Guerrilla marketing may be scrappy, surprising, and fast, but it requires careful thought and planning. Successful guerilla marketing tactics “strike” your audience—not randomly or whimsically, but strategically—so as to make a high impact. In this post we’ll go over the six key elements of guerrilla marketing strategies. Considering these elements will help you to come up with tactics that are creative and unconventional enough to be considered “guerrilla”, yet still in line with your your business’s brand and goals.
1. Your Core Marketing Message
What makes your business stand out? What is a key differentiating factor for your business? Guerrilla marketing tactics quickly and effectively capture the interest of your audience, so it is crucial to identify what it is that you want to convey to them once you have their attention.
A general feature or benefit is not going to cut it. Guerrilla marketing strategies need a core message that stands out. To come up with your business’s core marketing message, here are some helpful questions to ask yourself.
- What do you do that is different?
- What does everyone else in your industry do, that you don’t?
- What do you know that your competitors don’t?
- What misconceptions are there about your product?
- Are there any industry standards or “rules” that you break?
- What is the core need of your audience that you want to appeal to? Time, health, money, ease of access?
- Are you the fastest or the first with something?
- Is there something you always do?
2. Your Brand Essence
In addition to conveying a core message, guerrilla marketing strategies should also center around revealing the essence of your brand. What is the main quality that defines your business? Are you edgy? Extremely thorough? Reliable? Gentle?
Your brand essence is typically derived from your company’s mission and values. It is also closely related to your core marketing message. The way you convey your core message—the colors, fonts, actions, and methods you use—will help to reveal your brand essence; and the essence you reveal will help set your core message apart.
3. Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience is a fundamental requirement for all marketing activities, but it is especially important for guerrilla strategies. Given the risky nature of guerrilla marketing, you can’t afford to overlook any details; and given the fast, one-time nature of guerrilla marketing, you have to connect with your audience as much as possible.
First of all, which audience are you targeting? Is it your general audience or a niche market? Once you have identified the group you are focusing on, it’s time to do a deeper dive. Some questions to ask yourself to ensure you really know your audience include:
- Who: Who do they spend their time with? Who do they live with? Who will they be with when you have their attention?
- What: What are their problems, pains, or pet peeves? What do they like? What are their hobbies?
- Where: Where do they spend their time? Where do they work? Were will they be when they see, read, view, or engage with your campaign? Where are you performing this campaign? Are you guerrilla marketing online? Outside? Inside? In the city or suburbs?
- When: What time of day is the best for resonating with them? When do their pain points occur? When will they see your marketing campaign?
- Why: Why should they care about you? Why might they go to one of your competitors?
- How: How do they think? How do they get around?
Knowing how your target audience behaves will help you to predict how they will react to, engage with, and perceive your guerrilla marketing activities, so put some good thought into this when forming your guerrilla marketing strategy.
4. The Impact
Another important consideration for forming guerrilla marketing strategies is the type of impact you want to have on your audience.
- Is it to feel a particular emotion?
- If so, do you want to shock them with a statistic? Tickle their funny bone? Make them feel empowered?
- Is it to get more familiar with your brand?
- Is it to learn about another aspect of your business?
- Is it to become aware of a new product or service?
Asking the questions above will help you to ensure that you’re not just grabbing their attention or resonating with your audience, but that you’re connecting with them in a powerful way that will stick and inspire action.
5. The Action
Guerrilla marketing tactics package up your core message and brand essence, and convey them in a way that resonates with your audience and has an impact—but for what reason? Guerrilla marketing strategies aren’t complete without an ultimate action. Determine the action that you want the combined elements above to inspire your audience to take, and cater your tactics to that action.
The ultimate action you want your audience to take could be:
- Call you
- Sign up to be contacted by you
- Learn more
- Go to your website
- Stop by your store
- Buy your product
- Sign up for a program
- Request a consultation
These are examples of calls to action that are fundamental to marketing campaigns of all types. Guerrilla marketing strategies that focus on an action will enable you to not only optimize your campaign for that action, but also to measure your success.
6. The Results
Guerrilla marketing strategies require defined goals and objectives so that you can strive for and measure results. You want more customers, but every business wants more customers. The question is, how will you get more customers? Is it through increased social media engagement? More traffic to your website? More calls for consultations? The more specific you can get with your goals, the more accurately you can measure the results.
Track and measure the results of your guerrilla marketing campaigns using platforms such as Google analytics and tools such as conversion tracking.
Guerrilla marketing can be a fun way to market your business and get your creative juices flowing. Incorporating the above elements into your strategy will ensure that you also experience the joys of campaign success and business growth.
