Guerrilla Marketing Online
The newest, biggest, most mysterious, most misunderstood and most promising marketing opportunity in history is the one offered by the advent of the internet. Every day, online marketing gets bigger, better, and more helpful both for marketers and for consumers. Still, three facts must be understood by all who would hope to become online guerrillas:
a. Online marketing will only work if you understand marketing.
b. Online marketing means a lot more than having a website
c. Online marketing is only one percent of all marketing.
Remember that there are at least 100 marketing weapons and that online marketing is only one of them. In most cases, you can't market online only with any expectation of success. Yet, the entire media world is becoming fragmented. There are regional editions of magazines, zone editions of newspapers, cable TV stations that reach local communities, local radio stations, targeted mailing lists. Where does everything come together?
It all happens online. Slowly but certainly, people are learning that the whole story exists online -- that all the details they must learn before making a purchase are ready to be studied online. The entire Internet phenomenon is part of human evolution, and humans learning how to interact in cyberspace is also part of evolution. You don't have to be reminded that evolution takes place over a long period of time. The Internet is here and everybody knows it, but not everybody is online yet, and not everybody online is ready to make purchases yet. They will. But not quite yet.
The insight is that you've got to continue marketing with traditional media. Even when the Internet has achieved a market penetration comparable to that of the telephone, you must continue marketing using time-honored methods. TV revolutionized the marketing scene, but most of the big TV advertisers also market their offerings in places other than the tube. TV is part of their marketing mix, but not the entire potion.
When marketing with the traditional media, you're going to have to devote time and space to heralding your website because many people will want to know where they can get more information. Your website is where. No media offers you the comprehensiveness of the web. That's why you need it to flesh out your marketing. The world is learning to buy things in a new way and that way is online. But the learning process is still in process.
From Mastering Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
