Many companies, both large and small, use the guerrilla marketing strategy: inexpensive and above all based on their teams’ creativity.
Sommary
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Definition
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising technique that aims to highlight products or services in an unconventional way and with little budget. This form of inbound marketing was initially designed for small businesses with limited marketing budgets. Of course, we know of large companies that use this strategy with, sometimes, much larger budgets. We have told you about the #REDOffreMoiUniPhone by RED, SFR campaign that was all the rage at the beginning of 2021 for almost no budget.
Activities in public places initially characterized guerrilla marketing actions. We have all already received a flyer in our hands as we walked down a shopping street. Today, these strategies extend to digital marketing and have notably taken an essential place on social networks. Guerrilla marketing’s primary objective is to strongly impact minds to ensure a maximum diffusion rate via word of mouth and sharing of information of the campaign. The emotional appeal of a guerrilla marketing strategy is therefore essential.
The biggest dangers of guerrilla marketing are:
- the legal repercussions that these actions can have on the companies that undertake them
- potential misunderstanding of activities that may have a detrimental effect on the brand
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The different types of guerrilla marketing
There are different types of guerrilla marketing. We list and explain some of them below:
- Viral marketing is characterized by word of mouth made online, often through social networks, and allowing a brand to make the buzz.
- Stealth marketing is characterized by its discretion, hence its name. People (prospects, consumers, passers-by) are unconsciously part of a guerrilla marketing campaign.
- Ambient marketing uses the environment of the product, service, brand, or company as a marketing medium.
- Ambush marketing aims to take advantage of the notoriety of a third party (often a brand with more visibility, or influencers, for example) to promote its own products or services. These campaigns are rarely the result of partnerships but rather a derivative use of another brand for its benefits.
- Street marketing are street campaigns that play with elements present in public spaces, passers-by, and so on.
- Guerrilla projections are visual projections, usually on large buildings, on a highly visible face to ensure that many passers-by and motorists see the campaign. However, beware of the legal consequences!
- Experiential marketing aims to brand through experience. In several articles, we have already mentioned the importance of the customer experience via pop-ups and immersive and interactive experiences.
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Examples of guerrilla marketing
Here are some examples of guerrilla marketing:
- We have already told you about the #REDDonneMoiUniPhone campaign in this article. This hashtag was all the rage on Twitter (trendy for several days) and made the RED by SFR brand talked about during the first weekend of 2021.
- The collaboration between Nutuu.fr (mutuality) and mybetterself (influential on Instagram) was launched in December 2020 with the will to raise awareness about menstrual precariousness. In the description of her post, the influencer specifies that each sharing of a story will lead to the donation of hygienic protection to associations dealing with the distribution of this protection. Result: the post was shared en masse on the Instagram network, and the action had to be stopped given the number of shares.
- Two awareness-raising campaigns have been branded in recent years: the guerrilla marketing actions launched by UNICEF to raise public awareness of the difficulty of access to drinking water in Africa. The first initiative is Dirty Water Vending Machine, and the second, more recent initiative is entitled How far would you walk to find clean drinking water? Both videos are available above and speak for themselves.
Posted in Marketing.
