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CHAPTER
10 Guerilla marketing tips
20 guerilla marketing ideas for under 500 pounds!
It's cheap, it's smart, and it can really get you a lot of publicity. Just three reasons why you need to get to grips with guerrilla marketing now…
First things first, exactly what is guerrilla marketing? The term now covers a plethora of different marketing techniques but I rather like Marketing Terms' (www.marketingterms.com) definition, which says "unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results for minimal resources." Now, doesn't that sound like a great approach for cash strapped online businesses?
In fact, some might say that a grasp of guerrilla marketing is essential for any start-up or SME and that these companies are ideally placed to carry out these campaigns. A small or early stage company must take a guerrilla approach to marketing if it's to generate a profile for itself. No one is going to take notice of a small business that squirts out the occasional press release. By taking a nimble approach it's possible to achieve results that sluggish corporate marketing organisations could only dream about.
Guerrilla marketing can take a campaign to the next level. It can break through the advertising clutter. The bottom line is we're being hit with TV, radio and paper ad campaigns 24/7. They've become so much a part of our lives that they're beginning to take the form of background noise and we no longer pay much attention to them. Increasingly marketers are having to resort to guerrilla tactics to grab our attention.
Crazy
campaigns
Take the magazine FHM, who projected a 60-foot high image of
Gail Porter's backside onto the Houses of Parliament to promote its 1999 poll
to find the world's sexiest women. Then there was IBM who employed a graffiti
artist to paint pavements and walls in San Francisco and Chicago with the words
'Peace, love and Linux'. The site About.com sent out fake hitchhikers onto Highway
101 in the States to give out promotional masks to any kind driver that stopped
to pick them up. These campaigns all focus on creating a buzz around a product
or service; it's then passed on by word of mouth as people talk about in pubs.
Identifying super consumers who can become brand advocates and spread the word about a product. If one person has a great brand experience they can influence five to seven other people.
Top
twenty tactics
I have put together 20 sub 500 pound guerrilla marketing
techniques that could work for your business, but before you don the monkey suit
I have a few words of caution. There has been a backlash against some guerrilla
campaigns. For example, IBM's Linux campaign got Big Blue in big trouble with
the local authorities. The bio-degradable chalk used to create the marketing messages
on walls and pavements turned out not to be so bio-degradable. IBM was charged
with violation of city ordinance and had to pay an $18,000 fine - and that wasn't
good for PR and or for IBM's image. Plan and consider all repercussions. There's
always an element of risk in any guerrilla marketing campaign. Be aware of the
risks and prepare counter responses. So, you have been warned.
1)
Promote your site in discussion groups
Search through newsgroups to find
any that are relevant to your business. But don't leap in there posting promotional
messages willy-nilly, you'll get a right royal flaming. Get to know the newsgroup
first, take part in chats, and gain the trust of the other members. But while
you're doing that make sure you add a signature to the end of your postings that
points people in the direction of your site.
2)
Street theatre
To get publicity US gift registry site Della.com sent out
'wish fairies' that granted random acts of kindness to holiday shoppers, such
as free rides on the subway, paying parking costs and carrying their shopping.
It was a simple idea, but it brought in a huge amount of publicity for the company,
and the resulting coverage on TV, radio and in print was valued at an amazing
£3 million. Della.com aims to take the stress out of Christmas shopping for consumers
and that's exactly what the 'wish fairies' were doing. If you can think of a scheme
that matches your brand values, then simply find the out of work actors to hit
the streets.
3)
Don a sandwich board
Now this might not seem like a very sophisticated
approach to marketing, but it can be surprisingly effective.
.net
magazine, made good use of this technique when it set about promoting a fictional
Web site called CheatingScum.com, in an attempt to find out more about the art
of self promotion. The site, which invited visitors to send in details of cheating
love rats they had known, was promoted through traditional methods including viral
emails and PR. But as a final push .net decided to send out a member of staff
wearing a sandwich board with the words 'is your lover cheating on you?' across
the front. The poor dupe was sent to London to stand outside some of the capital's
biggest landmarks and get his photo taken. The result was an extra 500 hits on
the site and press coverage all for the price of a train ticket, a bit of hardboard
and a few laser print outs.
4)
Paint your car
Get your URL plastered across your car and any other company
motor vehicles you might own, at least your name will become known in your local
area. Ill-fated Web currency company beenz went to the expense of getting a 1970
bullion truck with its URL emblazoned across it and then parked it in front of
the offices of national newspapers and at key events, such as the annual Economist
e-business conference.
5)
Become a walking ad
Why not wear a t-shirt when you know your going to
be seen in a club, bar or restaurant. And always carry branded pens with you so
that you can leave them around after you have signed a credit card bill for example.
This is a real cheap form of guerrilla marketing and if you really believe in
your company, you should be proud to wear the T-shirt. Remember all those kids
with the Nike 'tick' symbol shaved in to the back of their head? What great free
advertising for Nike. People have even gone so far as painting marketing messages
on to the heads of bald men. Perhaps it's time to look at ways that you could
use your body to promote your brand, without getting arrested of course.
6)
Fly Posters
Fly posting is illegal, so you will be pursuing this guerrilla
marketing technique at your peril. However it can work well, especially if your
site or service is aimed at a younger, funkier audience and it's increasingly
becoming part of the marketing mix. Last year the advertising industry awarded
one of the year's most prestigious awards to a fly posting campaign.
7)
Promotional postcards
increasingly we're seeing racks of postcards advertising
various products and services in restaurants, clubs, hotels, bars and gyms. These
cards are usually well designed, desirable items that people will pick up and
keep or send to a bunch of their mates. Either way, if you can come up with a
good design and a message that entertains as well as promotes your brand on a
little 5x4 card, you could be onto a marketing winner. To give you an idea you
can get 5,000 postcards printed for £ust 295 pounds.
8)
Go a step further
To really push home that marketing message you could
always employ somebody to hand out these postcards for you. Ammo Marketing hired
a good looking woman to hand out what looked like business cards to young men
in a bar, they thought they were getting her phone number, when in fact the card
had details of Electronic Arts' new online game. It's a bit naughty, but it was
targeted at the right audience (young males) and the response rate was an impressive
60 per cent.
9)
Free gifts
Everybody loves a freebie and, as long as it's relevant, it
can help embed your URL into the memory banks of potential customers. For example
if you owned a pet website you could hand out branded tennis balls and dog biscuits
to dog owners at parks around the UK. This is a perfect campaign tightly focused
on the right market (i.e. pet owners) and with freebies they'll find genuinely
useful. Check out the Promotional Items Web site (www.promotional-items.org.uk)
to get ideas on freebies that might work for your business.
10)
Cunning Stunts
It was the agency Cunning Stunts that projected a naked
Gail Porter onto the Houses of Parliament for FHM magazine. To celebrate the new
DVD and video section on the Bol.com site it also produced the world's biggest
tub of popcorn and sat it in the heart of cinema land, Leicester Square.
11)
Use Web rings
Web rings link together sites with a similar subject matter
and they can be a cheap and easy way to generate traffic. This can work especially
well if your site focuses on a narrow, niche target market.
12)
Go back to basics
Local sites and online services can make good use of
small ads in newsagent's windows or classified ads in local papers to advertise
their wares. For example, what better place to plug a local entertainment guide
than in the local paper?
13)
Make yourself known to magazine and newspaper journalists...
By being controversial
and quotable, without getting yourself sued. Call up journalists with comments
on relevant news stories and to offer pro-active comment whenever your competitors
make an announcement. This doesn't necessarily need to be aggressive, but it should
provide an alternative viewpoint. And any editorial coverage is even better than
advertising in as people will read news stories without the preconceptions they
have when suspiciously scanning an advert.
14)
Dress up
When beenz (www.beenz.com) first launched it sent out a team (known
as the beenz army) of willing volunteers dressed in inflatable versions of the
beenz logo. These poor souls were used tactically at special events, such as the
Internet World show, to build brand awareness. Although the beenz company and
its online currency didn't go on to change the world, it did mean the firm attracted
enough attention to be bought out by another company.
15)
Take up argument and issues with the big boys
When Windows XP launched
in a blaze of publicity in October 2001 it claimed to be an un-crack able operating
system. Hackers around the world then proceeded to break into the system. At the
time anti-cracking software company BitArts, it sent out a release pointing out
what changes Microsoft needed to make to secure its operating system. The result
was coverage across the Web and in national and international newspapers and magazines.
16) Write a column
Local
papers are on a tight budget and it might just be that they're looking for a bit
of cheap editorial. If you're a Web design wiz why not offer your services to
the paper answering reader's questions about setting up a site, and then ensure
you get your URL published.
17)
Exploit a news story
You have to work fast to do this, and have one on
the press at all times, but Easy Jet managed it when a news story came out revealing
that Tony Blair and family were going to travel on a budget airline for their
holidays. Easy Jet chairman Stelios moved quickly and produced some adverts which
said "even Tony Blair got a bargain this summer." There was just one
flaw in this plan, it turns out the Blair's were travelling on arch rivals Ryan
air. But Stelios didn't hang his head in shame instead he covered up the offending
adverts with the words, "Oops! Wrong cheapo airline. Oh, never mind, Tony.
Perhaps next year?" Even though he'd jumped on the story a little too early,
clever clogs Stelios still managed to get plenty of column inches promoting his
airline. Twice.
18)
Work with your local Internet cafe
It's worth getting to know the managers
of your local Internet cafes and working with them to run joint promotions. Say
you sell domain names; you could offer free domains to the first five people into
the cafe on a specific day. To the rest of the visitors you then offer advice
on how to choose a good domain for your business.
19)
Unusual competitions
You can pull in publicity by running an unusual competition
on your Web site. Say you're MD of an online garden centre, why not run competitions
to find the best garden in the UK and get people to send in photos, you can then
publish on your site. Or maybe you sell underwear online, why not run competitions
to find the most unpleasant pair of knickers in the country? If your compo is
unusual or funny enough, it's more than likely to get you coverage in the press.
20) Real life product
placement
You could place undercover guerrilla marketers in bars, clubs,
restaurants and shops to talk up your businesses. It's all about creating a word
of mouth buzz, create that kind of real communication about your brand which they
will go and communicate to friends.