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Welcome to the The Marketing Source e-newsletter! Our goal is to provide you with real-world marketing tips.If you have any ideas for articles, please send them along.
Let Your Guerrilla Marketing Out!
You're on vacation walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City. You pause to look at the ice skaters in the Rockefeller Center rink when a cute couple approaches you and asks if you'd mind taking their photograph. No big deal, you think, they're tourists like me! While taking their picture you remark that their camera is cool. The "husband" offers "it was a wedding gift, we love it!" He then continues to rattle off some features. The exchange ends pretty quickly and you trot off to continue your vacation. Two months later you are on line researching digital cameras, you know what you want, that camera the cute couple handed you to use in NYC. GOTCHA!
What's going on? Our couple was not a couple at all. They were actors, hired by the manufacturer of the camera to get potential consumers to use their product and tell their friends about the camera. The couple's job is to create buzz and their victims don't even know what's happening.
Want another example of guerrilla marketing? Here's a fun one: You are walking through the airport. Something smells really good and you are really hungry; it sort of smells like home, not your current home, but mom home. It's cinnamon and wow, butter too! You head for the store selling the cinnamon buns and purchase a box. GOTCHA!
That smell is no accident. It's wafting your way because the marketing geniuses at the cinnamon roll company, with kiosks and stores in airports and malls, want to make you hungry and buy their cinnamon rolls.
Who came up with this stuff?
Originally coined in 1984 by Jay Conrad Levinson as a senior ad executive at a global advertising agency, the term guerilla marketing put a name to a set of tactics that creative marketers have been using for years. Guerrilla marketing includes tactics that are unconventional, non-traditional, not by the book, and extremely flexible. They can be used to help create a big splash, but some of the most effective guerilla tactics we've seen are seemingly small, simple efforts that can have a big impact.
These tactics are about being in the streets, working from the ground up, creating some "buzz". That is, guerrilla marketing's goal is to get consumers to talk about their products and do the marketing on their behalf. Cool right?
So put on your creative thinking cap and take a look at your own marketing. Use these ideas for a little inspiration, and a way to step outside the traditional box of advertising and press releases, billboards and brochures. What else can you do to have a bigger impact?
Guerrilla Advertising
Paid advertising is an obvious way to get to the consumer. When it comes to guerrilla tactics for this avenue, it's about finding unique and creative places where people might not expect to find you. Popular guerrilla-style advertising includes eye-level boards in restrooms, product placement in television programming, in movies, or on celebrities. These might seem like obvious choices for a manufacturer or retailer, but you can target these types of placement as well. Take a look at your own customers. If you have people sitting in your waiting room or coming to your offices, what's there for them to read or see about your company?
And technology has made it easier than ever to take advantage of new opportunities at a low cost. How about working with strategic partners or allies to place a link to your website on theirs? Or better yet, endorse your services or products in their store or next e- communication. Or take a cue from the big-leagues; convince a savvy friend or customer to use your products. Whether you are selling phones or diamonds, get your products in the hands of people others admire.
Size Isn't Everything
The cost of a guerrilla marketing campaign is entirely scalable - some of the best ideas cost very little. This style of marketing can be ideal for small, start-up companies that are quick, nimble, and creative. By going guerrilla, you can supplement more traditional marketing with tactics that cut through the white noise and expense to reach your target audiences.
When a local restaurant opened downtown, they used some traditional print and radio advertising. But their best move was delivering free lunch to select attorney's offices. Those attorneys loved their lunch and came back for more the next day. Only difference, they had to pay!
One Word of Warning
Sometimes guerilla marketers go over the top. Yahoo! Music was launched outside of a Madonna concert in London. The company sent a silver stretch limo with a phony "Madonna" inside to the event and staged a fake performance outside. The brand was launched all over the media the next day, but Yahoo! incurred legal penalties and fines.
The "Got Milk?" ad campaign by the California Milk Processor Board used cookie-scented strips to make people think "I want a glass of milk" in its advertising at bus waiting shelters around major cities in California. It received press coverage for its creative approach before the ads even started, but was forced to pull the campaign after consumers complained about the scented strips.
Guerrilla Strategies
Here are a few more ideas of guerrilla strategies. Use the list as a starting point to identify your best guerilla opportunities and extend your traditional marketing initiatives.
- Over-sized product replicas or creative signage
- Theme nights at popular venues
- Special events with "celebrities" (which can be well-known people in your community)
- Staged street performances
- Mass distribution of promotional products
- Freebie mass mailings
- Contests/ Sweepstakes
- Building projections
Need help finding your guerilla? The Marketing Source has tons of ideas - big and small - to help your organization make a splash.
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