You may not have heard the word of guerilla marketing but if you step into the marketing world, you will find it as a popular term. This world is advancing and you need to know each advertising aspect that can help you to boost your sales and grow your business.
After reading this article thoroughly, you will be able to create a great guerilla marketing campaign and promote your brands in a much better way.
Let’s initiate with some basics so that you can have a clear idea about these terms.
Guerilla Marketing explained
A Guerilla Marketing campaign is an effective marketing strategy that promotes a brand using surprise interactions towards its consumers.
Differs from all other types of traditional marketing because it mainly focuses and relies on personal interactions.
It targets small promoters groups. These groups of promoters have the responsibility to spread news or advertisements in a particular country or location.
What is an Example of Guerilla Marketing?
Although there are plenty of successful examples of guerilla marketing, we will discuss the well known, The Blair Witch Project. It was an American psychological horror film created in 1999 and was totally promoted using guerilla marketing campaign strategies.
The film was created by five graduate students from the University of Central Florida Film Program, and these students created this film with a minimal budget of only $300,000.
Firstly they launched a campaign to spread rumours about the signs and visibility of a terrible, horrific, unrealistic, Blair Witch. Secondly, they developed a website to promote their project and started to urge people towards their woods-based fantasy world story.
After that, they started to post with the eye-catching slogan as “In October 1994, three students went missing while shooting a documentary film in the jungle near Burkittsville, Maryland. A year later, the footage of them was found.”
This tagline was enough to attract a lot of audiences and huge attention in the entertainment world. The film was aired on Bravo in April 1998.
The creators of Bravo shows asked the film creators to create their own independent website totally dedicated to the Blair Witch Project because an immense number of people are commenting on Bravo’s website discussion forums.
Therefore, this marketing strategy allowed them to collect a total box office collection of jaw-dropping $248,639,099 from a film created on a minor budget of $300,000.
Major Types of Strategies Used
As guerilla marketing is designed to attract a wide range of people, there are a few different strategies that can help you in all types of business aspects.
You should choose the one that suits your business in the best way and can get you desired results. The list may include:
- Street Marketing Strategy
- Promotional Stickers Strategy
- Reverse Graffiti Strategy
- Stealth Marketing Strategy
Street Marketing Strategy:
Product sampling is a great strategy for street guerilla also can contribute to a buzz campaign.
As its name implies, street marketing strategy aims to be implemented on busy streets and public places to attract people.
Various well-known brands such as McDonald’s, Puma, Nike, Domino’s, and many others use street marketing strategy.
Promotional Stickers Strategy:
A personalized and creative promotional sticker will help a brand to give a boost to its awareness among the consumers.
Public transportation like buses, trains, cars, and such types of vehicles is the best place for promotional stickers.
Reverse Graffiti Strategy:
It is the practice of putting images or animation on the walls after removing the dirt from the surface for a short period of time. Therefore Nike, Domino’s Pizza, and Puma are some of the major brands that promote their products this way.
Stealth Marketing Strategy:
This is one of the most used marketing strategies and it requires a huge amount of creativity. Certainly, it is a creative way to promote a company’s product.
Pros of Guerilla Marketing:
Firstly, the Guerilla campaign has a great reach and covers a wide range of audiences.
It fuels creativity more than money.
A successful guerilla campaign can build a long-lasting reputation for your brand.
Secondly, attractive and creative campaigns can resonate in the city.
This type of marketing will not only allow you to connect to your customers but will also provide opportunities to make relations with other businesses as well.
Cons of Guerilla Marketing:
This type of marketing campaign may take a bit longer to attract peoples’ attention.
If your campaign is not creative or fails to attract people, running the campaign can be frustrating.
There is no 100% guarantee that the campaign will go viral.
You may go into legal trouble only if you place stickers at a restricted location.
More facts about Guerrilla Marketing
Guerilla Marketing was initially introduced in the 1980s by Jay Conrad Levinson and he used the term “Guerrilla Marketing” as the title of his book. Published in 1984, this book was all about this new marketing strategy and its aspects.
The actual thinking about this book was to develop a new marketing strategy campaign that can cause an impact on the people and they can remember the brand or product for a relatively long span of time.
There are two sides when it comes to defining guerilla marketing. One is the founding meaning from the 80s which defines it as an original physical marketing often cost-effective.
The second one evolved in the 90s and it refers to physical marketing activities that are executed without city or building owner permissions, which can be considered illegal.
Guerilla marketing works well for high priced products using big billboards and interesting designs but can be effective for low-cost products as well such as coffee using only print advertising and great positioning.