Guerrilla marketing can be extremely effective

If you do it correctly, guerrilla marketing is a boon for any marketer. It stretches your advertising dollar farther than ever possible and it can even go so far as to earn you the respect of your competitors. But why simply talk about this off hand? Let me offer you an example of this.

At the Beijing Olympics, Adidas pumped in millions of dollars by way of advertisements. They were fully expected to do so. They were, after all, official sponsors of the Games. Adidas has the kind of marketing budget few do, and Chinese sporting goods manufacturer Li Ning certainly did not have those kind of dollars to spend. But their solution was ingenuous. Li Ning was also the name of a gymnast, so he was made to wear the company’s clothing at the opening ceremony and it earned Li Ning (the company and the gymnast) the kind of attention marketing dollars often can’t buy, this on a budget. Consequently, Li Ning’s stocks soared and that, in summary, is the power of guerrilla marketing.

Guerrilla marketing is nothing more than a way to gain real traction in a market that already has enough clutter in it. There’s just so much hype and hoopla surrounding every event that you have to differentiate yourself somehow. And stunts such as the one Li Ning pulled off can go very far when it comes to grabbing your customers by the eyeballs. Consider another example, at the Atlanta Olympics. Reebok was the official sponsor, but Nike handed out flags to fans with the Nike swoosh on it. It was a hilariously brilliant tactic that saw Reebok ambushed at what should have been their own games and it got a whole lot of recognition for Nike.

Guerrilla marketing works well for large companies, but it works even better for small companies that don’t have the money or the awareness that big companies have. Using guerrilla marketing right means that it will catapult them into the consciousness of the customer in a way that was previously impossible. The first thing to do is to come up with a plan. For example, you might not be the official drinks sponsors of an event, but handing out free drinks to all those that arrive for the event is a great way to gain exposure. Marketing experts have confirmed something that doesn’t take a genius to figure out; free stuff always ends up winning you friends and you have attention so long as you hand out free stuff.

Hiring a marketing expert to come up with something can do the job for you, but in the end its about capturing hearts and minds and coming up with ingenuous ways to make this happen. Dubbing yourself the best sponsor not to be a sponsor at the Olympics could work, for instance, or saying you’re the best no 2 car rental company there is, which only makes you try harder (sound familiar?). Some countries, such as England and New Zealand, are tired of guerrilla marketing and are passing laws against such as the laws passed for the 2012 London Olympics. But how do you stop an idea, and how do you defend against free speech? As long as there are enough products to market, guerrilla marketing will flourish. And that is a fact that cannot be disputed.