Guerrilla Marketing For Your Business

The number one goal of “Guerilla Marketing” is to disrupt what someone is doing, to get their attention in a unique and innovative way. Let’s take a look at some ways you can add a “surprise” element in your marketing campaigns to get people to buy your product/service… even if you don’t have a huge marketing budget.

“Marketing is the lifeblood of everything that you do. If you don’t market to people, and if you don’t do so effectively, you’re not going to be successful.” — Fred Cary

What is Guerrilla Marketing?

According to dictionary.com, Guerrilla Marketing is defined as “innovative, unconventional, and low-cost marketing techniques aimed at obtaining maximum exposure for a product.”

There are several types of Guerrilla Marketing campaigns. The three we primarily focused on in our Facebook LIVE were Ambient Marketing, Viral / Buzz Marketing, and Street Marketing.

• Ambient Marketing
• Ambush Marketing
• Stealth Marketing
• Viral/buzz Marketing
• Grassroots Marketing
• Astroturfing
• Street Marketing

Want to know more about each type? Check out the info on types of Guerrilla Marketing.

Guerrilla Marketing is different things to different people. For a startup, on a shoestring budget, it may be their only choice for marketing. For a multinational organization with a bit of a larger financial spend then guerrilla marketing tactics are used to get people engaged and get the brand noticed.

Preparing to “Go Guerrilla” with your Marketing

Be Ready for the Traffic

Before putting time and energy into guerilla marketing, be sure that you can handle the traffic you are going to generate from your campaign. You don’t have to have a website to generate leads. You can use social channels as your landing pages; just be sure that you are ready to capture leads & opportunities.

Ask yourself:

• Do you have a place (like a social media landing page) to send your prospects & leads so they can show interest and get what you are offering?  
  • Is your website or landing page set up to gather vital follow-up information? 
• Do you have good looking profiles on the main social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter just to name a few.   
  • Are your profile and background motivating?
  • Is your contact info up to date?
  • Do you have an easy way for people to reach out?

Build Your Base

Start joining groups who really need the product, app, or service that you have to offer. If your business solution and idea is something for babies — join the mommy groups out there on social media.

You’re going to make your presence known and become influential by participating in adding relevant commentary. Remember to keep it interesting, keep it engaging, and keep it entertaining. Get involved. Make more friends. Just be the authentic person you know yourself to be and share what you know.

By the time you’re ready to launch your guerrilla campaign, everything will be prepared and ready for your ultimate success.

Don’t Jump to Selling

Initially, your goal is not to sell; your goal is to gather fans. As soon as you gather enough fans, change your goal to focusing on how to get your leads to buy. Remember, this is part of a process and it’s never too early to start. This needs to be a daily goal, a goal you become passionate about, and a goal that moves you towards achieving it each hour.

Let’s say you decide on the old fashion connection with a follow-up message or an introduction that offers value. Let’s say you are just a simple beginner starting with nothing. Time yourself to see how long it’ll take to connect with 30 people a day. Then create the habit and a system that can ultimately be outsourced in the future when you hire an assistant to help in your marketing efforts.

“Do your guerrilla marketing and any other kind of marketing until you reach your goal.” — Fred Cary

Prepare Mentally

Keep in mind that your marketing success is about mindset, setting habits, time management, and systems. Your business idea should motivate you to the degree that it gives you energy when you think about it. Guerrilla Marketing is a mindset. It’s the one that says, “I’m going to get attention for the winning solution and idea I’ve got.”

There’s no giving up. There’s just testing your strategies, words, and messages. Once the numbers are in, you can start measuring how the campaign worked and what can be improved.

Implementing a Guerilla Marketing Campaign

If you aren’t sure what type of marketing campaign to do, check out our 101 Marketing Strategies PDF download. Turn any of these marketing strategies into a Guerilla Marketing campaign by adding a little flare and creativity.

Remember that the essence of guerilla is to be innovative and memorable.

Your goal is to come up with something clever and captivating that people want to share. People will share things with their friends that are funny, engaging, and interesting on some level.

Fueling the Fire

Turn to Your Fans

Now that you have come up with something clever and captivating that people want to share, you are ready to start spreading the word.

Ask your fans to share for you. If you don’t ask, they will never think to do it.

Asking is simple. All you have to do is say, “Hey, By the way, I don’t need you to buy anything from me. Can you just spread the word? Would you do that for me?”

If you have a nucleus of 10,000 people and every one of them reaches out to two or three friends and those friends reach out to one or two people, the results will be amazing.

Getting your product or service to Go Viral is a possible side effect of great guerrilla campaigns… like this paper towel, one created a buzz of people sharing pictures on social media of themselves with the giant melting popsicle.

Use Facebook and Email

Your first goal as an idea entrepreneur is to build that audience however you can.
You can buy email lists of people who are likely to be your audience affordably or go on Facebook and do ads for your particular audience.

When we do our live IdeaPros shows, if we want to get it more exposure, we may spend $100 after a show, just to get more entrepreneurs to see it, and learn from it. We can get anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 extra people to see our live for just $100.

“Be there every day. This is not a part-time job.” Fred Cary

Get a Bigger Reach with Influencer Marketing

Here’s an example of a business owner whose only asset is owning 100% of a company in shares, clearly if the company has no sales it’ll be worth close to nothing as they have no money. What can this idea entrepreneur do? If you can’t get the word out any other way, there are bloggers. There are influencers on social media that are gonna require money, but some of them will work for a little piece of the pie.

Now you’re not going to get somebody with 10 million followers to work for 1% of your company, but you can find two or three people that have 100,000 followers. Engage with them and say, “Look, I don’t have a lot of money right now, but I love what you’re doing and the space you’re in. I think that your audience is a perfect target for me and I’m willing to work in a relationship with you where you can have a small piece of my company. In exchange, you will promote me upfront and maybe it’s 1%, maybe it’s 2%.” It’s trivial,  yet effective and can land you a bunch of new followers, just for being good at negotiating with an influencer.  It’s just a piece of paper that doesn’t cost anything except a written promise. You can do the same thing with bloggers as well.

Be Creative

It is important to understand that you need to reach people who are going to have an interest in what you do. If you can’t do it with money, you have to do it by being clever, artistic, authentic, and by communicating with that group in every single way that you can. There are hundreds – if not thousands – of stories of people with little 30-second YouTube posts that are just really clever.  Truly, Creative videos and posts are shared again and again on Facebook or Instagram and six months later the post has a million views. It happens all the time.

Partner Up With Us

We know you don’t have the money yet and this is why we share content that can help you achieve your goals without spending a penny. But, we also know a great idea when we see one and this is why you should contact us to explore the ways we can work together, as we partner with entrepreneurs who are ready to invest in the success of their idea, at any stage.

Apply today and let’s explore partnering together.