What is Guerrilla Marketing?

By Nehlsen Staff 4.5.10

Guerrilla Marketing: Using unexpected and unconventional methods to get your marketing message seen.

We’ve addressed the issue of getting your message seen in The Challenge With Direct Mail, and we’ve all heard the statistic that the average consumer is inundated with well over 3,500 marketing messages a day. How then can you expect your message to stand out from the clutter?

With the steady demise of traditional media and the rapid growth of social networks, there has never been a better time to utilize guerrilla marketing techniques. Why? While not altogether useless, traditional media is expensive; and while strategic planning is most certainly still a requisite, guerrilla marketing campaigns rely on the element of surprise to help a message spread virally, rather than the big budgets needed to reach a broad expanse of targets.

As discussed in Tchotchkes Can Help Your Tradeshow Message Spread Virally, we talked about how creative and unconventional tactics can give your message legs, often times garnering earned media – being featured in an industry blog, or even the nightly news -- and guerrilla marketing is no exception. Aside from a lesser initial investment, the viral spread of the message is what really sets guerrilla marketing apart from other tactics; and with social media where it is today, your message will spread faster than ever before.

Some examples of guerrilla marketing:

Wristwatch guerrilla promotion on city bus

wristwatch