What is Guerrilla Marketing? Risks & Rewards in Guerrilla Marketing

2 Minutes Summary

It is a type of marketing strategy in which a customer unfailingly falls into our market share. It attracts customers through surprises or unplanned interactions. Guerrilla marketing has many types like Ambient Marketing, Ambush Marketing, Experiential marketing, Viral Marketing. In 1984, the term guerrilla marketing was introduced by Leo Burnett’s creative director Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing. Some of the advantages are Awareness of the brand, eradication of competition, Diversification of ways of advertising, and many more. Also, some of the disadvantages are Misunderstanding of the campaign, Campaign Visibility, Time Management, and many more. Full Detail in Blog.

WHAT IS GUERRILLA MARKETING?

RISKS & REWARDS IN GUERRILLA MARKETING
Have you ever wondered why FMCG’s like Mcdonalds and Burger King have to capture huge shares in the market in very little time? That’s because they use “Guerrilla Marketing” Strategies.

You often notice Advertisements in unusual places where you don’t expect the ad to be placed. That’s how Guerrilla Marketing works.

Have you ever wondered why these ads are being placed at these places? Everything in the world happens for a reason and that’s why the placement of these ads has a purpose to define.

This particular Technique for Placing the ads is called Guerrilla Marketing.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

WHAT IS GUERRILLA MARKETING?

Guerrilla Marketing is an upcoming super powerful customer attraction method. It is a type of marketing strategy in which a customer unfailingly falls into our market share. It attracts customers through surprises or unplanned interactions.

Guerrilla marketing’s main focus is to take the customer’s attention by giving them surprises to make big brand impressions about the product or service. It mainly triggers customer attraction by connecting them emotionally to the product.

Guerrilla marketing has many types like Ambient Marketing, Ambush Marketing, Experiential marketing, Viral Marketing

EVOLUTION OF GUERRILLA MARKETING

How did Guerrilla Marketing come into existence? How did it evolve? The term “Guerrilla marketing” comes from the term Guerrilla Warfare, which employs atypical or noticeable tactics to achieve the desired goal. In 1984, the term guerrilla marketing was introduced by Leo Burnett’s creative director Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing. The term “Guerrilla Marketing” itself was from the inspiration of guerrilla warfare which was an unconventional war method that involved using different techniques from usual and small tactic strategies used by armed civilians. The Guerrilla Warfare was the most prominent war technique which was used by the people of Vietnam during the America-Vietnam War (1955-1975) It involves a high level of imagination, visualization, and energy to execute the Guerrilla marketing campaign.

WHY GUERRILLA MARKETING?

It is the best strategy for the promotion of products of traditional business. The traditional shopkeepers can easily attract customers to their businesses while sitting at one place.

Nowadays, customer focus has been shifted from offline purchases to online purchases, so business owners must know that when and from where they can attract customers towards their business.

The usage of advertising media channels like a printed pamphlet, posters, hoardings has become obsolete nowadays as customers are no more interested in seeing such things because it doesn’t tell the quality of product to the customer.

Rather, a customer in today’s time decides to buy a product after getting enough positive reviews about the product.

TYPES OF GUERRILLA MARKETING

Let us understand the various types of Guerrilla Marketing strategies that are used nowadays:

A) Ambush Marketing
Ambush Marketing is a form of Guerrilla marketing, used by the companies to encash benefits upon the awareness, attention, goodwill, from other big organizations.

Let us understand this through an example: Suppose in a football event, the title sponsor is OPPO mobile, but in the same event another mobile company like Nokia put his posters everywhere wherever there is an advertisement of oppo.

So, in this case, Nokia can fade the impression of Oppo from the minds of people and use Oppo’s brand image for the promotion of Nokia’s products without the knowledge of Oppo.

B) Experiential marketing
Experiential marketing is a type of Guerrilla Marketing Technique which means before selling a product to the customer, we are giving them the user experience of that product.

It means that the customer is provided with the experience of the working of the product or service before they buy the product.

Let’s understand this through an example- Ceragem is a company that sells body massage machines, so whenever a person goes into their offline store they provide them free machine body massage for 1 or 2 months.

So by this strategy, they are selling experiences to their customers who as a result becomes their future potential buyer for those body massage machines.

C) Viral Marketing
Viral marketing means marketing through the extreme emotional engagement of the customer. It means providing something unusual or delightful to the customer in the form of a product or service.

The customer feels delighted or good to share about the product with the other people which also increases the reputation of the person sharing the product.

Let us understand this concept through an example- There is a restaurant in Delhi named Ganesh Restaurant. It is also like other traditional restaurants but it has a huge footfall all the time as compared to its competitors.

The reason for this is their unique way of frying their food items. They do not use any utensils for frying, instead, they put their hand in hot boiling oil and then take out their food item from it and then serve it to the customer.

So their customers love to share this thing with other people and it becomes viral.

D) Ambient Marketing
Ambient marketing means surprising the customers through the placement of ads. It means that we design our advertising campaign according to the ambience of the place where our target audience is present.

For example – Coca Cola places its banners and stickers of normal coke on stairs and diet coke on the escalators of the metro stations. Using this technique, they are fully utilizing the ambience of the place for the promotion of their products.

IMPLEMENTATION IN DIGITAL MARKETING
As we have understood about the various types of Guerrilla marketing, now let’s understand how it works in the internet world.

Step 1: The Main Question
The main focused question here should be ‘How will my potential and prospective customers get aware of my Guerrilla marketing campaign?? , How will I delight them and make them aware of the product? ’.

These questions will help you to lay the foundation of your Guerrilla marketing campaign.

This will form the pillars of all the approaches that you need to follow in your Guerrilla marketing campaign and will make sure that the same constant message is spread throughout the entire campaign.

Mixed messages, not only confuses the customer but also wastes a lot of time and money.

Step 2: The Goals
Guerrilla marketing is very adventurous but it needs to be outcome-driven. It means you need to be specific towards what you are trying to achieve with the Guerrilla marketing campaign.

The business goals must fit the overall Guerrilla marketing campaign and the campaign also must reflect the business goals.

You straightaway need to know what you want to get or where you want to be through the campaign.

Throughout the Guerrilla marketing campaign, you need to track, analyze, evaluate, measure and manage the campaign.

Step 3: Analysis Of The Situation
Another major step of Guerrilla marketing is understanding the environment in which you are doing the marketing campaign.

The new and changing trends of your marketplace, the interests of your customers and also the different political and technological changes that all will have an impact on your digital marketing campaign.

As Guerrilla marketing suggests, it needs to get consumer’s attention towards the campaign and what is happening in the campaign.

We need to understand that what will surprise our target customers. Never skip important steps, always conduct thorough research on the current market trends and situation, and also understand what your competitors are doing.

Step 4: Defining The Consumer
As the analysis of the situation is being done, we now have to define our target audience i.e. the people whom we want to target with our Guerrilla marketing campaign.

By identification of the current and target market, you can easily get to know about what all processes you need to follow during the campaign.

This will help you to formulate a winning strategy including locations to activate the campaign and also do a creative design to capture the maximum target customer market.

Therefore, identifying the big and niche market is a great strength to your Guerrilla Marketing campaign.

Step 5: Campaign Positioning
Positioning is another most important pillar of Guerrilla marketing. It means that how clearly you show your brand and clarify its information in the minds of the customers.

It is very difficult to manage the position of your brand in the minds of the consumer as every consumer thinks differently about the product and the company.

However, if you have already done enough research and analyzed the campaign according to the customer’s point of view, then you can easily position your campaign in the market.

Step 6: Execution Of The Campaign
Now it’s time for the execution of the plan as during planning we do not know how will the customers exactly perceive the product and the campaign.

During this stage, we need to know what particular downfalls may occur or what could be the risks involved during this campaign and also try to evaluate all the methods to minimize these risks.

There are many other aspects that an individual must know during the whole execution like the feelings of the customers, would it harm their feelings or affect their beliefs, would it violate any laws or rules of the government, etc.

Step 7: Measuring The Results
As we can see up till now, all of our campaigns are dependent on our pre-planned research and analysis but after the execution, we came to know about the real scenario about how our target customers have perceived our product and campaign.

So it is very important during the Guerrilla marketing campaign to collect all the data after the campaign and identify what type of customers were actively participating during the campaign.

It also helps to analyze the number of consumers reached as well as new customers acquired after the campaign.

Step 8: Investing For Future
The Guerrilla marketing campaigns are future investments for your product and brand. Therefore it continuously needs to spread the message about your brand to the consumers and make them identify and aware of your brand timely.

These campaigns lay the foundation and help us understand the hoe to create a plan, execute it and measure.

The learnings in Guerrilla marketing is growing every day, and the more you do the better you get to know more about this wonderful marketing strategy

Advantage & Disadvantage of Guerrilla Marketing

Every marketing strategy comes with certain risks and rewards, so now let’s understand the various risks and rewards in Guerrilla Marketing strategies. Due to the increasing popularity of Guerrilla marketing over the years, most small and major companies practice this marketing strategy with a small investment and have a big impact on the market. Because it is a very unique strategy, the successful execution of it will surely make your brand successful. But Guerrilla marketing is inherently risky business, so let’s quickly get through disadvantage of Guerrilla marketing to get them out of the way.

Disadvantages of Guerrilla Marketing

Risk 1: Misunderstanding Of The Campaign
In Guerrilla marketing, the biggest worry is a misunderstanding of the promotion or the campaign.

During advertising, the total focus should not only on being unique but you also have to do a lot of real struggle for ensuring that your brand and vision are perceived in the right context by the consumer.

Risk 2: Campaign Visibility
The next major risk is the visibility of your campaign. It means that the visibility of your campaign should match with your brand and product.

If the campaign does not relate to the brand or your product, then there is a 100% chance of losing your potential as well as new customers.

This is the worst feeling as all things were going correctly but a small hurdle ruined the whole campaign. Uniqueness is great but there is a thin line difference between uniqueness and obscurity if you do not know the proper way of spreading your message across.

Risk 3: Time Management
Money is not a big issue in the Guerrilla marketing campaign but time and unpredictability are the major destroyers for this campaign if not properly managed.

A lot of time is required to do all the research, analysis, targeting and execution, measurement of results during and after the Guerrilla marketing campaign. If the proper amount of time is not given on any of the above-stated campaign aspects, then there is a high chance of failure of the campaign.

Now let’s see the various advantage of Guerrilla marketing campaign.

Advantage of Guerrilla Marketing 

Reward 1: Awareness Of Your Brand
Proper execution of the Guerrilla marketing campaign will convert the risk of misunderstanding into the reward of awareness. And this awareness can be of any high level. A good campaign can create a phenomenal impact on people and if it is unique enough, it can reach up to global awareness.

Reward 2: Eradication Of Competition
Guerrilla marketing is the best way for any business to eradicate the competitor or kick them out of the market. For global brands, it is not a big reward but for small businesses, it is a great helper for killing the competition.
You may notice your competitor also actively trying to engage in Guerrilla marketing but making a good Guerrilla marketing campaign is not a cup of tea for everyone.
But if your campaign is properly executed then its popularity will surely increase more as compared to the competitor and it may place your brand at a higher position in the minds of the consumer as compared to the competition and industry.

Reward 3: Diversification Of Ways Of Advertising
It is already pre-assumed by a person that Guerrilla marketing provides huge benefits. But it is very hard to find out how much is available to you. The world is a white sheet on which you can paint your ideas of the campaign, depending on whether you want to step over the grey areas or Guerrilla marketing ……

Guerrilla marketing is a massive part of advertising that is not captured or practised by many companies, but those who know the true value of Guerrilla marketing can capture the whole market through applying its techniques with very little or penny costs.

Reward 4: Inexpensive Costs
Guerrilla marketing is an inexpensive way of marketing, so it can be easily tried by every business.

When the economy is going through the declining stage, Guerrilla marketing acts as the best solution for companies to get a competitive edge over the other companies. During the declining phase of the economy, companies try their best to cut the costs due to which they are not able to execute the conventional marketing techniques and thus they opt for Guerrilla marketing because of its cheap costs, and also less capital is required for the investment in this marketing strategy.

Also, the focus of the marketing is shifting from investing in money required for the marketing process to investing in energy, time and creativity. The successful implementation of this campaign helps the companies to reach their goals for profits and growth with a very minimum marketing budget.

According to Guerrilla marketing guru Jay Levinson, the Guerrilla marketing strategy has its main focus on the follow up of the consumer rather than ignoring the customers after they have purchased your product. Customers’ follow up is the most crucial thing of Guerrilla marketing as the cost of acquiring a new customer is seven times higher than the costs involved in retaining the old customer.

During high competition and tough economy, your major focus should be on building good relationships with the customer rather than just sales and should aim individual people rather than acquiring groups. This helps in generating customer loyalty and also increases recurring sales, high purchase size and spread of positive word of mouth and also referrals.

The use of telephones, emails for improving relationships with the customers is the most inexpensive way of marketing, (for example, you wish your customer on their birthdays by calling them or sending them digital gift cards through the company’s website on your customer’s mails, then the customer will develop a family feeling towards your brand and this will result in better loyalty of your customer towards your brand).

Now you have all the knowledge required for starting up a Guerrilla marketing campaign, so buckle up to give a great start to your business.

I hope you have understood the concept of Guerrilla Marketing. For any further query, you can submit your comment below and we will be there to answer your query.

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