In 1984, Jay Conrad Levinson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, published the seminal book Guerrilla Marketing. Believing that Madison Avenue had ignored the needs of small businesses in favor of those with million-dollar advertising budgets, Levinson set out to level the playing field by documenting low-budget marketing tactics that would empower the independent business owner to compete in a world dominated by giants. His thinking inspired entrepreneurs and intra-preneurs alike, and spawned a more aggressive age in small business marketing.

Although many guerrilla tactics are geared more toward storefront operations or very small businesses, several of Levinson’s ideas are quite useful for larger clients in the B2B, education and non-profit sectors. Clearly important is the understanding that mainstream media are too expensive and too general (not targeted) to reach and persuade individual buyers or very small market segments.

Many current marketing communications options, such as database-driven one-to-one marketing campaigns, social media marketing (e.g., Facebook), networking, and even YouTube videos, are either extensions of, or natural partners to, guerrilla marketing techniques.

MarketPoint advocates guerrilla techniques – or at least guerrilla thinking – whenever appropriate for our clients.