Guerrilla Marketing: Thinking outside the box 

The other night, when I was travelling back home, a catchy billboard caught my attention. A plain black billboard with some captions – glowing in the darkness and a red car. It was literally a car that was about to jump off that billboard. That sight compelled me to read the caption on the billboard. By now, after visualizing this billboard, you must want to have a look of the same. So, here you go. This is the one I was talking about till now. 

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After having a look don’t you think, how cool is that! This kind of thing would definitely grasp anybody’s attention. Throughout my journey, I was wondering how easily this brand captured attention of so many. Moving forward, whenever I or anyone in my circle would like to buy a car, this name would strike me immediately. Being an academician, it runs in my system to dig deeper. What marketing is it? Curiosity drove me to this question and here are the answers that I managed to find. 

What is Guerilla Marketing?  

In the 21st century, the major problems faced by today’s businesses and marketers is the shortening of attention span of your target audience. Also, there are more than 500 brands coming up on their feeds daily. Then how would you mark your presence and conquer that “SPECIAL” place in their minds. The answer to this is Guerilla marketing.  

Now, what is so different about this type of marketing? The regular marketing practices like radio and television commercials, billboards and direct mail campaigns never tried anything out of the box. On the contrary, Guerilla marketing can also be better understood as Attention marketing, as it grabs the customers’ attention instantly. This style of marketing is about going out of the regular path. In simple terms, it’s a marketing strategy that requires less investment but makes a huge impact. 

What are the benefits of Guerilla marketing? 

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• Creative thinking: It gives you the opportunity to be creative and think out of the box. 
• You need not spend a fortune for advertising your products with this type of marketing. Square Yards – a name in the field of real estate has gained overnight popularity by using some catchy phrases, and sometimes that’s all you need.  
• Creating a BUZZ – Whether a small upcoming home-grown business or a big company operating at a GRAND level, all of them want to be the Talk of the town. “Folks! think of something that could go viral,” these must be the words of all the top marketing officials of various companies. So, creating a so-called Buzz is attained through this type of marketing only.   

Here are some real-world examples of Guerilla marketing 

Construction business: 

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I bet, these kinds of catchy lines, would definitely make the heads spin. Don’t you second this. We are not done yet with the positive sides of this marketing form. Let’s walk down the lane further. 

Food delivery business 

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Like Zomato – a food delivery company’s tweet, where they stated, “Sometimes you must eat home cooked meals,” created a BIG buzz, and it was everywhere. You must be wondering why they said something that impact their own field of business, but this is all worth when you get more customers. Not to forget the chain of other big names who followed the same trend. 

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YouTube India, Amazon Prime and others also joined the campaign, which in turn along with them benefitted Zomato too. 

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What can we learn from Guerilla marketing? 

To all the learners, who wants to take a dive into or make a career in marketing, this type of marketing is crucial for you to understand. This is because, in the contemporary times, a advertisement or the marketing strategy must carry the “CONTAGIOUS EFFECT.” Something worth sharing, worth laughing, and worthy to talk about.  

Imagine your colleague told you about a funny advertisement during your TEA break. Again, I would bet anything on it that you cannot forget about something which you have shared a laugh with your friend. On the contrary, you can easily forget about the pamphlet which was there inside your morning newspaper. In a nutshell, it is really easy and tough at the same time to mark a deeper impact on your audience with Guerilla marketing. 

To learn more about such interesting and insightful marketing techniques, enroll for an MBA in marketing on Online Manipal, where you will not only study the academics but also gain valuable practical knowledge as well. 

Disclaimer:  This blog contains only the perspective of the author and is a complete unsponsored post and the sole purpose of this blog is to impart knowledge and not to publicize any mentioned brands.