[.ca] Guerrilla Marketing Online Weapons: 100 Low-Cost, ... (ISBN 039577019X)

From Amazon.com:
This is an absolutely great book on online marketing, arguably even better than the many previous Guerilla Marketing books. If you follow the advice in this book, you stand a good chance of becoming one of the leaders of online commerce. I will even admit that while reviewing this book, I realized that there was something very simple that Amazon.com Books could do that we hadn't been doing, and in five minutes, I was able to help leverage an existing feature of our company in an entirely new way that may further strengthen our online identity. And, for a marketing book, there can hardly be any stronger recommendation.

the way of the dinasour:
THis thing is so out of date it's ridiculous. I mean, there is no way you can actually succeed with this book. And not to say it's a bad book but it's hoplessly behind the times. For something up to date, read Guerrilla PR Wired. It's cutting edge and hip and it's so much more than just a book of tips. It explains everything behind PR and why it works and other stuff like that. And the book tells you how to publicize your stuff without spending like a fortune. Why would anyone want to read anything else?

Sorry to disagree with Paul Allen, but....:
I hate to disagree with someone who obviously had enough business sense to co-found Microsoft, but this book is terribly outdated. The minute it was put to print, it became terribly outdated. Perhaps when the book was written, in the Mid-90s, it offered help in the new frontier of ecommerce. Now, it will just confuse anybody who doesn't know better. Why? Simply put, it doesn't speak of many new methods of marketing online. Banner Advertising, Search Engines, Site Design, and Opt In Email are no where to be found in this book. The book definitely has a very outdated feel to it, and I do not see how this book could be useful to anyone interested in online promotion.

Outdated:
Even in 1996 when it was written, it was old story. This book is good for basic marketing courses in high school.

Low Cost Internet Marketing Ideas are never out of date:
I have purchased more than 30 copies of this book to give to employees of an internet company that I founded in 1997. For me, it is required reading. Our company has 3 web sites in the Media Metrix top 500 and is ranked in the top 15 of all internet properties for page views. This is my favorite single treatise on low-cost guerillia marketing on the internet. Perhaps during the internet bubble many companies backed by millions of dollars of venture capital overlooked all the excellent suggestions in this book, these 100 weapons, and instead spending it all on traditional media campaigns to "build their brand." What a joke! I have seen more than one instance where a single determined employee with no marketing budget, a trench-worker, as it were, has applied the techniques described in this book over a long period of time and has literally generated millions of dollars of value (in terms of both traffic to our sites AND revenue) by doing so. People say this book is out of date. But I have never seen a book published since this one that captures the online guerilla spirit that is needed in the post-bubble internet economy and covers such a broad range of tactics. Certainly there are excellent new books on search engine techniques, affiliate marketing, and other strategies, but in my opinion every employee of every internet company should read this book (it's a quick read) and apply several of the "weapons" described in it and watch the results. If you aren't sophisticated enough to track the results of every weapon you use in your internet marketing strategy, you'll never know that this book is packed with great ideas. Some of the verbage is out of date, and the book feels out of date, but look past that to find some excellent ideas that most people are too "sophisticated" to try, and you'll find many keys to success. I continue to recommend this book and buy copies for my associates.

Ch 12 made sense:
The first ten chapters represented a firestorm of ideas. Ug, as the book states a 100 ideas to pursue. Let say the value of each idea is debatable. Some ideas will be a waste of time. My advice is to mapout a path of "what you want". Look at what ideas will move you towards your goal. Finally, in chapter 12, Mr Allens says, "Referrals are the easiest and least expensive way to market your business. Its much simpler and cheaper to develop repeat sales to a group of satisified customers you've developed over the years than to find new customers." I think Mr Allen should have changed his book to a 100 ideas to retent a customer. Amazingly, Mr Allen states, "The best guerrila marketers spend 60 percent of their time and energy selling to existing customers." I'll bet that percent is higher today. Customer expect top notch performance. One is left to wonder why did Mr Allen did not change his first ten chapters focus to "Building Happy Customers using Online tools". There I've given him a great idea. I found a number of websites links in the book broken or of no value. Disappointly, Mr Allen hit all the buzz words: email, bulletin board, storefront, service, feedback, classified ads, media campaigns, and free advice or articles. The bottom line building a presence in cyberspace is expensive and positioning is king. The current of media attention getter does not trade with the consumer using pennies, instead hugh promotional campaigns dump billions to compete for the minds of the consumers. So, Mr Allen correctly accesses the situation intelligently in the last portion of his book when he tells the reader to focus on build the business by word of mouth from satisfied customers. Now that makes sense!