What is Guerrilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is a marketing strategy that applies unconventional low-cost strategies to promote products, services and ideas.  These advertising strategies may involve sticker bombing, flash mobs, and extensively promoting a brand in order to reach the target market. The namesake of guerrilla marketing can be traced back to guerrilla warfare in which unusual tactics were used to accomplish goals and objectives.  This advertising strategy may be successful because it is easily understood, easily implemented, and inexpensive.

Why Use Guerrilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing relies on time, frequency, energy, and imagination.  Oftentimes, heavy budgets may not be part of guerrilla marketing campaigns.  It involves gathering customers’ attention in unusual ways in highly competitive environments. These types of campaigns are usually very interactive in nature and target their customers in unexpected styles.

How It Works

A major objective of guerrilla marketing is to create a “buzz” in the market through unique, eye-catching, thought-provoking and engaging advertisements.  These initiatives may transform into viral, or frequent, cycles of marketing campaigns. Guerrilla marketing may involve public relations (PR) stunts, street giveaways, dropping off pamphlets, and mock stalls.  The adoption of emerging technologies may affect guerrilla marketing as well.  Digital technologies may be employed extensively to reach target consumers.  Text messages spaced at regular intervals can catch customers’ attention.  Frequent Facebook posts and Twitter tweets may also reach consumers.

Guerrilla marketing focuses more on the use of cost-effective and creative strategies of marketing rather than the utilization of burgeoning budgets.  Its basic requisite is “creativity on time” rather than “creativity on money.”  Profits on sales may provide a good measure of the success of a marketing campaign.  Repeat customers may assist companies by extolling their products to their families and friends, a form of word-of-mouth marketing.

The Impact of Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing strategies may be referred to as “guerrilla marketing weapons.” Guerrilla marketing may encourage companies to “be creative” and may motivate them to “be unconventional” in their products promotion strategies.  Guerrilla marketers employ public relations stunts extensively.  Marketers may also analyze the promotional strategies of other companies in order to improve their own.

Small businesses or SMEs (small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs) may benefit from guerrilla marketing.  Small size may be an advantage for them, as their proximity to their end-user customers may allow them to capture their consumers’ needs and demands.

Guerrilla marketing is based on the following principles:

•     Specially tailored for SMEs
•     Focus on human psychology rather than judgement and guesswork
•     The creation of a competitive edge via product specialization
•     More focus on business cooperation with other companies rather than competition
•     Adoption and usage of new technologies for strategy execution
•     Customizing market campaigns for target consumer groups
•     Understanding the needs of customers rather than trying to persuade them to buy
•     Frequent cycles of campaign to target more and more customers