The term “Guerrilla Marketing” is used to define a type of unconventional marketing strategies and activities that leverage low-cost channels and tools to maximize results, especially in the ratio of expenses incurred to visibility achieved.
Guerrilla Marketing
As mentioned above, Guerrilla Marketing is a type of Marketing strategies that we can define as out of the ordinary and that aim to maximise results with few economic resources. Guerrilla Marketing uses messages and content that aim to impress the public and pay attention to the message being conveyed
History and birth of Guerrilla Marketing
Born in the 1980s, almost opposing more traditional advertising forms, it was theorised by Jay Conrad Levinson starting from an important need: to organise successful marketing activities and initiatives while having little budget.
To understand its essence well, it is, perhaps necessary, to refer precisely to that era. Those were the years of the real boom in commercial advertising: TV, print media, billboards, and radio represented the most widely used media, and the investments to be incurred for a campaign were by no means small for a company.
Jay Conrad Levinson’s idea was to create, offbeat campaigns that, with little budget, could be fixated the Brand in the consumer’s head.
Guerrilla marketing, if you will, was thus born somewhat against the trend: creativity, small budgets at hand, but above all the idea of focusing on micro-targets and real niches of potential consumers.
The goal is to strengthen brand awareness and generate attention and stimulate word of mouth.
Levinson defined some key principles of Guerrilla Marketing:
- these are strategies that do not take into account large budgets;
- investments are mainly about time, energy and creativity;
- the method of measuring the success of a strategy is based on profit rather than sales and relationships established.
Guerrilla marketing: types and tactics.
In order to maximise the results of Guerrilla Marketing campaigns, are campaign can be used alone or integrated with others.
These are some types of Guerrilla marketing tactics that are often used
- Viral Marketing is a form of Guerrilla Marketing that prompts users to spread information about a product service you want to promote.
- Environmental Marketing we refer to the placement of advertisements in unconventional places where we would never expect to find one.
- Experiential Marketing is a Guerrilla Marketing technique by which an experience is created between the brand and consumers. These experiences are mostly realistic serve to intrigue and engage the consumer.
- Astroturfing marketing: is type of Guerrilla Marketing in some ways “hidden”. Astroturfing is a Marketing strategy that aims to make a message, a commercial or an idea seem completely natural by trying to hide the sponsors and brands that promoted it, thus making it pass as a bottom-up, spontaneous idea.
- Street Marketing: is a marketing strategy that uses different channels than traditional ads such as TV, radio and others. As the word implies street marketing campaigns are literally developed on busy streets or near large shopping malls.
Some examples of Guerrilla Marketing
Nike Guerrilla Marketing
Among the most emblematic cases of Guerrilla Marketing campaigns by Major Brands are Nike’s initiatives. Among the most emblematic cases of Guerrilla Marketing by Nike are the installations of benches without seats in major metropolises with its own logo and the word RUN. An initiative to do physical activity in line with the corporate vision.
McDonald’s Guerrilla Marketing
McDonald’s is another brand that has made Guerrilla Marketing strategies into its Marketing activities. Among the most famous installations are there are the crosswalks ‘in potato chip version. that overflow from the McDonald’s bag.
