Understanding Online Guerrilla Marketing

For those who are still a bit hazy about the idea of guerrilla marketing, here’s how dictionary defines it:

“Guerrilla marketing is a form of marketing technique that utilizes unconventional tactics to increase customer reach.”

In other words, Guerrilla Marketing is about overwhelming the customer, make a permanent impression and create abundant social buzz. Now, what is online guerrilla marketing (OGM)?

“Online Guerrilla Marketing is an unconventional way of reaching out to target audience using online channels of communication, such as social media, with imagination and creativity to make a strong connection with the potential customers.”

Traditional guerrilla marketing utilizes street marketing as a supplemental component to drive customer’s attention while online guerrilla marketing utilizes online tools and applications to garner customer’s interest. With the advent of digital marketing and online advertisement, more ads are being created than ever before that give marketers a chance to implement OGM strategies.

Why Online Guerrilla Marketing?

Research shows that more than 68% of the world’s population uses online communication channels and community networks that include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and Twitter on a daily basis. Online guerrilla marketing was born to fulfill the need to reach out to the potential customers through these popular online channels. The following figure shows the social media usage across different channels, which represents a huge opportunity for online guerrilla marketing.

Online Guerrilla Marketing Tools

The primary requirements to implement online guerrilla marketing strategy remain the same as they are for traditional guerrilla marketing. Regardless of your business type, online guerrilla marketing requires ambition, creativity, a considerable wit, element of surprise, and massive appeal all merged into one. You can utilize various online tools to engage audience through online guerrilla marketing tactics which are discussed in the next section. The following image highlights the online tools that you can use to implement your OGM strategy.

The primary tools include:

Online Guerrilla Marketing Strategy in 4 Simple Steps

Now let’s get down to the strategy that can help you shape your online guerrilla marketing campaign.

1. Set your Marketing Budget

Be proactive and choose the amount you will spend on your online guerrilla marketing campaign. You don’t need much, but whatever amount you need, it is crucial that it is all decided beforehand. If you decide to use social media banners or other paid online promotional campaigns, you may need to set aside a portion of your marketing budget for OGM implementation.

2. Choose the right Online channels

This is the most crucial step. Don’t simply hold up to see what other marketers are putting forth. Spend time exploring the various tools and tactics to see what will serve your business the best. For example, you can choose articles and blogs on your website, and share events on social media. You can create your own OGM mix with well-defined activities for every online digital channel.

3. Create a schedule for marketing events

A straightforward schedule of showcasing endeavors will help you monitor spending and results. Whatever domain you pick for your guerrilla campaign, divide your campaign into measurable and achievable events.

4. Use Tasteful Visual Content

Before you prepare anything for your strategy, remember that visual content is much more effective than other content types. Generally, a customer’s attention span is only around 3-5 seconds. Use that time frame to create strong, engaging visual content. Some of the online channels that could be utilized include Youtube, Instagram and Facebook. The following diagram shows a simple strategic plan to create content for all online channels. Notice that different channels are used for different types of activities; for example, social media is best utilized for customer engagement.

Online Guerrilla Marketing Examples

It is impossible to understand the concept of OGM without the practical examples, so here are a couple of examples to give you a clear idea about how it’s done.

The essence of true GOM is to utilize your sense of humor and creativity with unconventional tactics to garner your target audience’s attention while they engage n social networking or other online activities that involved social media channels. Online guerrilla marketing can be easily executed without spending a hefty budget if you have a proper plan in place. Research shows that many top-tier companies spend no more than $500 on their online guerrilla marketing campaigns and sometimes even less.

So, you do not necessarily need to have proper budget to execute a successful Guerrilla marketing tactic. All you need is a clever wit that can be creatively embedded into an advertising campaign to get people’s attention and ultimately garner their interest for sales.