All Posts in Guerrilla Marketing

|In: Guerrilla Marketing|Last Updated: | 0 Comments
Couple of weeks back, while having chai [tea] at local tea shop, I noticed an interesting thing, the shopkeeper offered me tea in a paper cup that had ‘OLA Branding’ on it!! When there was further probing from my side, he informed that OLA Marketing team had given the tea cups for free and the quantity depended on the locality & density of prospective OLA customers [based on research done by the OLA team].
The cups were given out for free with the expectation that more & more people would come to know about OLA [and in turn use it’s services] i.e. converting prospective customers into customers. It looked a very interesting case of Guerrilla Marketing where they could grab more eye-balls with less spend on marketing!! After couple of days, there were Swiggy tea cups lying in his shop though the intention of this exercise was also the same !!!
Few days back, we received a Press Release of a startup named GingerCup that specializes in offline-marketing and Paper Cup advertising is one of their specialties :), lets’s look into what it can do for businesses. While online marketers are playing it hard with their tactics, GingerCup still sticks to offline marketing and busts the idea of an ad getting unnoticed.
Essentially, GingerCup optimizes two interesting offline marketing platforms. So, what do they do ?

Paper Cup Advertising

GingerCup’s marketing strategy entails bringing a brand into the limelight through exquisitely designed printed paper cups used for tea/coffee. The strategically designed quality paper cups feature the client’s logo, website address, offer code, contact details etc. upon them. After getting designed, they are then printed and distributed for free where they are likely to come in contact with targeted audience.
The expert team at GingerCup first decides the right set of people to target, the quantum of cups to be distributed, and the places where the cups are to be distributed. A purposefully designed quality tea cup gets the brand noticed and spoken about. People seem to enjoy every sip of their kick-start drink [tea/coffee] and thus spend ample to have it. So, while having it, they see an alluring ad right in their hand. It is not only welcomed but also shared further through word of mouth.

Flyers

Not all the flyers in the world are distributed with a strategy. GingerCup does it purposefully. It is beyond someone’s imagination how the booming online world can be a boon for an offline marketing campaign. Right from shopping clothes to give them for laundry, from buying books to ordering a pizza, everything is done online. We know everything which is bought has to get delivered at a customer’s place.
GingerCup prints enticingly designed flyers that speak about their clients’ brand/product/service and all the essential information the targeted audience would require knowing about them. Having tied up with the delivery providers, GingerCup gets the flyers delivered at a place along with the products being ordered online. In a fit of excitement to open a newly bought item, people notice what comes along with it. It then makes it certain for the flyer to get read and create an impact about the advertised brand on the reader’s mind.

Carrying a distinctive strategic approach, these marketing methods are easy on the pocket and fertile enough to breed the desired level of brand recognition for an advertiser. Therefore, when there is every possibility of an online ad getting scrolled down, GingerCup’s potential ad weapons are hard to ignore. Indeed, it is something here to stay.
Though Paper Cup Advertising looks very targeted, it would have been better if they could have also added QR Code on the cup which when scanned would take you to the Play Store to download Client’s App. This would have resulted in better ‘Call To Action’
How can Paper cup marketing be used in more engaging manner, please leave your suggestions in the comments section.

|In: Guerrilla Marketing|Last Updated: | 8 Comments
Time has changed and gone are the days where you had to spend huge money to advertise on televisions, radios or any such medium.With the advent of Web 2.0, companies especially startups have found a better, easier and faster method of spreading their ideas.You can find interesting thoughts on Traditional Marketing in my previous articles here & here.

Just came across an interesting video [shown below],which demonstrates “Why the big bucks spent on marketing may not be good enough to catch the eyeballs of the consumer !!!“


Source : Marketing Amnesia

If you [does not matter if you are a technical person like me] are interested in Marketing and want to interact & learn from other marketers, do join the Marketing Unconference group called MarkCamp here and here.You would also find the likes of Mahesh Murthy and other industry experts in the group so you can be assured that your first marketing campaign would not end in this way biggrin.

Related Articles:
Successful Marketing stunts
Marketing strategies for Startups
Email Newsletters : Cost effective way of marketing
Harry Beckwith on “Selling something that no one can see

|In: Books|Last Updated: | 1 Comment
This is in continuation to my earlier article , which listed the 9 differentiators between traditional marketing from guerrilla marketing.Below are the other 9 differentiators between the two sides of marketing:

Note: Guerrilla Marketing is referred as GM in the article.

Traditional Marketing v/s Guerrilla Marketing:

Strategy #10 – Use “You” Marketing:
Traditional marketing is “Me” marketing.A prospect goes to a company’s website and it says “Let me tell you what we do, let me tell you why the company is so big” whereas GM is “You” marketing.GM is always oriented to the customer and not the company, because people are more interested in themselves than in any company.

Strategy #11 – Use Marketing combinations:
Traditional marketing would have people believe that just advertising works or having website works or a particular medium of advertising works.Whereas GM says that times have changed and hence, you need a combination of strategies.Days of single weapon marketing do not work anymore since, we are living in a time where only marketing combinations work biggrin

Strategy #12 – Embrace technology:
Traditional marketing never made allowance for technology since, technology was too complex and it was hard for an average business owner to understand.Things have changed now and Marketers need to be tech-friendly and need to go hand-in-hand with the technology.

Strategy #13 – Create partnerships:
Traditional marketing instructs to compete with the competition whereas GM says to forget the competition and scan the horizon for those businesses with which the firm can cooperate.
The reason: Marketing partners lower the total marketing costs & increase the reach of both the partners.Hence, co-operation(and not competition) is the backbone of GM.

Strategy #14 – Help customers succeed:
Traditional marketing is also about “taking” and about seeing how much money they can get from each of their customers whereas GM is all about “giving“.GM thinks about what they can do to help their customers achieve their goals since, this is what would ultimately help to flow the profits into the company.

Strategy #15 – Build relationships:
At the end of each month, traditional marketers count how much money they have brought in whereas Guerrilla Marketers count how many new relationships they have made.The reason – Longer the relationships, the more sales they will eventually make and the more profits they would eventually earn.

Strategy # 16 – Consider the details:
Traditional marketing only identifies the mass weapons of marketing like radio, television, magazines , newspapers and other mass marketing medium.Due to this some of the minute things in marketing getting unnoticed whereas in case of GM , each and every aspect of marketing is important.
Guerrilla Marketers are aware of all the details of marketing , including the attire worn by their company’s representatives and how their employees treat the people on the telephone.Thus, each and corner is important in case of GM.

Strategy # 17 – Gain consent:
Traditional marketing has always aimed to make the sale with the marketing but the reality is that it is very hard to make a sale with one piece of marketing.Whereas GM aims to gain consent since, once the business has gained consent, it markets only to those people.When a company does that, it is not wasting money by mailing to or marketing to disinterested people.

Strategy # 18 – Increase the Marketing Arsenal:

Last but not the least, traditional marketers always had a limited arsenal.They fail to identify some of the unusual weapons of marketing which is quickly identified by the Guerrilla Marketers and many of them are free.
Companies that use GM are going to find out that their marketing arsenal may consist of twenty different weapons , and of those weapons , many of them would be free lol Hence, the bottom line is : The size of the arsenal of the Guerrilla Marketer is much larger than the arsenal of the traditional marketer.


|In: Books|Last Updated: | 3 Comments
What is Guerrilla Marketing?
Guerrilla Marketing is pursuing conventional goals using unconventional means.It begins with an idea for how to generate profits for a business and become a circle when that business has the blessed patronage of repeat & referral customers.

More about “What is Guerrilla Marketing” as described by it’s so called father Jay Conrad Levinson here
In my opinion:

From a blogger’s point of view, Guerrilla Marketing comes into picture when the no of readers of your blog increase since, the first few readers of your blog are the ones that have spread the word about your blog wink

Traditional Marketing v/s Guerrilla Marketing:
There are lot of differences when we compare the traditional marketing with Guerrilla Marketing and this is the strategy that keeps Small & Medium Businesses(SMB) alive & kicking.In the book “The best of Guerrilla Marketing”, Jay Conrad has described 18 strategies that differentiates traditional marketing from Guerrilla marketing.The article is divided in two sub-parts, the first 9 key differentiators are listed below:

Note: Guerrilla Marketing is referred as GM in the article.

Strategy #1 – Invest Time, Not money:
Traditional marketers say that a marketer’s primary investment should be money.With GM, the primary investments should be time, energy and imagination.If marketers are willing to invest enough time, energy and imagination;they don’t have to invest as much money.

Strategy #2 – Measure performance by Profitability:
Traditional marketing measures it’s performance by sales while guerrilla marketing focusses on profits.Anybody can achieve high sales, but it takes talent to generate ever increasing profit.
For example: A store owner may feel that more the no of purchasers in the store, more is the profit.But many times, more sales does not result in an increasing profit.The reason – They are not making a lot of money on each sale & the cost of doing business is subtracting more.Hence, guerrillas focus more on profit because that’s how executives build their business.

Strategy #3 – Spend Small:
Traditional marketing has always been suited for big businesses.The reality is GM is geared to small businesses with big dreams – but a tiny bank account biggrin

Strategy #4 – Maintain Focus:
Traditional marketing says that companies should grow their businesses large & than diversify into different fields & services.GM says that companies will probably get in trouble if they do that; the ability to maintain focus will lead to a company’s success much more than it’s concept of diversifying.

Strategy #5 – Know the tools:
Traditional marketing is full of guesses; marketers are not sure if it includes sales and they are not certain if advertising really is marketing.Guerrilla marketers feel no sense of intimidation and to them, there is no mystique about marketing.

Strategy #6 – Eliminate Guesswork:
Traditional marketing has always been about guesses whereas GM is based more on psychology.For example: Guerrilla marketers know that 90% of purchase decisions come from an unconscious mind, and they know that such a manner of accessing human unconscious mind is through repetition.

Strategy # 7 – Grow Geometrically:
Traditional marketing has always said that companies should focus to add new customers one at a time and that is an expensive way to grow : Arithmetically. GM tries to grow companies geometrically, enlarging the size of each transaction; and having more transactions from each customer.It is always easy to sell to an existing customer which in turn results into the birth of new customers(as a result of referral from the existing customers)

Strategy # 8 – Target individuals:
Traditional marketing always aims it’s messages at groups,the larger the group the better.GM aims it’s message at individuals , just a few at a time; if it’s going to be a group, the smaller the group the better.

Strategy # 9 – Follow Up:
Traditional marketing seems to have aimed at making sale, period while GM is big on Follow Up.Guerrilla Marketers say “You have to make a sale and than follow up with that customer”.Most of the lost businesses is not due to bad service but due to loss of apathy after the sale.Customers are ignored after the sale.
That’s why Guerrillas follow up with all of their customers and stay in touch with them.They can’t wait for customers to come to them; they have to constantly be proactive and get in touch with their customers,through any medium.This also gives an indication that “You are valued and are very important biggrin“

The other nine differentiators would follow in the next article.