Guerilla Marketing: a Grassroots Approach to Marketing

May 5, 2009, 2:20 PM

Everyone loves to believe that guerilla marketing – a grassroots approach to getting attention for your product or company – is the great panacea...the one idea that will work even in a down economy. Sure, it can be cheaper than paid advertising and garner more media attention than traditional send-out-a-press-release PR methods, but what if it backfires?

There’s a fine line between doing something inventive (and in line with your company’s mission and values) to gain media exposure and doing something down right crazy (and possibly politically dangerous) just to call attention to your firm!

Clever word-of-mouth and viral marketing campaigns can deliver low-cost, high yield results, as can experiential campaigns (where the target audience actually uses their senses to “experience” your product.) For example:

  • What works: a pie company that creates a “scratch-n-sniff” direct mail card so recipients can “experience” what a warm apple pie, fresh from the oven, can do to enhance an everyday meal.
  • What’s Dangerous to Try: Having 15 people dressed in apple suits standing in front of the TV station’s offices offering to “commit suicide” just to be in the ACME Pie Company’s famous apple strudel.

At Burgess Advertising & Marketing, we talk to clients every day who want more bang for their marketing buck. And we work with these same companies to develop marketing campaigns that move the needle and rise about the clutter within the marketplace – without destroying the corporate image many of these revered firms have worked so hard to attain.

If done well, and with an appropriate nod to protecting the integrity of your brand, there are plenty of measurable, quantifiable guerrilla PR tactics that can and will generate greater ROI than traditional marketing options. But as with any marketing effort, think it through before you act.

1 Comment

August 29, 2011 1:06 PM
Orange County Grassroots Marketing says:
Finally someone willing to tell the truth of marketing. It can back fire. A lot of time when my clients hears about guerrilla marketing they start coming up with crazy ideal, even though they hired me to do the marketing for them. The main focus is not to grab all the attention but rather make sure the message you are trying to spread is the correct one. Not too many people understand that.

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