Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla marketing is the unique way of throwing all conventional marketing techniques out the window for an approach that is more emotionally driven and easier to do on a budget. Put more simply, guerilla marketing is an out-of-the-box way of reaching out and snagging the attention of your target market. To give an example of real-world guerilla marketing, let’s look at the Pepsi Challenge. While Coca Cola was busy paying exorbitant amounts for lavish billboards thirty second Super Bowl ads, Pepsi paid a few college kids about $10 an hour to go to festivals, fairs and other locations with high congregations of people to pitch their product. The campaign was a success and it followed the guerilla marketing formula to a T. It was inexpensive, emotionally driven, it gave away free product and it tossed conventional advertising right on its head.

Guerilla Marketing Online

The Pepsi Challenge example was used to further your frame of mind when understanding guerilla marketing, but it doesn’t really cover how this marketing technique can be used online. If we’re going by our criteria, we will need to find new and innovative online marketing ideas that don’t cost a lot of money, that allow us to connect with our audience in entirely new ways and that give out free samples of our products or services. That’s no easy order; but here are a few examples that might spark some ideas to help you find guerilla marketing success.

Website/Blog Marketing

It doesn’t cost much to start a website or blog. In fact, you can develop a blog for free if you choose the Blogspot.com or WordPress.com platforms. If you want control over all of your content and you would feel more comfortable hosting your web presence on your own, it’s recommended that you pay for web hosting. Still, many hosting packages cost less than $10 for an entire year. As far as guerilla marketing is concerned, starting a website and an informative blog is one of the best ways to reach out to your target group in a whole new way for less.

Email Marketing

Many email marketing platforms are inexpensive or free, at least at the basic level. Combine your email marketing abilities with your website and blog and you will have an excellent guerilla marketing system. Take Josh Spaulding, for example. This affiliate marketer created a single landing page where he advertised his $5 formula. The formula was intended to teach marketers how to set up multiple Google Adsense sites for the purpose of earning an online income. The system could be easily replicated, hence that $5/day could easily turn into $10, $50 or hundreds of dollars a day.

Josh took his website, added email marketing and gave away a free ebook teaching his system. He was able to capture the email addresses of hungry marketers everywhere and each email he sent out gave him another opportunity to sell more affiliate products.

Free Sample Or Gift

The Pepsi Challenge allowed participants to the guerilla marketing campaign try their product for free. In effect, the campaign gave out gallons and gallons of free Pepsi. You might be wondering how you can give away your product to someone online, especially if yours is one of a physical nature.

You don’t have to give away one of your products, per se, in order for your guerilla marketing campaign to be effective. Spaulding merely gave away a free report, some marketers give away secrets in video form and some release a podcast featuring interviews with top industry dignitaries. The idea is to offer value and that value can take any form. As long as your target audience comes away feeling as though the interaction with your guerilla marketing campaign was worthwhile, you’ll have reached your goal.

Viral Video Marketing

Most mobile devices these days come complete with video creation capabilities that rival some of the best video cameras. So gather your mobile device or camera, head down to the street corner and tell your team to start singing acapella. The idea is to do it badly so that you can dirty looks and no tips from everyone who passes by. Then tell the camera about your new product and tell them, “Please buy it, because we sure can’t sing for money,” or something to that effect. The idea is meant to be humorous and if it’s well done, it could help your message spread virally.

Groups/Webinars and Web Cam Sessions

Google+ has hangouts, Skype has camming capabilities and LinkedIn has Groups. These are excellent platforms for getting up close and personal with your target market. Just like the Pepsi Challenge marketers met with real life people, shook their hands, blindfolded them and took them through the tasting challenge, you can also connect with your market on a personal level by using technology instead of real life interaction.

Invite your audience for a specialized session and make sure there’s something in it for them. Let them know all that they will gain by being in attendance and really bring the goods the moment your session goes live. The idea is to get people eventually talking about you and your guerilla marketing methods. That’s when you’ll know that your guerrilla marketing campaign has been a resounding success.

A webinar is another great way to capture the attention of your target group, and you can combine all of the above guerilla marketing techniques to help promote it. You can set up a website and blog, an email marketing campaign that builds hype around the event and viral video to help promote it. You can then offer a free gift or report to all participants who show up.

You now have several ideas to assist you with understanding guerilla marketing. As long as your idea is unique, it doesn’t cost that much money and it connects with your target market personally, you will have succeeded at your guerilla marketing goals. Keep developing your ideas and, who knows, you might be able to teach others’ your guerilla ways for an even more effective campaign sometime down the line.