Guerrilla Marketing: Definition, examples & tips

Are you looking for a strategy that will attract the attention of your consumers unexpectedly, unlike traditional marketing methods? Then, you can create a guerrilla marketing campaign. This valuable strategy allows you to convey your message to your target audience in compelling and unusual ways. It is a more creative, original, and low-cost marketing strategy than traditional methods.

In this article, we define guerrilla marketing and talk about its types. We also teach you how to use guerrilla marketing properly for your business in 7 steps. We include 5 successful examples of guerrilla marketing that we think might inspire you. Finally, you can continue reading our article to learn the pros and cons of running a guerrilla campaign for your business.

What is Guerrilla marketing?

This marketing method also adopts the concept of guerrilla warfare to create interaction with its target audience. Jay Conrad Levinson developed this marketing method, which refers to transitioning from traditional to digital media. 

Guerrilla marketing types

Guerrilla marketing helps you develop an effective and unusual strategy to leave a lasting and emotional impression on your target audience. Although there are four main guerrilla marketing tactics that you can use according to your goals, it is possible to classify this type of marketing in various ways. Below, you can see the main types of guerrilla marketing and other classifications:

1. Outdoor marketing

Outdoor guerrilla marketing is a strategy that can be implemented through creative and eye-catching visuals or events in public areas such as parks, streets, and bus stops. You can also place advertisements with unusual content on building facades and billboards to promote your brand, products, or services.

✏️ Example: Ikea brand ran a successful outdoor marketing campaign in Australia by placing sofas at bus stops, aiming to create an emotional connection with its target audience and increase brand awareness.

Ikea’s outdoor marketing example (Source: Mumbrella)

2. Indoor marketing

Indoor guerrilla marketing is a marketing strategy that has creative and attractive interiors in closed areas such as shopping malls, hotels, or cinemas. You can display your message in these areas to attract the attention of your target audience while they are doing their daily activities. This way, you can communicate directly with your target audience in a specific location.

✏️ Example: Belvita has developed a successful strategy to increase brand awareness with its Give A Smile campaign with Fare Share. It has placed interactive digital screens in shopping malls in England, attracting people’s attention while shopping and asking them to smile at the screen. The campaign also aimed to create an emotional connection by conveying the message that these smiles are donated as a meal to those in need.

Belvita’s indoor marketing example

3. Event ambush marketing

Event Ambush Guerrilla Marketing is a marketing strategy in which you can advertise at large-scale events such as the Olympics, sports events, or concerts without making a formal sponsorship agreement. This strategy helps you interact with your target audience by taking advantage of the event's popularity for advertising. This way, you can attract attention and increase your brand awareness with your extraordinary campaign.

✏️ Example: Nike is one brand that successfully integrates event ambush marketing campaigns into sports competitions. During the 2014 World Cup, it produced impressive content by collaborating with famous football stars with the Risk Everything campaign. It aimed to increase brand awareness by placing large billboards around the stadium and in the city centers where the football tournament was held.

Nike’s event ambush marketing example (Source: Strong Island)

4. Experiential marketing

Experiential guerrilla marketing lets you directly interact with your consumers and create an emotional connection. This type of marketing allows you to introduce your brand through a story or experience extraordinarily. Thus, you can offer your target audience the opportunity to experience your products and establish a personal connection. It will help strengthen your users' connection with your brand.

✏️ Example: Burger King's Burn That Ad campaign, launched in Brazil, Burger King asked its customers to burn the advertisements of its rival brands in the digital environment through the Burger King application. It increased the incentive by offering free whopper coupons to its users who did this, which they could use in their restaurants. The campaign had a significant impact on social media.

Burger King’s experiential example

5. Ambient marketing

Ambient guerrilla marketing is a striking marketing strategy that makes your ads seem like a natural part of your consumers’ daily lives. Through this campaign, you can promote your products by integrating them into the environment with unusual and creative methods. By placing your unusual ads in areas such as elevators, restrooms, or escalators, you can attract the attention of your target audience and increase your brand awareness.

✏️ Example: In 2021, the McDonald's brand ran an ambient marketing campaign in Canada. Through the Follow the Arches campaign, it aimed to direct people to the nearest restaurant by placing advertisements on large billboards in the city. The brand designed the visuals it used to guide people and integrated them into daily life.

McDonald’s ambient marketing example (Source: LLLITL)

6. Buzz marketing

Buzz or viral marketing campaigns are an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy for promoting your products/services and increasing brand awareness. Creating an effective buzz marketing campaign is complex and requires careful planning and implementation. The most critical step in achieving your goals is identifying the suitable buzz marketing campaigns that align with them and choosing the proper marketing channels.

✏️ Example: Coca-Cola's Share a Coke campaign is one of history's best buzz marketing campaigns. Coca-Cola launched a personalized campaign to increase brand awareness and get people talking about the brand. They placed the 250 most popular names on the bottles and encouraged people with these names to share Coca-Cola. 

Coca-Cola’s buzz marketing example (Source: square44)

7. Stealth marketing

Stealth marketing effectively promotes a product, service, or brand without consumers' noticing. This marketing method can help you create curiosity in your consumers and naturally attract consumers’ attention. By running a proper stealth marketing campaign, you can increase your brand awareness and achieve success in the long term.

✏️ Example: Heinz brand has carried out one of the successful Stealth marketing examples with the ketchup stain campaign it launched on social media. By conducting it through popular food blogs or social media accounts, it created the perception that the ketchup stain campaign occurred accidentally. Thus, it increased brand awareness naturally and entertainingly by creating a fake discussion.

Heinz's stealth marketing example (Source: thekitchn)

How to use Guerrilla marketing for your business

Guerrilla marketing allows you to create an effective and extraordinary marketing strategy for your business. It is essential to learn how to strategically use a guerrilla marketing campaign to capture the attention of your target audience and surprise them. You can use guerrilla marketing for your business by following these 7 steps:

Steps to follow in guerrilla marketing

Step 1: Know your target audience

As with many marketing strategies, the first step in using guerrilla marketing for your business is to know your target audience. Understanding your target audience's behaviors and expectations is crucial to developing a creative marketing strategy. Thus, you can create a more unusual and impressive guerrilla marketing idea.

Step 2: Determine your goals

The second step is determining what you aim for with this campaign. Defining goals is vital for creating a successful guerrilla marketing strategy, as it is for any marketing strategy. What do you want to achieve with your guerrilla marketing strategy? Knowing this question answers also allows you to choose the right type of guerrilla marketing that aligns with your goals.

Step3: Prefer the type of guerrilla marketing that suits

After determining your goals, you should choose the right guerrilla marketing type to help you achieve your goals. You should consider this step closely to develop an effective marketing strategy. For example, promoting a product, service, or brand without consumers noticing your goals may be among them. In this case, you can create a stealth marketing campaign for your business.

Step 4: Create creative and original content

The most important feature distinguishing guerrilla marketing from traditional marketing techniques is that it is unusual and exciting. Therefore, you should ensure your content marketing is creative and original and will attract customers' attention. Your content must be compatible with your brand identity and values. It will make it easier for you to integrate your campaign into the environment where your target audience interacts.

Step 5: Choose the proper distribution channel

In this step, you should choose a distribution channel suitable for the type of marketing you have determined. You can run a guerrilla marketing campaign on platforms where your target audience is active. For example, you can share your campaign through social media platforms, some of the most common distribution channels.

Step 6: Implement your campaign

Once you select the appropriate marketing distribution channels, you can implement your guerrilla marketing campaign. However, it is essential to double-check your campaign before you do so. It will ensure that your goals align with the type of marketing and distribution channels you choose.

Step 7: Analyze your campaign results

Analyzing guerrilla marketing campaign results allows you to evaluate the effectiveness and success of your campaign. It allows you to see what you did right and wrong in your campaign process. Thus, you can improve your missing or faulty points, run your following marketing efforts more efficiently, and achieve more productive results.

5 Impressive Guerrilla marketing examples

Many world-famous brands have succeeded by running a guerrilla marketing campaign to promote their products or increase brand awareness. You can grab the attention of your target audience by running an extraordinary and effective guerrilla marketing campaign. Below, you can see some successful guerilla marketing examples for small businesses and big brands that can inspire:

1. Burger King - Moldy Whopper campaign

Burger King’s moldy whopper advertising campaign is an example of a highly effective guerrilla marketing strategy implemented in 2020. The brand left an extraordinary impact on its target audience through this campaign. Usually, brands publish ads to show the most appealing aspects of their products.

Burger Kings’s guerrilla marketing example (Source: Ogilvy)

However, Burger King published a time-lapse video of a Whopper rotting process over 35 days through this campaign. In this way, it aimed to show its target audience that it had removed artificial preservatives from its products. The intended message positively impacted the target audience, and the campaign demonstrated a successful example of guerrilla marketing.

2. Samsung - Capture the Night campaign

Samsung ran a “Capture the Night” guerrilla marketing campaign 2023 to promote its new product, the Galaxy S23. The campaign aimed to highlight the powerful features of its latest product's night camera and offered users a platform to upload photos taken with their phone cameras.

Samsung’s guerrilla marketing example

Through the platform, it analyzed photos using artificial intelligence algorithms and made appropriate music recommendations. In this way, it aimed to increase interaction by establishing an emotional connection with its users. The personalized experience offered by the campaign attracted the target audience's attention, and the campaign achieved its goal.

3. Google Pixel - Pixel Fold campaign

With foldable phones becoming popular, Google launched the Pixel Fold campaign in 2023, an example of a guerrilla campaign, to highlight this product on Pixel. This campaign used three-dimensional billboards to promote Pixel Fold. These panels displayed the product's stylish design and impressive features three-dimensionally.

Google Pixel’s guerrilla marketing example (Source: Campaign)

In addition, it aimed to reach a wider audience by sharing the campaign on social media. Thus, although Google used conventional marketing channels such as video ads and social media, it managed to create exciting and extraordinary content and leave an impact on its target audience.

4. Nike - Ambush guerrilla campaign

As we all know, Nike is a brand that has implemented many marketing strategies quite effectively and successfully. This marketing method effectively uses the ambush method, one type of guerrilla marketing. Although Nike is not the official sponsor of the 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2024 European Cup, it has developed a strategy that will attract the attention of its target audience by using these events.

Thus, it wanted to emphasize that France designed the 2024 European jerseys by covering the facade of a large building in Paris with an advertisement and the slogan it gave below. The ad carried out a strategic campaign without a direct connection to the events by featuring Kylian Mbappé, one of France's football stars, and the colors of the French flag.

5. Spotify - Wrapped campaign

Spotify’s guerrilla marketing example (Source: Scribly Media)

Spotify’s Wrapped campaign, which we all know and maybe even use, is a successful example of guerrilla marketing. It has been offering its users personal experiences every year since 2015. Through this campaign, Spotify provides each user with a personalized summary of the songs or artists they listened to the most throughout the year. At the same time, this summary was designed so that users can share it on their social media accounts, encouraging interaction with users.

Pros & cons of the Guerrilla marketing

You can achieve many goals for your brand or business by running a guerrilla marketing campaign. This method will benefit you in many ways when executed correctly. However, besides these advantages, it has some risks because it is less structured. You can see these pros and cons in more detail below:

Advantages and disadvantages of Guerrilla marketing

Pros:

Cons:

Key points to take away

With the increasing use of digital marketing and social media, businesses have started to look for different marketing strategies to gain an advantage in many ways. When executed correctly, guerrilla marketing emerges as a strategy that helps you communicate with your target audience quickly and effectively. You can also interact with your target audience by running a guerrilla marketing campaign using unusual methods.

In this article, we talked about the definition of guerrilla marketing and its types. We also included 7 steps for using stealth marketing properly for your business. Then, we explained the latest successful guerrilla marketing examples. Finally, you can see the pros and cons of the guerrilla marketing. 

If you think you have learned everything you need about guerrilla marketing, plan a guerrilla marketing campaign that suits your goals and carry your business to success with extraordinary methods!