Guerilla Marketing - Does this really work???
 

Sorry, this is a little long but worth the read I think:

I was at a bookstore a little while ago and ran into a friend I haven't talked to in a couple of months. We both had a little free time so we decided to go to their little coffee shop and get a cup of coffee and shoot the shit for a little while. When we sat down, I noticed a young woman sitting at a table next to us on her laptop and she had a beginning php book beside her. It's not uncommon to see someone coding in a coffee shop so I didn't give it much thought.

A guy comes along with a newspaper and sits down at another table near us and gets a call on his cell phone. I thought he was an inconsiderate prick at first since he didn't move and I could hear every word of his conversation. He started talking about his websites. He mentions that he coded something on his own, then starts talking about SEO. He mentioned that all of his blogs were on different class c IPs. He said having his sites crosslinked on different class c IPs makes him a lot of money. Then he said "No, it's all the same host. I use xyz host. They set you up with as many different class c IPs as you want. Yeah, of course they support php and mysql. Expensive? Oh, no way. They're only about $30 for 2 class c IPs and you can add as many as you want later. Seriously! Check them out. They are at xyzhost.com. By the way, they are local so you can drop by their office if you want to."

Dickhead...whatever. I finished up talking to my friend and headed to another bookstore to try to find what I was after. As I stood at the computer book shelf and thumbed through books about AJAX, I heard the same guy talking on the aisle next to me and it was the EXACT same conversation. I even quietly said "By the way, they are local so you can drop by their office if you want to" just before he said it. The guy standing next to me looking at books gave me a strange look since I clearly "predicted" what this guy was about to say. I told him that I thought we had just been spammed and I had heard his same fake phone call not more than 30 minutes before at another bookstore.

I put my book down and moved to the aisle where the cell phone spammer was and pretended to be interested in books in that section. As soon as I did, he walked away. He ended the call and I asked him if he just spammed me. He acted surprised at first but after I told him that I was just in the other bookstore and heard that same conversation. I explained that I wasn't pissed, just intrigued. He finally admitted that it's a little bit of guerilla marketing and he's been doing it for quite a while with excellent success. Whenever he sees someone that might be interested in his services, he has his wife call him on his cellphone and goes through the script again. He even applies it to a couple of his other ventures but wouldn't tell me what they are.

Sneaky bastard. Has anyone ever heard of doing this or anything similar? I was annoyed by it at first but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

It seems to work for him. Strange method though. It seems very labor-intensive.

Yes I have.

Every one of those arrogant asshats claims they are successful, and a step away from pure genius.

:disgust

hmm...i think it seems like a lot of work..but i dontknow if it would work

He is a retard.

Could work.

Sounds like a whole lotta work to me. One customer at a time.... woohoo

It does seem like a lot of work but he said he doesn't go someplace JUST to "market." If he's there, he keeps an eye out for anyone who might be interested.

Clearly at the first bookstore I wasn't the intended target. There was nothing about me that would have identified me as a webmaster. The girl with the php book was the mark. That's the beauty of it though. I don't know what she thought about the host but I made a mental note to check it out since I have been eyeing Baddog's hosting for a while now. So it did work on me.

thats lame.. fly a banner across a major intersection would do the job a lot better.. but on the phone, you'd get the feeling of "being sneaky" and getting a tip.. not to mention it looks like he spams a series of people if he's doing this in bookstores and coffee shops.

R

I guess if you're desparate then give it a try.

So is he the owner and operator of this hosting company?

or just an affiliate? :winkwink:

Track that sale...

Maybe yes & maybe no :upsidedow

waste of time considering all the effort put into it - you have a limited audience and the odds of success are slim on each call.

Thats way too much fucking work for a weak ass promo

that sounds so retarded.

you are better off doing those hotel conference room MLM type meetings. as a promoter what he is doing sounds like a terrible waste of time. what i used to do that was very effective was go around to all the bookstores and such and insert my dj services brochures in all the bridal magazines. you have to be super guerrilla about it though.

:)

Hey there babaganoosh, how are you?

Guerrilla does work! That tactic you mentioned IMHO sucks, and is far and away from being a smart guerrilla move - but you might be interested on this kind of reading:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/lis...435794-7525742

Cheers,

Bruno Dickman :thumbsup

you have better luck posting, "see sig" or "sig placement" - no one clicks it unless they are surfers hoping for free porn

Damn, I just got spammed again. :1orglaugh

Short term sure, black hat SEO and marketing will only hurt you more down the road.

Nice business thread :)

hosting companies can get thousands of dollars per customer for the lifetime of their membership, so it could be worth it considering how valuable each customer is

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Yes, it does work. It works really, really well, in fact.

Except, it isn't really suitable for things like webhosting. The perfect product to promote this way is something trendy, with viral potential.

For example, let's say you are promoting some "extreme" new energy drink. Normal advertising might work to a certain extent, but it will pretty much kill the trendy underground image the product needs in order to be successful.

Now, instead of using billboards and such, you could try guerilla marketing. Give the drink for free to people in extreme sports, DJs, etc. Have people in "trendy" clubs order it. Have people post about how awesome it is on blogs and message boards. Have "cool" people drink it and talk about it on the streets.

Pretty soon, your product will be known throughout the trendsetting communities. From there, it has the potential to grow virally, while keeping the cool, underground image that makes it sell.

And yes, it works - it's how Red Bull got to where it is.

I using guerila marketing all the time.When you dont have money then you must use it,there is no other alternative :)