Are you looking for a creative way to beat down the competition? Take a term that comes from a type of combat that ambushes the opponent, and then turn it on its face to shock and awe your audience. Today, we’re discussing guerrilla marketing, a classic concept perfectly suited for the digital age.
How Does Guerrilla Marketing Work?
Guerrilla marketing works by taking the familiar, whether it’s an image, a premise, or an idea, and adding an unexpected component that causes the audience to sit up and take notice. It differs from being surrealist or intentionally vague, though you can incorporate those elements. This type of advertising creatively repurposes existing content in a way that targets a very specific audience segment and subverts their expectations.
By taking a subversive, innovative approach, smaller companies with meager budgets are able to compete with major players by making a visual impact. This is the kind of content that creates a buzz. When done right, it could make your marketing campaign go viral. In fact, it’s ideal for social media engagement.
Guerrilla marketing is also very budget friendly because you’re simply taking the known and adding the element of surprise. This type of creative, innovative, and unique advertising ensures you stand out. It changes the perception of your brand and elevates it.
Guerrilla marketing is:
- The flash mob that puts a smile on your face
- The clever play on familiar concepts
- The unexpected photo-bomb
- The unscripted surprise interview
Notable guerrilla marketing campaigns include the time GoldToe dressed famous New York statues like the Wall Street bull in their underwear or Chipotle transforming popular menu items into traditional baby shower fare. Burrito baby swaddle, anyone?
5 Low-Cost Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Can Put Into Practice Today!
“Crash” an Event
Several notable viral campaigns have used this method. For example, Fiji water placed models with trays of their brand near the red carpet at the Oscars one year, offering the product to celebrities, and people lined up watching them arrive. They also managed to position one model to photo-bomb celebrities during interviews.
Show up at an event – the bigger, the better – wearing your brand or offering samples. Try to appear in the background of any photos or video if there is press present.
Get the Public Involved
People love to be part of the action, especially if they think it will net them their 15 minutes of fame. There are unlimited ways that you can raise brand awareness through live events on public streets. The previously mentioned flash mobs consistently invite engagement, which a local dance school in one city effectively used to boost membership.
Bounty dreamed up another example of guerrilla marketing. Bounty paper towels placed a 10-foot long popsicle in the middle of a well-trafficked area of a major city and invited passers by to use their product to soak it up as it melted. Even if you pull such a stunt in a smaller town, it’s probably going to make the news.
You can even take this online and turn it into a viral event, like organizing an online treasure hunt and asking participants to post photos of themselves finding items from a list around their town. Offer prizes or freebies to the winners.
Give Your Audience Incentive
People also like to be helpful. Dominoes Pizza capitalized on this by creating an ad campaign called “Paving for Pizza” that addressed two things people hate: bad roads and messed up pizzas. The campaign was simple, involving a map of the US highlighting areas were roads were notoriously bad and blaming the existence of excessive potholes for sliding cheese syndrome. The headline stated that they wouldn’t cease until America’s roadways were fixed.
Infiltrate Social Media
What would you do if you were browsing Tinder and saw a profile of a celebrity? That’s just what 20th Century Fox did when they made a very funny profile for Deadpool to promote its release. People who swiped right were redirected to a link to purchase tickets.
This type of guerrilla marketing is a social media ambush. It’s a free, funny, and unexpected way to get noticed and promote your brand, and the uses are limited only by the amount of creativity and time you’re willing to invest.
Create an Air of Mystery
Back in the early eighties, I was asked by a friend for innovative ways to promote his new club. He was having a grand opening, and he really wanted it to be a success. I decided to leverage FOMO (fear of missing out) by making the opening seem like an underground event that was by invitation only for VIPs.
They intentionally kept the whole event mysterious, with no signs, balloons outside, or advertising. Instead, they sent invitations to thousands in his target demographic, wording them to make recipients feel important and special, as if the evening wouldn’t be complete without them. By 10pm, it was standing room only with a large line of people waiting to get in. However, the people in line were mostly friends, and all of those who had their invite were pulled out of the line and ushered in ahead of them with great fanfare.
Here are Some Ideas
How can you out this into play? Tag your logo in strategic places all over targeted cities or neighborhoods. Put up fliers or post a billboard with wording like “Do you know [product name or person]?” or insinuating that they should know your brand if they were cool. You can further leverage this concept by sharing the photos across social media, making the brand appear as a mystery that needs solving.
Pro tip: Don’t be a try hard. Authenticity still matters. You’ll never succeed if you go into this with the intent to go viral. Such things happen organically. This is an opportunity to flex your creative muscle and truly engage your audience by engaging in outside-the-box thinking. Dare to be different, clever, and unique.
Final Thoughts
In a world where everyone and their mother is engaged in digital marketing, you have to stand out. Guerrilla marketing is an advertising style that raises brand awareness by taking an unconventional approach.
Are you looking for new ways to subvert audience expectations while promoting your branding? Talk to a branding specialist from Level343. We’ll work with you to take your digital marketing game to a whole new level.
