To most businesses, the idea of guerrilla marketing can be an exciting, yet sometimes scary one.
The premise is pretty easy to understand. Instead of investing all of your money into a traditional method for advertising, or placing a lot of money and time into your current inbound marketing strategy, you work on pooling your resources into pulling a “publicity stunt” that increases your brand visibility and enhances your reputation.
Guerrilla marketing has become increasingly popular in recent years – particularly for start-ups looking to appeal to an experience-obsessed audience, and for major brands who want to refresh their current image. But how do you decide whether it’s really the right move for you?
Evaluating the Benefits
A good place to start when asking yourself whether it’s time to embrace guerrilla marketing is to consider the benefits that it can offer. For instance, a well-executed, and well-planned campaign can provide:
- Unconventional – You get the chance to appeal to audiences on a different level – taking them outside of the common advertising methods that they’ve grown to dislike and distrust. Guerrilla marketing is, by its nature – something different.
- Distinction – Since guerrilla marketing is less common than other methods of advertising, it often represents a great way to help you stand out from the crowd.
- Creativity – In guerrilla marketing efforts, you have all the space you need to show your creative nature and come up with something completely unique. That’s a far cry different to traditional ads that generally limit you in the words, images, and space you use.
- Go Viral – Finally, one of the biggest benefits of guerrilla marketing is the possibility that you can go viral, and gain exposure for your company on a massive scale. Though this obviously doesn’t happen for everyone, it’s a particularly alluring possibility.
Analysing the Risks
Alright, so the benefits are great – but it can’t be all positive, right? There are some drawbacks to guerrilla marketing that you need to think about too if you want to make an informed decision about how the process will work for your company.
For instance:
- It takes a lot of time and effort – If you want your guerrilla tactic to be a success, you need to be willing to devote a lot of energy into the process of making it “just right”. One mistake in planning and you could end up with some very bad results.
- It’s unpredictable – Guerrilla strategies are hugely unpredictable, and you can never be totally sure of the impressions, growth, or success that you might get.
- Misinterpretation – finally, there’s always a chance that your guerrilla marketing tactic could be taken the wrong way – or seen as something else entirely, jeopardizing your reputation and leading to serious problems with your brand.
Guerrilla marketing is clearly complicated, and the question of whether you should implement it into your advertising project will depend entirely on your assessment of the various risks, and benefits.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR, and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442, or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
