Guerrilla marketing is not a new term – it was coined in the 1980s by business writer and marketer Jay Conrad Levinson – but many businesses are still unaware of its potential.
Marketing is certainly guilty of using its fair share of jargon and buzzwords, and guerrilla marketing is often thought of as one of them. But it shouldn’t be dismissed by small businesses wanting to increase their marketing activity – it can be hugely effective if used well, and is often simpler than it might appear.
At its most basic level, guerrilla marketing refers to unconventional marketing methods that are designed to grab attention. It is often done on a small marketing budget in an unexpected place, and it involves imaginative or creative methods that aim to shock or surprise people.
“It’s about creating an emotional response and capturing people’s imagination in a way that’s not standard above-the-line advertising like TV or print ads,” says Thomas Brown, director of strategy and marketing at the Chartered Institute of Marketing. “It’s about striking a chord with your target audience in a way that’s out of the ordinary and doesn’t cost that much.”
The method emerged as customers became increasingly jaded by traditional print, radio or TV ad campaigns. Ad agencies started to try and surprise people with the unexpected, in an attempt to avoid getting lost in the marketing din.
The concept of guerrilla marketing has certainly produced some interesting ideas. In April 2015 Iglo Foods, for instance – owner of the Birds Eye brand – wanted to highlight that UK consumers were throwing away £700-worth of food every year. Brown says: “To highlight that they could have done a TV ad, but instead they took £700 in notes and coins and froze it into the shape of a giant fish. They put the sculpture on a bridge in central London, and as it melted people could take the money. It was a smart, clever way of capturing people’s attention.”
However, some experts say that too much emphasis has been placed on the ‘shock and awe’ element, and that guerrilla marketing’s success doesn’t depend on simply surprising people with a gimmicky flash mob or mural in the centre of town, for instance.
Instead, it needs to combine steady, low-level marketing efforts that chip away at consumer consciousness, with the more exciting elements.
Bryony Thomas, who runs agency Watertight Marketing and has written a book of the same name, says: “People get excited by guerrilla marketing, but they miss that the catchy one-off needs to be underpinned with bedding in for the long term, doing low level effective stuff.”
She adds that this is the same way that guerrilla warfare, which gave the method its name, operates. “They do low-level things for years whilst also occasionally doing shock and awe stuff.”
Combining consistent, low level marketing with the more unexpected and fun elements is the most effective approach, but Thomas warns against taking the term ‘guerrilla’ too seriously.
“It can be a phenomenally unhelpful term from a mind-set perspective,” she says. “It’s dehumanising, and suggests that potential buyers are the enemy – that they should be tricked and captured. People who use terms like that – or targeting, or lead capture – there’s something that happens that stops them thinking about the human being at the other end.”
But even with this caveat, it can still be helpful to take the basic principles from guerrilla marketing and use them carefully. The idea of bedding in for the long term, and sticking to a baseline activity plan of techniques that are done at regular intervals, can be very useful.
Good examples of ‘bedding in’ involve making the most of every opportunity, however small. For instance, Thomas says, businesses can make more of little things such as the pages customers arrive at after they have downloaded something from your website. “Make use of the ‘thank you’ page where they land – for example send them an invite to come to a webinar. It’s all about thinking about every touch point – what can I do here that will take this person on to the next step?”
For the bigger, more exciting stuff, businesses can be much more imaginative. Thomas cites an example of a former company she worked for which sold IT systems to director-level people. The marketing team found out the addresses of the directors making the decision on an important deal, and bought billboard advertising space aimed squarely at them, with billboards targeting them by name on their commute from home to the office.
Not only this, but the team hired advertisement vans which were parked outside their office building, and also inserted leaflets in the top ten copies of the newspaper sold in their local newsagents, ensuring the leaflets would be seen when the directors went into buy their paper that morning. Guerrilla marketing can be fairly assertive in nature, but this is often necessary for companies striving to stand out.
For small businesses with key customers that they want to target, Thomas says that unusual direct mail can work very well. Personalised videos are one obvious example, but she also cites the example of one ad agency who sent carrier pigeons to their top targets. “It’s stuff you can’t ignore,” she says.
Brown says there are several other things to bear in mind when thinking of a guerrilla marketing idea.
Firstly, he says businesses need to stay focused on who their consumer is: “Don’t get caught up in an idea for an idea’s sake. We can all think of a quirky idea that’s a bit edgy, but there’s a danger you will drift away from your target audience.”
The next thing to bear in mind is that there needs to be a connection between the guerrilla activity and the rest of your offer, such as your website and what comes up when someone Googles you. If there is no mention of the fun marketing someone has seen while out and about, there’s a chance you will lose them.
Finally, run your idea past a couple of friendly customers and colleagues to make sure it’s not too out-there. As Brown says: “Do a sanity check – make sure it doesn’t just sound great to the marketing team.”
Guerrilla marketing involves work and discipline, but if you have a great idea that is fully focused on your core customer, the effort should be worth it.
This advertisement feature is paid for and produced to a brief agreed with MOO, sponsor of the Guardian Small Business Network’s Branding hub.
