Introduction to Guerilla Marketing
The concept of Guerilla Marketing was first introduced by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984. In his book named “ Guerilla Marketing”, author Levinson stated the purpose of Guerilla Marketing. The main purpose of this type of marketing is to create a murmur in the market about a certain product, service or brand in order to raise awareness. This marketing increases the chances that customers will purchase the products or services.
Guerilla Marketing is a strategy in marketing and advertising where a certain set of actions are carried out to launch a marketing campaign at a reasonable cost. It relies majorly on innovative and creative thinking. There is an “element of surprise” in this type of marketing campaign. Some of the elements of this sort of marketing are:
- Cost- Effective Approach
- Interactive
- Provocativeness
- Innovative and Creative
- Clever placement
Some of the examples of Guerilla Marketing are:
If you carefully notice all the advertisement, we can conclude that none of them are mainstream. All advertisements are unique and they have a creative representation. There positioning is contemporary and all of the advertisements have a surprising factor.
Features of Guerilla Marketing:
Creativity and Innovation
Marketing in today’s world has become a piece of art. Creativity in marketing projects is very common. Marketers create marketing campaigns that stand out. Guerilla Marketing is such a marketing approach that is unique and stands out. All of the above illustrated marketing campaigns are creative in their own way.
Emotional Remark
Guerilla marketing has a direct impact on the sentiments of people. The purpose of such marketing is to catch the nerve of consumer. The design of advertisement or marketing campaign must have an emotional touch. Marketing approach with emotion lasts long among the consumers.
Optimization of resources
Guerilla marketing campaigns are characterized to be cost effective. Marketers and promoters are always trying to get the best from their campaign, best utilizing the available resources. Guerilla Marketing uses the available resources in the most efficient way.
No Traditional Medium Required
This type of marketing doesn’t require traditional mediums like TV, Radio and Newspaper for advertisement. Anything, any space can be a medium to convey the marketing message in an effective way. Some of the creative ways for Guerilla marketing are: Graffiti, Stickers, Undercover Marketing, Flash Mobs, Publicity Stunts, Urban Environment.
Direct impact on customers
Guerilla marketing is done in a way where people get involved with the campaign. Campaigns are made creative so that it reaches the target audience without much effort. For instance, a billboard or interactive screen doesn’t require anyone to convey its message.
Message Diffusion
Guerilla Marketing is cost-effective. This means, consumers voluntarily diffuse the essence of advertising around their environment as such campaigns are surprising and interesting. No one knows how some advertising gets viral. The reason is they are made and positioned to be viral.
Benefits of Guerilla Marketing
Every strategy comes with some positives and negatives so this strategy also needs to be analyzed carefully before using. Some of the benefits of such marketing are:
- Employs word of mouth
Guerilla marketing hugely depends on word of mouth publicity which is one of the most strong influencing factors. Creative and innovative marketing promotes the product or brands by getting people to talk about their product/ campaign on their own.
- Increases the product/brand awareness
Few noteworthy or unique campaigns reflect the image of the company. Such a creative marketing approach leads the public towards the product or brand, providing extra promotion with more benefit.
- Cost effective
Guerilla marketing requires less money as it utilizes the available resources effectively. This marketing just requires an idea that is different and makes a difference.
- Focuses on B2C approach
The ultimate aim of such marketing is making the consumer aware of what is expected. Hence, businesses target such marketing campaigns directly to their consumers i.e. B2C. Transitional marketing approaches sometimes alienate the product from consumers. To communicate the desired emotions to their customers, companies or businesses targets the consumers directly via guerilla marketing.
- Associates a brand with authenticity
Almost all multi billionaire brands are dumping huge money in publicity. Guerilla marketing helps them to get closer to people’s hearts. There is real involvement of consumers with the marketing campaigns.
This is a simple hoarding with no logo and direct branding, yet, people can associate this advertisement with its brand. Such creative guerilla marketing promotes brands with authenticity.
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