs and the other super expensive TV ads and charge you a mere $500 per month? Starting to sound better, right? Right.

No kidding, in most markets, small business people can advertise daily on CNN, TNT, ESPN, etc. right along with the big guys for an annual budget of under $6000. Just in case you missed that, I'm talking about daily TV advertising for the entire year for less than $6000.

So, how do we pull of this marketing miracle? To find out you'll have to call me... just kidding. The answer is: local cable. Yes, your local cable provider can contract with you to produce and air your very own 30 second TV ad every day for the next year for less than $6000. (in most markets). This breaks out to about $1000 to produce the spot, making sure it's coordinated with the rest of your marketing. And, about $400 per month to be placed on random appearances throughout the day and night.

Soon, about a month or two, from the time you start, if you're in the ad, and you probably ought to be, you'll be a star in your community and your phone will be ringing off the hook! Hang in there. Don't stop. Ride it out for a minimum of 12 months, a full year. You will want to change your ad. You'll be sick of it. Your family will tell you to kill it or they'll kill you! Don't stop. Don't change it.

Wait, I hear Robin Leach calling.