Guerrilla marketers rely on word-of-mouth or viral marketing to distribute their overt advertisements, enabling them to attract a larger crowd for cheap.
Guerrilla marketing relies on a relationship with customers’ feelings. This strategy is not for all products and services; instead, it is marketing to millennial customers more prone to react favorably to “edgier” things.
Streets, concerts, public parks, athletic events, festivals, beaches, and retail malls are a few popular spaces where guerilla marketing exists.
Picking the appropriate time and location to launch a program to prevent legal concerns is a crucial component of guerilla marketing.
Guerrilla marketing, which aims to engage customers with a company, can take place indoors, outdoors, as an “event ambush,” or as an immersive campaign.
Types of Guerrilla Marketing
1. Ambush Marketing
A proper ambush is a sudden attack by someone hiding out and waiting to strike. Ambush marketing means using “ambush” to outmaneuver rivals by snatching their attention.
It is one of the essential weapons in brand battles because it allows a brand to acquire greater exposure and profit from an audience at the expense of its rivals.
- Nike employed ambush marketing to defeat Adidas at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The game’s official sponsor was Adidas, although Nike promoted its goods through TV ads and well-known football players.
- The official advertising sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup was Coca-Cola, but Pepsi ambushed its promotion by recruiting 19 well-known athletes.
2. Buzz Marketing
Buzz advertising strategies aim to maximize a product or campaign’s capacity for word-of-mouth advertising.
It means promoting in a compelling way to grab consumers’ eyes and get them talking about it. As a result, the target market is more responsive, and the product gains more attention.
Let’s talk about EA Games launching Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 game.
The game revealed the Jesus shot, in which Tiger Woods would wade into the sea to hit the stroke, which served as the game’s fascinating opening move.
It aimed to draw attention to the fact that players were permitted to make shots while standing on water hazards in the game.
This type of guerrilla marketing took place to generate interest in the game.
3. Ambient Marketing
It describes the marketing of goods and services using various environmental factors, creative concepts, and unconventional settings.
They effectively utilize the environment as a result.
To speak to people’s sentiments by making it hard for them to ignore it, Frontline, a company that makes medications for dogs to reduce flea and tick infestations, posted an innovative image of a dog-insect illusion.
The BIC lawn mowing razor promotion in Japan also had a profound effect on people, prompting them to consider whether or not it was indeed feasible to shear a lawn with a razor using BIC’s razor.
4. Grassroots Marketing
Marketing techniques are known as “grassroots marketing” aim to reach a specific demographic to spread a brand’s idea to a broader audience and increase its awareness in the industry.
An instance of how grassroots marketing starts a domino effect is as follows:
Grassroots marketing helped spread knowledge of the ALS disease and motivated people to make donations for the cause.
Here, participants were instructed to splash a bucket of ice water on their heads and then push others to do the same.
The goal was to mobilize people to join the movement and take direct action.
5. Astroturfing
One of the more aggressive guerilla marketing strategies is astroturfing, which has the potential danger of harming the business if customers see it as being incredibly fake.
It gets its name from the word “astroturf,” which is another synonym for “artificial grass.”
It entails fabricating publicity or producing a false impression of support via false testimonials, endorsements, and other evidence.
Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Startups
1. Snap. Inc
Consider that you are entering the high-tech hardware industry.
How can you draw interest to your goods through marketing?
The parent firm of Snapchat, Snap Inc., faced a similar challenge and came up with a straightforward yet inventive solution: market its service through vending machines.
Snapbots, a type of mobile dispensing device, started to show up in unexpected places all over the world.
Customers could buy the $130 camcorder sunglasses known as Spectacles for one day.
Additionally, the devices enable customers to virtual test sunglasses before finalizing a commitment.
Snap made an interactive map that disclosed the locations of the vending machines 24 hours in advance so that people would know where they would be.
2. PourMasters Bar Service
Pour Masters Bar Service hosts a monthly free block festival for the general public at Parkside Lane with the support of other event industry suppliers.
Everything goes for promotional purposes. They cook and provide an open bar, music, and fun activities.
The use of social media for event promotion and specific hashtags are provided for each event. For the most shares and likes, prizes are given out.
When they come, their emails are gathered and uploaded to the roster of prospective customers.
Following six years, they average about 100 attendees at every event to promote their businesses.
Finally, PMBS had their yearly Yacht Rock party, where they all simulated sailing on a big boat and enjoyed specialty drinks, live music, delicious cuisine, and casino games.
3. Netflix
Netflix started a fairly intriguing guerilla marketing effort to advertise the third season of Narcos’s popular TV show.
They decided to reproduce the LA drug environment from the mid-1990s when the Cali cartel dominated the narcotics industry.
In nightclub restrooms in Miami, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, they placed translucent stickers depicting rolled-up dollar bills covered in coke debris.
Most cocaine use in these cities in the 1990s occurred in nightclubs, as you would know if you have seen the series.
4. GreenPal
At the time, GreenPal had about 120,000 users, so they sought to find a scaleable strategy for approaching them.
Following a creative session, the business came up with the concept of using customers’ pets to access their souls.
When a household registers for GreenPal’s service, the company asks if they have pets and, if so, what their names are.
They do this to ensure the lawn merchants know the dangers of invading the grass.
GreenPal determined they could deliver a personalized present to the customers’ pets that was dedicated to them using this information about their clients.
Clients were particularly impressed by this; the business received handwritten messages of gratitude, videos of customers’ dogs biting the bone GreenPal supplied, and thank-you tweets. For the effort and money spent, it was well worth it.
5. Upwork
Upwork’s “Hey World” advertising campaign from 2018 jokingly provided guidance to time- and resource-constrained businesses and workaholic celebrities.
This multimillion-dollar advertising effort aimed to draw more clients to Chicago, New York, and San Francisco.
It entailed placing signs in locations the chosen demographic frequents frequently and related videos, radio ads, and television takeovers.
While Elon Musk and NASA may not have used Upwork to find their expertise, this guerilla marketing strategy undoubtedly caught the eye of many, including companies that desperately need qualified personnel.
