What is Guerrilla Marketing Exactly?

Have you ever wanted to get creative or innovative in your marketing efforts, but are stumped by the execution? You probably want to try something out of the ordinary, but you keep getting stuck. It may be time to try guerrilla marketing.

Guerrilla marketing is the execution of highly innovative and unconventional marketing techniques that prove to be a low-cost way to obtain maximum exposure for a product or brand.

Let’s dive a little deeper. 
In guerrilla warfare, the goal is to magnify the efforts of a small group and to win over the public by executing strategies to deplete the enemy without suffering significant losses of their own. Guerrilla marketing is similar because the goal is to maximize the impact of low-cost, differentiated marketing efforts and to use their strategies to gain public attention and brand exposure.

In all avenues of business, differentiation is usually a successful approach to adopt because it will create a distinguished and attractive finished product. This idea, paired with strategic innovation (something new that isn’t easy to copy), and creativity represent the fundamental principles of a guerrilla marketing campaign.

A successful campaign is measured by several components. Guerrilla marketing campaigns should garner attention from the public by being clever and even newsworthy at times. For a guerrilla marketing effort to gain publicity it must also be catchy, almost like a grassroots movement; taking control of people's attention and driving it toward marketing the brand or company. Exposure and publicity is key. At times, even negative publicity is acceptable if it doesn’t damage the reputation of the brand or company in the long run.

What are some types of guerrilla marketing:

The nature of guerrilla marketing places strategic importance on viral marketing and buzz marketing. The internet and social media are obvious factors that allow this to occur, but the main function of guerrilla marketing is to gain consumers’ attention through physical public places to attract a mass audience all at once. This style of marketing is applicable across industries, but works well mostly for small businesses, even though large corporations have utilized it as well.

There are many types of campaigns and mediums that encompass the guerrilla marketing spirit. Most of these terms are so closely related that they are often difficult to determine from each other. They all share common traits. Here are some examples.

1) Ambient Marketing: 

These advertisements are often interactive, take up a large amount of physical space, and can be located virtually anywhere. The purpose of ambient marketing is to use your surroundings. These campaigns gain consumer attention by using elements of surprise and intrigue.

2) Ambush marketing:

This is an often controversial campaign where a rival company associates its brand with an event that already has paid sponsors. The event and audience gets ambushed, in a sense, with messages by a different company.

3) Presence marketing:

This is similar to ambient marketing in that it will utilize the physical surroundings of consumers. Presence marketing is all about making the brand recognizable through always being present. This is commonly achieved through product placements in movies and TV shows.

4) Stealth marketing:

Stealth marketing is similar to buzz marketing in that it aims to attract people to a brand against their knowledge. The idea is for consumers to get involved with the brand without them knowing they are part of the advertising campaign.

5) Grassroots marketing:

This campaign type can take many forms. The structure is based on winning over the emotions and approval of individual consumers to attract them to the brand for life. The most important factor of grassroots marketing is building relationships.

6) Wild posting:

This campaign type is an aggressive mass flyer posting in highly populated urban areas. Posting flyers without permission, along with posting many flyers in one location are the common practices of wild posting.

7) Astroturfing: 

This risky and highly controversial guerrilla tactic that involves fake endorsements or artificial hype that can generate attention, but has proven to damage companies as a result.

8) Street marketing:

Street marketing can be defined as brand ambassadors working to promote companies in public places, or firms utilizing physical space and street culture to convey messages to the public. Popular fixtures utilized include, manhole covers, shopping trolleys, bus stops, public transport, trash cans, lamp posts, etc.

Some final thoughts:

How do you feel about guerrilla marketing? Would you ever recommend it to one of your clients? How do you think it could it work for your business?

"Creative without strategy is called art. Creative with strategy is called advertising."  -Jef I. Richards

This article will be the first part of a three part series I'm doing on guerrilla marketing. Stay tuned!