Guerrilla Marketing: Types, Examples and More
If you think the classic marketing strategies and tactics are not working for your brand, then you might wanna try Guerrilla Marketing.
These guerrillas are extra and special forces, implementing the killer strategies to turn the tide and defeat the ones working against your strategies.
Keep on reading to learn more about it in detail.
1.
Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing is a beneficial and alternative strategy to traditional marketing. Moreover, it thrives on original thinking and creativity, where your imagination and ingenuity beat out the tight budgets.
Additionally, it tends to be cheaper than traditional marketing, and it relies on smaller, more localized brick-and-mortar strategies.
Let’s discuss it in detail.
Some of these strategies are:
Graffiti
This type uses city streets and alleyways as a giant canvas. However, smaller, more covert operations will make their mark whenever they want, but you will need permission from the property.
Stencil Graffiti
Stencil graffiti uses stencils to create repeated works of street art.
One of the benefits of using this type is that you can create multiple instances of your art in a short period of time.
Reverse Graffiti
Reverse graffiti is when you or your marketing team remove dirt and grime from a street or wall in order to create an all-natural marking message.
For this, you just need to put a stencil on a sidewalk and then wash the uncovered spaces.
Stickers
You can also use stickers and is one of the great tactics to be very successful.
Undercover Marketing
Also termed ‘stealth marketing’, in this type, marketers disguise themselves as peers amongst their target audience.
During the interactions, they rave about their new products, revealing their new features and capabilities.
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Roots of Warfare
When you hear the term “guerrilla marketing”, then it is often hard not to think of guerrilla warfare.
It makes sense as that is where this style of marketing comes from and got its name.
However, in the warfare context, guerrilla tactics largely depend on the element of surprise.
But, this does not translate into the work you as a marketer will be doing.
In the terms of marketing, you play on the element of surprise.
As it turns out to create highly unconventional campaigns that catch people’s attention in the course of their day-to-day activities and routine.
Guerrilla Marketing: A Budget-Friendly Option
As a marketer what you will really enjoy with this marketing tactic is that this marketing strategy is fairly low-cost.
Moreover, you will be investing in creativity, intellect, and its implementation, however, it does not need to be expensive.
Moreover, many marketers term it as repurposing your existing content like taking a fragment or segments of a report and expanding each one into a blog post.
Thus, it is an investment of time, but not of money.
Guerrilla marketing works by repurposing the current environment of your target audience.
Therefore, you can evaluate it and figure out which part or segment of it can you can repurpose and include in your brand.
Benefits of Guerrilla Marketing
The benefits of Guerrilla Marketing are:
- Cheap to Exaeute: One of the biggest advantages of using this marketing strategy is that it is cheap than traditional advertising.
- Uses word-of-mouth: Guerrilla marketing relies on word-of-mouth marketing and is one of the most powerful and influential tactics of marketing. Moreover, there is nothing more beneficial than people talking about your campaign
- Publicity can Snowball: Another unique feature of this marketing campaign is that it can get picked up by local news sources, thus resulting in a publicity powerhouse.
- Creative Thinking: With guerrilla marketing, you can use your imagination, and is also budget-friendly.
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Disadvantages of Guerrilla Marketing
Now let’s discuss the disadvantages of guerrilla marketing:
- Unpredictable Obstacles: There are a number of factors like bad weather, thrown timing, and other small instances that can negatively affect your entire campaign
- Potential Backlash: Some of your audiences may call out your campaign and may also not approve of it. In some instances, undercover marketing campaigns may also face backlash from individuals.
- Authority Intervention: If you are using non-permission street graffiti, it may result in tension with the authorities
- Misunderstanding the Messages: In some cases, your target audience may also misunderstand your marketing campaign, thus resulting in skew audience interpretation
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2.
Types of Guerrilla Marketing
There are a number of types of Gureelia marketing strategies you can make use of to capture your target audience’s attention.
You might find it as a type of niche marketing strategy, there are a few sub-categories that have their potential benefits.
Keep on reading to learn more about it.
Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing
This type of marketing involves putting ads in preexisting urban environments.
You can choose to place your removable ads onto statues or put temporary artwork on sidewalks and streets.
Indoor Guerrilla Marketing
This one is similar to the one above, however, it takes place in indoor locations like train stations, shops, and university campus buildings.
Event Ambush
You may choose to leverage your target audience in a progressing event like a concert or a sporting time.
It helps to promote your products or services in a noticeable way without permission from the sponsors.
Experiential Guerrilla Marketing
Experiential Guerrilla Marketing uses all of the above types, however, you can execute in a way that needs the public to interact with your brand
Now let’s discuss the examples to inspire your brand.
3.
Examples of Guerrilla Marketing to Inspire your Brand
You might be attracted to the idea of jumping right into using Gurrellia marketing tactics for your brand, however, without context, the whole idea can be a little confusing.
The following section contains a few examples of Guerrilla Marketing to inspire your brand.
Let’s discuss them as follows:
The following are a few examples to consider:
Childish Gambino’s Ice Cream Pop-up
If you think that food is not a powerful motivator then think again.
Make is a sweet treat and you have yourself a winning combination for your marketing campaign.
Childish Gambino might have had this idea for many years, where pop-up events were planned and free ice cream was given away.
As a result of this campaign, many people qued up in the heat for the delicious ice cream as the soundtrack of the Gambino’s two singles played on a loudspeaker.
Moreover, it was a great way to expose their target audience to their EP, Summer Pack.
Thus, sometimes you have to draw an audience in with the incentive to draw attention.
Bounty’s Giant Popsicle
You might have seen the hype of this ad campaign on the internet.
Bounty found a unique way to advertise their product by installing life-sized
messes throughout New York City, with minimal words.
You might be thinking ” Will a Billboard ad not provide the same benefit like this one?”
Well!. many of us are beginning to opt for every possible way o remove ads from our lives.
This is why individuals like DVR and Ad-free options on streaming services like Hulu and YouTube.
Moreover, this ad campaign ignores all.
Why?
Because you stumbled upon a melting popsicle that is the size of your mattress and you would stop and look at it.
Right?
Thus, identifying the biggest problems your brand is facing and finding unconventional ways to broadcast your ads without words is often beneficial.
Frontline’s Interactive Floor Ad
If you saw this ad it might have triggered a thought “Someone gets this dog away from the flies”.
Well! Surely we did think like that.
If you would have looked carefully, the dog is not real and neither were the flies.
Why does the company use this type of ad?
The Frontline is a company that makes prevention products for flea and ticks for your dogs.
The company was able to fill the entire floor with an image of the dog in a public space and there were many people who were walking on the space every day.
From the top level of the building, it would create an illusion that there are flies on the dog.
Moreover, this campaign is different than a usual one as it is just putting forward a single message that most people are unlikely to ignore.
Additionally, this type also creates a form of human interaction that reminds your target audience that what your product does.
Figuring out how your audience involuntarily interacts with your marketing messages can address the issue and even leave a mark on their mind.
UNICEF’s Dirty Water Vending Machines
You might be feeling guilty about using bottled water and wasting money on them.
Moreover, most of the workplaces offer filtered water from a machine, not a traditional cooler.
This is why the guerrilla marketing campaign from UNICEF got the attention of many people.
They posted a question “What if these bottles of water you waste money on were filled with dirty water?”
It was a way of reminding the masses around the world that a number of different parts of the world, even the entire populations have no access to clean drinking water.
Therefore, instead of spending money on bottled water, UNICEF suggested that putting efforts to bring clean drinking water to such areas.
It did so by creating makeshift vending machines that sold bottled dirty water, and with each button labeled as a disease caused by a lack of clean drinking water.
Guerrilla marketing tactics also work in the not-for-profit sector as well.
While saddening and scary images often create an impact and communicate the mission of your brand, you can create something less in-your-face and interactive ads for the public.
The GRAMMY’s Singing Posters
It would not have been fair as it was not pulled off in reality, however, how cool it would be if it actually did?
In order to promote the nominees for its Album of the Year category, the GRAMMYS music award show created a video to show what would happen if posters from the nominated artists just begins to sign.
Moreover, it is different than a billboard ad, as when individuals walk by the paper of advertisement, they do not expect them to start moving.
It might not be a budget-friendly idea if the ads actually start to love, however, even if you could include a single moving or digital image, it would come as a surprise.
Thus, it will actually catch people off guard and therefore, get their attention.
Come up with ideas that capture the attention of your audience and things they come across every day. Making them unexpected and interactive.
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Fiji Water’s #FijiGirl
To grab the attention of your target audience in subtle ways, the strategic placement of the product is one of the tactics of guerrilla marketing.
One such example is Fiji Water’s presence at the Golden Globes of 2019.
During this, the models wore blue and carried trays of water for thirsty attendees.
It did not end there, one model even positioned herself in the background during photographs, effectively photo-bombing high-profile celebrities.
When these photos started to emerge on social media platforms, many people began to notice Cuthbert as a common denominator, dubbing here #FigiGirl.
Moreover, she became one of the highlights of the evening, winning over fans and drawing attention to the brand.
Your brand does not need to focus on the event in order to sand out.
BBC’s Dracula Billboard
Remember the ad BBC capitalized on promoting their show “Dracula”.
By the day, they designed their billboard with minimalistic red text on a white background with a few bloody stakes.
However, the billboard changed completely every time night fell.
The stakes on the board were strategically placed, in order to cast a shadow of Dracula himself.
The installation ended up being featured in Adweek and also had some viral success for its creativity and skillful implementation.
Thinking outside the box for your advertising material can help to convey the message and capture the attention of your audience
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Final Thoughts
With the help of the above examples, you might start to get the idea of guerrilla marketing and promote your brand, even if it is a small one. Do not be afraid to crowdsource your content for these campaigns.
Moreover, it is all about creative approaches to your work that helps to maintain guerrilla marketing’s budget-friendly, inbound nature.
However, remember to catch individuals where they are and place your brand there. Do not interrupt but invite them to participate in your campaign.