7 Effective Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Ideas

What comes to your mind when you read the word ‘Guerrilla’? 

For the majority, it will be a bunch of fighters in a war in a jungle. But when it comes to Guerrilla Marketing, is there any relevance apart from brands fighting against each other to dominate sales?

The term ‘Guerrilla’ has its essence felt in several marketing efforts. Its popularity grew to an extent where guerrilla marketing is now a common strategy.

So what is Guerrilla Marketing?

It is an unconventional and powerful way of marketing goods and services to customers. Due to its unique and dynamic nature, it resides in the customers’ minds longer than usual marketing techniques. 

They enable the customers to easily associate with the product, the brand, and its core values. From giants like McDonald's to the grocery shop next to your place, every business can use guerilla marketing to increase their user base. Also, this strategy is an organic growth strategy that entails the audience to connect with the brand at a personal level.

Guerrilla Marketing Ideas

With cutthroat competition among the brands these days, everyone is eyeing fresh ways to capture new markets.

Here are a few techniques that prove to give amplified results to some of the most celebrated brands in the world:

1. Ambush Marketing

Using this strategy, a brand can use an event to market themselves where they appear to be the sponsors of the event, but in reality, they are not.

Like Stella, a renowned beer brand took advantage of a US Open tennis match. By bombarding the nearest station with advertisements and giving it a tennis theme, they were the highlight of the show.

This allows the brand to remain in the peripheral vision of the audience. By this, they are creating an atmosphere where the audience knows the presence of brands without them being in their face. 

2. Experiential Marketing

Commonly known as live marketing, it is thoroughly focused on engaging the potential audience in an event. It creates memorable experiences for them in a quest to convert them into paying customers.

Concerts, flash mobs, and competitions are ideal examples where the audience interacts with a brand’s products and services. However, since they engage them in a camouflaged manner, it maintains the balance between marketing and providing a valuable experience.

Pop-up stores are a great example of this. They embrace a unique experience created by a brand where sales are not the priority.

3. Street Marketing

Public areas are a marketers' playground if street marketing is concerned. The window for experimentation is really vast. The biggest advantage is that it is an effortless way to attract customers' attention while they just walk on the road.

Synonymous with unconventional marketing, this strategy is the most economical when we take into account the cost of customer acquisition. 

McDonald’s creativity with witty billboards, street markings, pedestrian crossings are perfect examples of this strategy.

4. Grassroots Marketing

This is one of those marketing that focuses more on the emotional quotient and can build a personal connection with the customer. This strategy is unique to other strategies as this is more niche-specific. Rather than trying to increase outreach, this strategy concentrates on aggressively catering to their specific target audience.

Example: The personal care brand Mamaearth in India is an excellent illustration of emotional marketing. With every order placed, the brand plants a tree attracting a lot of environmentally conscious customers.

Therefore, grassroots marketing is also an ideal way to promote word-of-mouth marketing amongst the user base. 

5. Stealth Marketing

A lot of times we have observed products being used in a movie or a TV show without any specific mention of them. That’s when customers like us are not aware that we are being subtly targeted by the brand.

This is a great strategy for brands to create a buzz before announcing a new product. This solely depends on communicating the USPs or innovative features of a product, and not the product itself. 

If your favorite cricketer wears PUMA tees all the time, it creates an unknowing positive impact on the brand itself. And who knows, the next time you are on Amazon looking for tees, PUMA will have a soft corner. 

6. Viral Marketing

It exactly justifies the term ‘viral’ because it spreads at a very swift pace. Earlier reliant on word of mouth, viral marketing has become a major source of publicity in the marketing domain now with the advent of the internet. Users themselves spread out the content far and wide with their shares, likes, and comments.

The very famous Ice Bucket challenge from 2014. It made splashing ice-cold water a buzz amongst everyone. Not to promote any product, but to support and raise awareness about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease. This marketing idea spread on social media like wildfire.

Brands looking to create viral content, don’t worry. There is no set template or formula to generate a piece of content that can go viral. It is about being consistently creative for a substantial period. 

7. Creative Product Placement

This is a unique strategy that focuses on placing the brand’s product in such a way that it gains undue attraction and generates leads. You can compare this with the beverages kept in front of the players during their media conferences. 

The usage of Audi cars in the Iron Man trilogy had generated a huge influx of fans for the Audi brand. And effectively, a portion of these fans bought Audi cars. 

The efficacy of product placement depends on the context and the brand’s alignment with the context. Audi and its cars in the Iron Man trilogy worked well since Iron Man and his love for technology were well-known. 

Conclusion

All the Guerilla marketing ideas mentioned above can potentially be the catalyst needed for brands to increase their user base and profitability. However, there is a substantial amount of risk involved with each of these strategies. With media preying on marketing strategies in the lines of ethics and eco-friendliness, care should be taken to design and execute these strategies.