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Guerilla Marketing Definition
Guerilla marketing is a very innovative form of marketing that is quite different from traditional marketing. This form of marketing mainly relies on a surprise factor and creating situations that spark interactions. Guerilla marketing techniques are generally low-cost techniques that focus on capturing the attention of small groups or people in a particular location.
Guerilla marketing is a form of marketing that uses unconventional methods to attract small groups of audiences to a particular good or service.
This type of marketing aims to create a lasting impact on the audience by engaging them. The engagement and surprise elements make guerilla marketing interesting for the audience. Whereas, from a marketer's perspective, the zero-to-low cost involved in the spread of information makes guerilla marketing appealing.
Guerilla marketing has zero-to-low costs as it relies on the audience to spread the information through word-of-mouth, viral, and ambient marketing.
Do you know how guerilla marketing got its name?
Guerilla marketing gets its name from guerilla warfare. This is an unconventional type of warfare where the participants form fast-moving small groups to use tactics such as ambush, sabotage, mobility, and hit-and-run techniques, unlike traditional police or military forces.
Similarly, guerilla marketing uses unconventional techniques to capture people's attention, unlike traditional marketing strategies.
Types of Guerilla Marketing
There are different types of guerilla marketing; the most common ones are listed below:
1. Event Ambush Marketing - capturing the attention of audiences already attending an event.
2. Ambient Marketing - placing advertisements at highly visible but unusual or unexpected places.
3. Wild Posting - pasting posters onto the walls of the buildings.
4. Grassroots - targeting and spreading the message to a small group of people, hoping they will spread it further to other people.
5. Buzz Marketing - creating creative and innovative advertisements that generate word-of-mouth.
Having learned the types of guerilla marketing, let us now find out the features of guerilla marketing.
Features of Guerilla Marketing
To plan a guerilla type of marketing for your product or service, you need to make sure that the campaign has the following characteristics:
1. Surprise element - guerilla marketing focuses on surprising its audience to capture their attention. The ad placement or manner of advertisement is unexpected and surprising for people.
2. Interactive - the guerilla marketing campaigners devise situations to ensure that the created scenarios spark a conversation or other engagement among people.
3. Low-budget - guerilla marketing relies on creativity and unconventional methods to spread the message, making it a budget-friendly marketing method.
4. Evoke emotion - it is crucial to evoke emotions among the audience to get them involved and thinking about the campaign. This way, they can connect with the brand, making it more memorable.
But how effective is guerilla marketing? Let us find out!
Guerilla Marketing Effectiveness
Being a budget-friendly form of marketing, guerilla marketing is popular among small and medium-sized companies. To organize a guerilla marketing campaign, you need more creativity than money. Only a creative and unique idea can engage people and get them to discuss the brand or product.
As this is an engaging and interactive form of advertisement, it leaves an impact on people. It is much more memorable among the audience than the other traditional forms of advertising, as it evokes emotions such as surprise or happiness, thereby helping them bond with the brand. This tactic creates a long-lasting impression on the audience's minds, making it an effective form of marketing.
Moreover, guerilla marketing helps companies stand out from their competitors because of their unconventional methods. Guerilla marketing prompts word-of-mouth, a very effective marketing tool, thereby increasing guerilla marketing's effectiveness.
90% of the purchase decisions are influenced by word-of-mouth.1
Customers exchanging information with others about their experience or interest in a company or its products is called word-of-mouth.
To learn more about this marketing strategy, check out our explanation of word-of-mouth marketing.
Guerilla Marketing Advantages and Disadvantages
Like most other marketing techniques, guerrilla marketing has its set of pros and cons.
Guerilla Marketing: Advantages
The main advantages of guerilla marketing are as follows:
1. Low budget - Having to spend very little on marketing is one of the most significant advantages of guerilla marketing.
2. High ROI - even with a small investment, guerilla marketing brings in a high return of investment (ROI) in the form of increased brand value, sales, and revenue through word-of-mouth.
3. Better Reach - creativity and unconventional methods help a guerilla marketing campaign reach a higher audience.
4. Creative Freedom - when it comes to guerilla marketing, there are no fixed guidelines or rules to follow. You can let your imagination run wild and develop the best ideas you can implement. It has an enormous scope.
5. Secondary and Tertiary Distribution Sources - if the marketing idea is good, people will spread it, in addition to its message and experience, on different social media platforms. This will help the campaign reach an even wider audience and benefit from platforms you had not intended to use.
Guerilla Marketing: Disadvantages
The main disadvantages of guerilla marketing are as follows:
1. Misinterpretation of Message - due to the nature of guerilla marketing, there can be instances where customers misinterpret the intended message. People may also be offended by some aspects of the campaign.
2. Failed Campaign - if the idea does not appeal to the audience as intended, the campaign can fail. It may be due to a lack of engagement or simply because it failed to capture people's attention.
3. Authority Intervention - if you plan a very public campaign, it can lead to an intervention from the authorities. This may be because the campaign is disrupting people's daily activities or causing a nuisance in some manner. This can give the company a negative reputation, resulting in counter-productive results.
Guerilla Marketing Examples
Listed below are some very successful guerilla marketing campaigns examples.
1. Frontline - Frontline set up a very innovative ad campaign. They laid out a huge picture of a dog on the ground floor of a multi-story building, so when people walk over the picture, they look like ticks on the dog's body when viewed by people from the upper levels. This marketing campaign aimed to bring people's attention to their flea and tick repellant spray.
2. BBC - BBC's Dracula billboard was a very innovative ad campaign. It did not look anything out of the ordinary in the morning - just a few bloodstained stakes with the words DRACULA on a white background. But at night, you see that the stakes were strategically placed to cast a shadow of Dracula on the billboard. This was seen and appreciated by many as very innovative and out-of-the-box thinking.
3. Fiji - does anyone remember the hashtag "#Fijigirl" that was all the buzz during the 2019 Golden Globes? This type of guerilla marketing focused on strategic placement. They had models dressed in blue holding a tray of Fiji water to serve the thirsty guests. One particular model captured a lot of attention when she started photobombing various celebrities with a tray of Fiji water bottles. People started talking about the model on Twitter with the hashtag #Fijigirl, bringing a lot of attention to the company.
Guerilla marketing is, therefore, a budget-friendly marketing method that focuses on creativity and interaction with people to spread the message and raise brand awareness. Now that you have read about how effective guerilla marketing has been for companies, are you fascinated by this marketing method? Have you had any instances where you came across such a marketing campaign?
Guerilla Marketing - Key takeaways
- Guerilla marketing is a form of marketing that uses unconventional methods to attract small groups of audiences to a particular product or service.
- Customers exchanging information with others about their experience or interest in a company or its products is called word-of-mouth.
- The features of Guerilla marketing include surprise elements, interactive, low-budget, and evoke emotion.
- Low budget, high ROI, better reach, creative freedom, and the use of secondary and tertiary distribution sources are the advantages of guerilla marketing.
- Misinterpretation of the message, failed campaign, and authority intervention are the disadvantages of guerilla marketing.
References
- Georgi Todorov. Word of Mouth Marketing: 49 Statistics to Help You Boost Your Bottom Line. Semrush Blog. 2021. https://www.semrush.com/blog/word-of-mouth-stats/
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Frequently Asked Questions about Guerilla Marketing
What type of marketing is guerilla?
Guerilla marketing is a very innovative form of marketing that is quite different from traditional marketing. This form of marketing mainly relies on a surprise factor and creating situations that spark interactions. Guerilla marketing techniques are generally low-cost techniques that focus on capturing the attention of small groups or people in a particular location.
Why is it called guerilla marketing?
Guerilla marketing gets its name from guerilla warfare. This is an unconventional type of warfare where the participants form fast-moving small groups to use tactics such as ambush, sabotage, mobility, and hit-and-run techniques, unlike traditional police or military forces.
Similarly, guerilla marketing uses unconventional techniques to capture the attention of people, unlike traditional marketing techniques.
What type of media does guerrilla marketing use?
Guerilla marketing is a form of marketing that uses unconventional methods to attract small groups of audiences to a particular product or service and can therefore use all types of media such as digital media, billboards, and so on.
How do you start a guerrilla marketing campaign?
Understanding your target audience is significant for guerilla marketing, as you will have to base your ideas on what will be appealing to them. Next, you will have to decide your location and develop a creative and original idea. You will also have to make sure that this idea will involve engaging the audience in some manner to create an impactful campaign.
How is guerilla marketing measured?
Conversion rates, response rates, social media mentions, referrals, and increases in sales are a few methods to measure the effectiveness of guerilla marketing.
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