Guerilla marketing: unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Jay Conrad Levinson coined this definition way back in the 1980s for the philosophy and tactics he’s developed to give small businesses their first marketing tool for standing out against bigger, better financed competitors. Three decades later, some of the biggest brands of them all are donning guerilla fatigues in at least some of their branding strategies to cut through the growing resistance of a jaded public. Consider McNeil Consumer’s branded port-a-potty TV ad for Immodium AD, a campaign spotlighted in an “Emerging Trends” Jan. 21 column at Forbes.com.

It hinted at forthcoming “slam, bang, buy” marketing campaigns to bolster the Tylenol, Snapple and Altoids brands.

There’s more than ad sizzle to this story. The gospel according to Levinson and his disciples has produced a 29-book series on small business Guerilla Marketing, selling 14 million copies in 42 languages.

The latest in that series, Guerrilla Mark-eting in 30 days (Entrepreneur Press), was released in February and is co-authored by Levinson disciple Al Lautenslager a former marketing executive for the Mead Corp. Lautenslager is a marketing consultant and operates his own commercial printing company in Naperville, IL. “There’s a lot of (marketing help) clutter out there,” he said. “I’ve tried them and I know what works, and what doesn’t.”

Kicking off a 20-city promotional tour in early January, Lautenslager visited the final session of a guerilla marketing class at Northland College that used uncorrected galley proofs of his book.

The invitation came from instructor Leslie Hamp, a fellow “certified guerilla marketing coach” in the international marketing network Levinson has created over three decades around his self-help principles for small business operators and entrepreneurs.

The Levenson-Lautenslager book is organized in 30 chapters, each focusing on an essential component in a marketing strategy, thus the name. Each chapter is a quick read, ending with an action plan for the day.

Chapter 7, titled “Market planning & strategy,” sums up the stakes for businesses of all sizes: “All other company planning is driven by the marketing plan.”

Hamp said it was a perfect textbook for her class of 12 mid-career executives and business owners scattered around Northwest Wisconsin. They met weekly on the Northland campus and at satellite locations in Drummond and Hayward, all linked in an interactive teleclass.

Hamp has taught the guerilla marketing class at Northland in each of the last four years. As with her earlier classes, these students developed a marketing plan with benchmark evaluation measures for a live business with real marketing issues: Ashland-based Northern Photographics.

(The seven-year-old business and its founder-owner Dale Thomas were an “On the Move” feature in BusinessNorth’s March issue.)

Hamp brought a graphic designer and a Web site developer into the equation as resources for the class to develop the marketing plan.

The exercise helped Thomas define his current and potential customers and a strategy for holding and reaching them, all at nominal cost. “It was a win-win … the class got a real world experience and Dale has a plan, and publicity,” Hamp said. “We hope he will move the business to the next stage,” beyond trying to be everything to everybody, she said.

Obviously, it is up to Thomas to execute that plan. But marketing plans developed by those earlier classes for other businesses suggest Northern Photographics is beginning a new chapter.

Hamp said one case study produced a name change for a Bayfield business to Living Adventures (formerly Adventures in Perspectives); another, Good Thyme Catering in Ashland created new signage and print materials.

Hamp adeptly puts the guerilla marketing principles she preaches to work in her Ashland-based business, www.forward

momentum.biz. She develops Web-based marketing teleclasses that have landed her clients across the nation.

One of them is Linda Paulsen, a former surgical nurse who began a new career four years ago as owner-operator of Immigrant House, a bed and breakfast inn at 2104 E. Superior St. in Duluth. Paulsen participated in Hamp’s eight-week teleconference last summer, in search of creative ways to generate more repeat business, and to position Immigrant House as a meeting site for small groups. As a direct result, repeat business has increased, Paulsen said.

But the biggest benefit has been the confidence she’s gained in better matching her product to the needs and wants of her customers. “I’ve learned that there are no mistakes; some things just work better than others,” she said.

Meanwhile, Hamp has just completed an electronic public relations action book that she’ll use as a resource for future teleclasses, and for personal coaching.

The action book came from her participation in a 90-day Web-based marketing program called the “Product Factory,” a brainchild of two major figures in the Guerilla Marketing fraternity.

She led a team of 14 other participants, from as far away as Australia, to “top producer” status, also winning free entry in the next Product Factory program.

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