Why You Should Promote Your Brand with Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

Promoting a business can be challenging, especially when you’re just starting out. You need to think of innovative ways of brand promotion that will make your business popular.

Your promotion strategy should create a buzz for your business and effectively persuade your target consumers to engage. Guerrilla marketing can be a great addition to your existing digital marketing strategy for promoting your business or brand.

What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing refers to a low-cost advertisement strategy where businesses use unconventional tactics to promote their products or services on a small budget.

It involves high creativity, imagination and energy focused on grabbing the attention of the public in more personal and memorable ways.  

^{A Nikon Guerilla Marketing Campaign.}

4 Reasons to Apply Guerrilla Marketing in Your Business

People are enticed with newer and more creative marketing techniques that catch their attention. And to capture people’s full attention, it is important to ensure that effective communication between your advertisement and the consumer exists.

Effective communication and involvement of your target consumers increases the connection with people that could ultimately win over the interest of the larger public. Your guerrilla marketing should therefore deliver a clear, exciting message to consumers or else it might not be effective. 

This promotion method is still one of the most relevant in marketing today. The big question however is: why should business owners incorporate it into their marketing strategy?  

Here are some reasons why...

1. It works outside mainstream marketing tactics

Guerrilla marketing is about making your ads stand out among others. It’s good to keep doing the usual, but nowadays consumers want to see new things. If your strategy is unique compared to your competitors’, there will be greater possibility that your product will gain more attention.  

Below are some examples of creative guerilla marketing advertisements:

Guerilla marketing is not a common tactic brands use. Unlike conventional advertising where the approach is more straightforward, guerilla marketing is about persuading your consumers to buy or engage with your product without making them feel like you are manipulating them.

Being creative is what guerilla marketing needs, while in traditional marketing you need money to implement it successfully. Businesses with small budgets like this strategy because it focuses on bridging the gap between customers, while traditional methods often count on merely increasing profits.  

2. It gets your business easily noticed

With guerilla marketing, there is a higher chance you will change the way people think of your product. As you promote with this marketing method, people will be interested in your business, even just by observing. When you surprise consumers, it increases their attention on what you are promoting.  

There are four basic types of guerrilla marketing you can use to get noticed:

• Outdoor Guerrilla Marketing – This is the most common type of guerilla advertising you might see in the streets. It’s commonly cited as Street Marketing. The kinds of outdoor guerilla marketing you might want to try here in promoting your business include viral marketing, ambient marketing, presence marketing, grassroots marketing, wild postings, tissue-pack advertisings, undercover or buzz marketing, astroturfing, alternative marketing, and experiential marketing.

• Indoor Guerrilla Marketing - As the name suggests, this type of advertising is done inside a building, but is still accessible to the public. For example, school campuses, malls, subways, and parks where you may need permission to run the ad and ensure security protocols.

• Event Ambush Guerrilla Marketing - This is a great technique to use when you want to promote an album, newest single or book. It is often referred to as a guerrilla gig in the U.K. and as a guerrilla concert in South Korea. Recently, a K-pop boy group, Born to Beat, held a surprise guerilla concert on the streets of Sinchon where they performed to promote their new music. It creates buzz that would definitely excite fans and there would be a huge chance non-fans present would also turn into supporters of the performers and businesses involved.

• Experiential guerrilla Marketing - This is a combination of the three types of Guerilla marketing. Its success depends on the people since it requires participation and interaction from the audiences.  

3. It’s unconventional, creative and low cost

Guerilla marketing can make consumers laugh or even cry, and touch their hearts. It’s a persuasive strategy that relies on the emotional appeal creative ads have. Aside from this, guerilla marketing is cheaper than traditional marketing because, as already mentioned, you mostly need extra creativity not extra money.

When conceptualizing and planning your new marketing strategy, make sure you don’t forget your business’ logo. It should be consistent, matched with the outdoor signage that you have. The style and sizes of the fonts you have put on your business logo should be exact representations so people don’t get confused about the correct look and name of your brand or business.  

If the layout, name of your new guerilla advertisement and brand logo is consistent, don’t worry too much about irregular sizes of letters in ad content. Even if set on “similar” fonts (e.g., font size 14), oftentimes not all letters appear the same sizes as evident in the illustration below:  

4. It builds a lasting impression

Guerrilla marketing often leads to a word-of-mouth kind of advertising that cements your brand perception in the minds of people. Besides, people are easily persuaded by the testimonies of peers and other people who engage with your ad. Through this marketing strategy you can also attract public attention more than simply advertising on television, especially if your ad goes viral on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

But, just like any other advertisement, such as ads on television or radio, guerilla marketing also has its drawbacks.

Some Guerilla Marketing Drawbacks

Despite the freedom of conceptualizing ads, you must be aware of the goals you want to implement. Your end goal is to attract your audience and not to annoy them. If your ads make the customer pissed off with the message that you’re trying to sell, you’ll end up losing customers rather than gaining them.

Engaging people with this marketing strategy is key. If they like and take a photo with your ad, for example, it will most likely be posted on the internet. Social networking sites have a large scope, and because of the curiosity people have, they will eventually pay a visit to your business website.  

If you are ready to use this marketing strategy for your business, make sure you research and secure the best place to put up your advertisements. Keep in mind that the main goal is to make people on the street stop upon seeing your ads. Be as creative as possible so it won’t get ignored.