Guerrilla Marketing (#121)
Unconventional stunts that earn attention in unexpected places — then get turned into repeatable strategy. The point isn't the one-off spectacle. It's finding a memorable, low-cost way to break through, proving it works small, and running it again.
Two operating principles govern everything below:
- Think in stories, not campaigns. People don't share your funnel. They share a story worth retelling. Design the moment so the person who receives it wants to tell someone else.
- Test small before going big. A guerrilla idea is a hypothesis. Prove it on a handful of targets before you spend real money scaling it.
Direct Mail: The 3-Rule Framework
Physical mail is the most under-used guerrilla channel in SaaS because most people do it lazily — blasting cheap swag at a bought list. Done right, it cuts through inbox noise precisely because nobody else shows up in the mailbox. Every direct-mail play must satisfy all three rules:
- Relevance — The item connects to your product, your message, or something the recipient specifically cares about. A random branded mug is noise. A gift that lands a joke about their exact problem is a story.
- Relationship-building — The mailer opens or deepens a relationship. It's a gift, not a pitch. If the recipient feels sold to, you've spent money to annoy someone.
- Precision targeting — You know exactly who is receiving it and why. Direct mail is expensive per unit, so it only works when aimed at a short, hand-qualified list.
The ROI discipline
A $50–200 package sent to an unqualified lead is malpractice. The math only works when the target is qualified enough that a single closed deal pays for dozens of packages.
- Qualify before you spend. Reserve high-cost mailers for named accounts and hard-to-reach decision-makers where the deal size justifies the cost.
- Test small before scaling. Send to a handful first. Measure reply and meeting rates. Only scale the version that actually earns responses.
Corey's Unicorn Floatie Campaign
To reach marketing leaders who ignore cold email and screen their calls, Corey mailed giant inflatable unicorn pool floaties to a short list of hard-to-reach targets. The floatie is absurd, oversized, and impossible to ignore — it lands as a story, not a pitch (relevance + relationship), aimed at a hand-picked list where each closed deal dwarfs the package cost (precision + ROI discipline). Recipients remembered it, mentioned it, and replied.
Case Library (inspiration fuel)
Steal the pattern, not the prop. Each of these turned a small, unconventional act into outsized attention or revenue.
- WePay's 600-lb ice block — At PayPal's developer conference, WePay dropped a 600-pound block of ice with money frozen inside and a sign reading "PayPal Freezes Your Accounts." A pointed, physical jab at a competitor's real weakness, staged exactly where the audience was.
- Xero skywriting — Xero paid for skywriting over TechCrunch Disrupt, hijacking a competitor-heavy event's attention from above without buying a booth.
- Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner space jump — A supersonic freefall from the edge of space drew 8 million concurrent live viewers — a story so big it dwarfed any ad buy.
- Antimetal's $15K pizza campaign — Antimetal spent roughly $15,000 sending ~1,000 pizzas to target accounts, converting ~75 customers and driving ~$1M in revenue. Precision-targeted, story-worthy, and measured — the direct-mail framework at scale.
- Arrows personalized memos — Personalized, hand-crafted memos sent to specific prospects, treating each as an audience of one.
- ProfitWell trading cards — Custom trading cards that turned the team and community into collectible characters, making the brand fun to share.
- Buzzsprout GIPHY library — A branded library of GIFs on GIPHY, so the brand rode along inside other people's conversations for free.
- Wistia "Gear Squad vs Dr. Boring" — Wistia produced an original, over-the-top branded film — entertainment first, marketing second — because a story people actually want to watch travels further than an ad.
How to Use This With a Client
- Pick the story. What's the one memorable thing a target would retell? Start from the story, then reverse-engineer the tactic.
- Qualify the list. For any high-cost play (direct mail especially), name the exact accounts and confirm the deal size justifies the spend.
- Run the 3-rule check on physical mail: relevance, relationship-building, precision targeting. If it fails any one, redesign it.
- Test small. Ship to a handful, measure replies/meetings/coverage, and only scale what earns a response.
- Turn the stunt into a system. If it works, make it repeatable — a recurring mailer program, a series of films, an ongoing library — rather than a one-time spike.
Source: Corey Haines, Founding Marketing, ch. 13.