Guerilla Marketing and Traditional Old Fashioned Marketing

Things that you expected today cannot be predicted tomorrow. Marketing arena is one of the biggest victims of rapidly changing phenomena. It evolves every day.

Big corporations and Multinationals possess big Marketing budgets. However Small and Medium Enterprises cannot afford for a big marketing budget. Sometimes they have to hammer these big corporations and Multinationals with this mini knife. However sometimes mini knives can create big damage to giants. That is why I say the Marketing arena is evolving and it is completely dynamic.

I always see Guerrilla Marketing as a SMEs’ strategy which do not rely on the brute force of an out-sized marketing budget instead it depend on vivid imagination.  Rather than talking about what is Guerrilla Marketing, I thought of sharing my views towards the difference between Guerrilla Marketing and Traditional Marketing. In my next post I will be covering in-depth Guerrilla marketing tactics.

1-      In Traditional Marketing, if you want to market your product and service you just invest money. However Guerrilla Marketing operates other way around. If you want to market your product and service, you do not have to invest money, if you are willing to invest time, energy, imagination and information are more than enough to capture the market.

2-      Traditional Marketing geared towards big business, but the soul and spirit of Guerrilla Marketing is small business, especially companies with big dreams and tiny budgets.

3-      Traditional Marketing counts the Fanpage likes, website visits etc. to measure the performance of a campaign, but Guerrilla Marketing mantra is to measure anything with profit. It pays attention to the bottom-line.

4-      I have seen many big companies in Sri Lanka diversify their efforts and get into hot water because it led them away from their core competency. Guerrilla marketing suggest, if you want to grow, grow it, but maintain the focus.

5-      Generally Traditional Marketing puts the efforts to make sales then forget about the entire thing.  Just a full stop is kept. But if you are a Guerrilla Marketer, you always keep the attention to the customers and focus more on after sales service. This is how you create positive word of mouth and referrals.

6-      Traditional Marketing advises you to scan the competitors those who are similar to you. However Guerrilla Marketing is all about corporation.

7-      Traditional Marketing is always a “ME”marketing. Visit any website and observe, it will say About Us, About Our Product, Contact Us, About Our Management etc. But Guerrilla Marketing is all about “YOU” marketing.  Because customers never care about companies, they care about themselves, if you can talk to them about them, you will have their full attention.

8-      Traditional Marketers count money at the end of the day, but Guerrilla Marketers count new relationships to the business at the end of the day.

9-      Traditional Marketing has messages that are always aimed groups. It is simply the larger the group better the reach approach. But Guerrilla Marketing aims its message at individuals, towards the profitable niche.

10-   Traditional Marketing is unintentional, big companies spend millions in TV, Radio and Paper ad. But they always forget sometimes about the way calls and queries are answered, how the follow-ups are done, attire worn by the employees etc.  Guerrilla Marketing is always intentional. It pays close attention to all details of customers and the all contact points.

Though there are many to talk, these are some of the main pin points I have identified and wanted to share with you.

Top Marketing and Digital Marketing Trends for the year 2011

Year 2011 is going to be a challenging one for everyone, especially for marketing professionals year 2011 is yet another tough year with minimum marketing budget and competition. Apart from traditional marketing marketers should need to learn how to leverage all the new digital marketing capabilities. Because digital marketing is the best way to cut down marketing expenses and reach the target audience more accurately. Following are the predicted marketing and digital marketing trends for the year 2011.

1 – Customer value is the key – Customers will never think of buying excessive, whatever buy they might have a reason for buying. Purchase matches the need. That’s it.

2 – Firms will only perform well in the market when they deliver superior value to the customers.

3 – Understanding customers well is a key factor for success. It is not about just selling, knowing the customers well and selling is the concept. Database, data mining and one to one marketing is going to be important in marketing activities.

4 – Winning the customers heart is the key, not just by offering superior products and services, but through social responsibilities. These efforts will need to be believable, sustained and engaging.

5 – Innovation– Brands / firms need to pull the “me too” mindset away from the customers. They have to differentiate themselves compared to competition.

6- Right word of mouth is going to be the key in driving the business. Their purchase decision will strongly influenced by peer group thoughts and views towards the brand. Social networking is growing and people talking about their lovable brand everywhere.

7 – Customers will seek for human touch / human interaction. Automation will further irritate customers in several ways.

8 – Loyalty marketing continues to be the important. Probably point based loyalty scheme will continue to work but not the privileged based one.

9 – The importance of digital media continues to increase. Marketers need to know more about digital media and how they can take maximum use out of it for less cost. Following are some digital marketing trends for the year 2011.

• Marketing budget will continue to shift online – Customers spend their time more on internet. People are bombarded with ads and other traditional medium. Digital media has changed the way customers purchase products. Post purchase evaluation will start in the beginning; people will build initial relationship with brands and then only buy it. Most of the firms in Sri Lanka actively recruiting people to do online marketing as they know the city population is now online.

• Traditional media tends to lose their prominence in marketing activities. Click here to watch a video

• Social media marketing will take new shapes such as social listening research, influencer marketing, community marketing and social gaming.

• Mobile marketing will take off – I would say year 2011 firms will continue to use mobile marketing than before. I would name year 2010 as a year for spamming. I get several spam mails from companies in Sri Lanka. Most of the reputed brands in Sri Lanka also used e-mail companies to market their product. Unless there is a need exist people going to get irritated with spam e-mails. For sure 2011 sms marketing will pick its boom in Sri Lanka.

• Personalized marketing gets connected with e-mail, mobile and online marketing activities. Marketers will collect more information about the customers and they will try to use the data at their maximum level. The data mining process is going to be the critical one in database marketing. Marketers are encouraged to identify more unique variables about customer’s behavior.

• Search engine optimization will become more critical; marketers need to ensure their brands are in the top list for targeted keywords.

• Real time help and quick responses will continue to delight customers.

• Integrated digital media marketing will get stronger in year 2011.
Adapting to these changes will require changes on the measurement of results, manging and marketing the brands. If brands are going to ignore these trends, it’s going to be a hard time for them.