What comes to your mind when you hear the word “guerrilla”? I know the first thing that you will think of is a gorilla, a giant big animal, if you ever see it, you will get stunned or shocked.
And here is what catches your attention to the word guerrilla and if I place the word marketing next to it, it will make you wonder about Guerrilla marketing.
To know more about Guerrilla marketing, just follow us until the end. In this article, we will take you on a journey of ideas for Guerrilla marketing.
What is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional marketing strategy that involves unusual techniques to drive publicity and boost your brand awareness and is generally designed to shock, wow, and surprise a potential customer’s senses to develop publicity.
Guerrilla marketing, First popularised in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson, who forged the term in his book where he writes about easy and affordable strategies to make large profits.
It boosts brand recognition with audiences without interfering with them, making it a very unorthodox kind of marketing.
You don’t have to invest a lot of money in Guerrilla marketing but what your real investment in it is your imagination and creativity to make an everlasting impact on people’s minds.
A well-planned guerrilla marketing campaign can catch the audience’s attention straight into their mind and drive people to talk about it on social media, to their friends, families, and colleagues which increases your brand exposure
Know you are well versed with the term guerrilla marketing, let’s dive deep into it to know the different types of guerrilla marketing and understand more about guerrilla marketing companies and their ideas.
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Types of Guerrilla Marketing
Before moving to the different ideas and examples of guerilla marketing, let’s understand about different types of Guerrilla Marketing you can use to build your audience. Some of the types are:-
Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing
- Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing involves adding something extraordinary to pre-existing urban surroundings, like placing something removable onto a statue or setting up temporary work of art on sidewalks and lanes.
Indoor Guerrilla Marketing
- Indoor guerrilla marketing is identical to outdoor guerrilla marketing. The main difference between these is that you’re doing this marketing in different indoor areas like college buildings, train stations, etc.
Event Ambush Guerrilla Marketing
- Ambush marketing seeks to grab the benefit of an event – like a concert or carnival- to promote its own product or service in an innovative way, without any consent from the event sponsors.
Experiential Guerrilla Marketing
- This marketing approach involves building creative campaigns that require the active participation of customers which means that the public gets a chance to interact or engage with your brand.
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Elements of Guerrilla Marketing
Like any other marketing tactic, guerrilla marketing has some key elements that one must know before planning any guerrilla marketing campaign. These are:-
1. Unique:- Create your own kind of content that stands out from others. Come up with something unique, creative, and unusual type of content and present it in such a way that your intended audience would understand and appreciate it.
2. Cost advantages:- Make use of low-cost unconventional tools that are mostly intended to create something which is more shareable among peers. Considering its emotional impact on users and the brand awareness it creates, Guerilla marketing ideas are highly cost effective compared to other means.
3. Engaging :- Guerilla marketing heavily depends on the creativity of the team that has been assigned to do it. Make sure to create content that energizes individuals to get engaged and interact with its emotional aura. Reaching your audience to take part effectively in your campaign is important for its success.
4. Clarity:- Your promotional message should be inspiring, clear, funny, etc. It should be designed in such a way that it conveys a clear message that can catch your audience’s attention immediately. Make sure that your message reaches the audience in one go.
5. Timing:- Timing is the most important key element as you need to amaze your target audience at the perfect time. Examine and launch your campaign when your audience least expects it.
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15 Best Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Start-ups
Guerrilla marketing strategies are more useful than traditional marketing strategies. Here are the 15 best creative guerrilla marketing ideas for start-ups that you can try and take your business to the next level.
1. Billboard Advertising
When people see this billboard advertising, it helps them to remember it easily.
Billboard advertising must use creative copy and the purpose of such advertising is to help people recall a brand when they enter the purchase funnel.
2. Word-of-mouth
Word of Mouth is the best marketing that happens when people talk about the product or service with their friends, family, or colleagues.
This marketing is however intended to create an opinion in the user’s mind by other customers who review the product and their experience.
3. Create Graffiti
Graffiti marketing uses city walls in a creative way to draw people’s attention by writing or painting some creative drawing or message on the walls that draws attention to your brand.
You can implement this in places that are often visited by people.
4. Creative sculpture
Placing creative sculpture at public places can also help grab human attention, people often click photographs at public places that can be used as a great idea to get benefit from it as people share and appreciate images and sculptures with creative designs. This idea can help you to bring more customers to your business.
5. Treasure hunts
Another guerrilla marketing tactic that possesses active engagement of the audience is treasure hunt. You can make customized and high-quality treasure hunts that include posting online hints to hidden items scattered over a single or few cities.
Winners are awarded rewards or hints for the next level of the treasure hunt which will involve the energetic participation of people.
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6. QR Codes
Technology has made communication more rapid with the help of smartphones. There are many different ways that you can use QR Codes to get eyeballs on your brand.
For eg – Using a QR code that can link back directly to your website or anything that you are selling. You need to mark the prominent location where there’s high foot traffic and use such QR Codes with a message that pursues them to open the message.
7. Stickers and Posters
If you know who your target audience is, you can build a sticker or poster and deliver proper messaging that relates to that customer. By doing this, you can capture their attention.
All you have to do is make sure that there’s some sort of brand association in your message and send it to your new or existing customers at a time when engagement is high.
8. Unexpected Flash mobs
A Flash mob is a group of people who gather unexpectedly at a public place to perform for the surrounding crowd. Performance can be in any form, dance, song, drama, etc.
It is not necessary that you perform it yourself, you can engage local school or college students to perform the flash mob. You can use various props to engage audiences.
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9. Merchandise
Merchandise are not so popular yet effective. Merchandise stays for a longer duration with a consumer. Make sure to use merchandise that helps fulfill your brand image and connect with a consumer.
Key chains, customized bags, stickers, t-shirts, caps, are popular merchandise that many brands use to grow brand awareness.
10. Vending Machines and Food Trucks
Advertising your products utilizing vending machines or food trucks could be a great way to reach a large audience. If you own an eatery business, you can place vending machines in famous spots in your area or have food trucks. It can help you to attract more consumers.
11. Give Away Samples
Everybody loves getting free products, right? Then why not use these guerrilla marketing tactics to expand your business offline. Giving free samples is a perfect way of getting your products into the hands of customers.
People adore free goodies because when they receive free samples, they feel like spending their money on the products they once received as samples.
12. Floating Barges
Some out of the box You can set up a sales stand at any ongoing event or fair and interact with your customers directly and distribute them free samples or start approaching local event organizers and offer to distribute your products as samples to their visitors.
13. Street Art
Street marketing needs imagination and creativity. In this, people contribute their time, energy, and innovative thinking to a commercial initiative. Street advertising was first mentioned in Jay Conrad Levinson’s 1984 book, Guerrilla Marketing.
Street marketing has progressed from the fundamental use of advertising in the city to the development of innovative methods. Brand managers, graphic designers, and creation architects will work together to plan and assemble the appropriate promotions.
14. Influencers
Influencer marketing is the promotion of a company or service by someone who is already successful on social media in a certain area and engaged with followers.
More than 69.5 percent of marketers in the United States use this technique to advertise their business. Influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the most efficient methods of attracting customers and clients.
15. Social buzz
“Social Buzz marketing” is a kind of marketing that focuses on generating interest in a product or service through social media and word-of-mouth.
In this strategy, they communicate with their target market using social media, influencer marketing, microblogging sites, peer reviews, and so on. Its aim is to convince people to become loyal customers.
It provides the marketer with the option to communicate directly with customers. It will raise product or service awareness and increase revenue.
Other Ideas for Guerilla Marketing
Cartoons
Shopping Malls
Underground metros
Sky Marketing
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11 Best Examples of Guerrilla Marketing
Let’s walk through some Guerrilla Marketing campaigns companies followed and gained huge success.
1. Ikea Campaign
Ikea, the biggest furniture company in the world, observed a traffic jam outside its Hyderabad store on the first day of its launch.
The brand used a few guerrillas marketing examples to spread about its launch and gained a lot of attention and many people came to experience it.
They set empty boxes on the conveyor belt at the airport in Hyderabad. These boxes had a written message letting people know their store was open.
They gave bus shelters a makeover with their products such as sofas, cushions, and curtains. People noticed and visited these stops and clicked pictures. It was a huge victory for Ikea.
2. Colgate Campaign
Another great example that grabs the eyes of the audience on social media recently was from Colgate company which manufactures toothpaste. They made a Popsicle stick that
resembles a toothbrush inside a chocolate ice cream bar to remind whoever enjoys this ice cream bar, must not forget to brush their teeth to get rid of cavities. They used a great and creative guerrilla marketing tactic to engrave their product.
3. McDonald's Campaign
Almost every one of us is aware of the brand, McDonald’s.
McDonald’s used an innovative guerrilla marketing idea on the streets. They painted their famous French fries on a street that simulates the lines are fries coming out of the packet of the hamburger brand.
Not only is this observable on busy streets, but it’s also eye-catching and photographable from the building’s overhead.
Other Examples of Guerrilla Marketing
King Kong 3D
Unicef
Samsung
Duracell
Netflix
Kit-Kat
Coco-cola
Lipton
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Conclusion :-
Brand marketing campaigns become successful when you convey an ordinary product or an ordinary service in an extraordinary and unusual and in the most innovative way that engages the extreme emotion of customers.
When it comes to building your brand, you need to think out-of-the-box ideas. We’re living in a world where there are thousands of pieces of content that are being put out to the world every minute of every single day. You need to be creative in order to stand out in the industry.
It is very important for your brand to be constantly innovating the content and how you deliver that content to your audience that way your audience remains engaged on a day-to-day basis
So, I want to challenge all of you to start thinking out-of-the-box ideas and come up with ways that you can leverage guerrilla marketing to unlock immense growth for your brand. If you have any further guerilla marketing ideas or examples, please share them with us.
