What’s Guerrila Marketing?
Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy concept designed for specially small businesses to promote their products or services in an unconventional way with little budget to spend. So, if you have a small business in Bangladesh, this is perfect for you.
Being low-cost in nature the real investment in this kind of marketing is the creative, intellectual one.
In a way, guerrilla marketing works by repurposing your audience’s current environment. Evaluate it, and figure out which segments of it can be repurposed to include your brand.
Guerrilla marketing campaign is all about going to an extra mile and creating an emotional connection with the consumers.
Types of Guerrilla marketing
There are several kinds of guerrilla marketing. Namely-
- Viral or buzz
- Stealth
- Ambient
- Ambush
- Projection advertising
- Astroturfing
- Grassroots
- Wild posting
- Street
How does Guerrilla Marketing work?
When traditional marketing gets boring, you do something extra.
Good guerrilla marketing campaigns take consumers by surprise and create an emotional reaction.
This is the key. Charged emotions lead people to take action, tell their friends, and get involved in the campaign in some way. In turn, the campaign message spreads far and wide.
Ideally, these emotions will be shock, surprise, delight, curiosity, and admiration.
Amazing examples of Guerrilla Marketing to inspire your brand
1. UNICEF Sells Dirty Water
In a wealthy country, it’s easy to take for granted our abundant access to clean drinking water.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world doesn’t have this luxury.
In this guerrilla marketing example, UNICEF’s aim was to draw attention to this atrocity.
So how did they do it?
By giving the residents of New York city a taste of what this dirty, disease-ridden water is really like in the form of vending machines.
Each vending machine sold eight different flavors of diseased water: hepatitis, dysentery, malaria, cholera, typhoid, dengue, yellow fever, and salmonella.
Looks refreshing, right?
The guerrilla marketing campaign caught people’s attention. It was a stark reminder of the difficult and dangerous conditions many people must face on a daily basis around the world.
Nobody drank any water, but many people donated.
What’s more, the stunt was picked up by news channels around the world, helping to spread awareness, and increase donations.
2. McDonald’s guerilla marketing Campaign using zebra crossing
The lines painted on the ground give you a lot to play with if you have the necessary creativity. For example, McDonald’s simulates that the lines are French fries coming out of the typical package of the hamburger brand.
What is interesting about this action is that, besides of being part of a real zebra crossing, which still has the same function, it has achieved that the image is one of the company’s products. And besides, with the image type of the M in the sight of all pedestrians.
3. KitKat’s Guerrilla marketing campaign using urban benches
Following the same logic that the zebra crossings uses, the actions that guerilla marketing seeks in urban benches is to capture the client in his or her commonplace. KitKat has made famous its benches in shape of chocolate bars. The brand of sweets takes advantage of the famous design of its products, in form of bars, incorporating the famous red paper.
On their behalf, Ikea has gone a step further and has decorated all the space around a bench in the middle of the street with cushions, coffee tables, and rugs, promoting the comfort of their products. This example shows one of the great possibilities of guerilla marketing in the middle of the street, and it brings their products closer to the users. In this case not only the user is surprised to see their regular space customized, but also, they use specific products of the brand.
Guerrilla Marketing Pros and Cons
Guerrilla marketing has some advantages and disadvantages. Take both into consideration before choosing to move forward with a campaign.
Pros of Guerrilla Marketing
- Cheap to execute: Whether using a simple stencil or a giant sticker, guerrilla marketing tends to be much cheaper than classic advertising. So, this sort of campaign works pretty good for small businesses.
- Allows for creative thinking: With guerrilla marketing, imagination is more important than budget.
- Grows with word-of-mouth: Guerrilla marketing relies heavily on word-of-mouth marketing, considered by many one of the most powerful weapons in a marketer’s arsenal. There’s nothing better than getting people to talk about your campaign on their own accord.
- Publicity can snowball: Some especially noteworthy or unique guerrilla marketing campaigns gets picked up by local (and even national) news sources, resulting in a publicity powerhouse affect that marketers drool over.
Cons of Guerrilla Marketing
- Mysterious messages can be misunderstood. There’s often an air of mystery to guerrilla marketing campaigns, and while it’s this sense of mystery that can often propel a campaign’s attention and notice, the lack of clarity can also skew audience interpretation.
- Authority intervention. Some forms of guerrilla marketing, such as non-permissioned street graffiti, can result in tension with authorities.
- Unpredicted obstacles. Many guerrilla marketing tactics are susceptible to bad weather, thrown timing, and other small instances that could easily threaten to undermine an entire campaign.
- Potential backlash. Savvy audiences may call out businesses who are implementing guerrilla marketing campaigns they don’t approve of. This is especially true of undercover marketing campaigns – if you’re caught, prepare to face the wrath.
There’s no doubt that guerrilla marketing can provide fantastic results in Bangladesh while allowing marketers to exercise their creativity in a unique way, but it will only work for businesses who aren’t afraid of risk-taking.
Need assistance? You can contact us. We will gladly help you to run a Guerrilla Marketing Campaign in Bangladesh.
