Guerrilla Marketing Tactics That Create Buzz

• By AllBusiness.com
• On 8:00 am EDT, Monday September 7, 2009

If you're a small business owner with a small marketing budget, you might want to consider guerilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is the practice of using unconventional approaches to reach potential customers to get your advertising message across. The ultimate goal is to generate buzz and create interest from a modest effort.

Become a Guerrilla

There are many examples of successful guerilla marketing efforts. For instance, a bubblegum company attached large balloons with the name of the bubblegum to the faces of models on other billboard advertisements. Attention getting? Yes. Expensive? No. Long lasting? Probably not. But those balloons probably lasted long enough to get people talking. And that's the point of guerilla marketing.

You can come up with your own guerrilla marketing campaign by assessing your business and its products. Think about alternative ways of promoting your products. For example, a local dentist marketed himself by creating a huge set of teeth and wrapping them around a tree. Individual teeth were pull-off advertisements with the dentist office information. The only cost to the dentist was the time to create the teeth and the printing.

Think Outside the Billboard

You expect to see billboards on the way to work, placards on the bus beside you, and a two-page layout in magazines. This is traditional advertising. Guerrilla marketing is unexpected and it grabs consumers' attention. Guerrilla marketing takes marketing to another level. Much of it takes place outside, in parks, along tree-lined city streets, or where people congregate. One farmer's market created fiberglass carrots that wrapped around the base of tree trunks, with the farmer's market logo imprinted at eye level. People who drove by the trees saw a forest of huge carrots. It was memorable, it was funny, and people talked about it. And more than a few people stopped to check out the market who might have driven past it previously.

Create Something Outrageous

Golden Palace.com, an online gaming company, rented out advertising space on people's faces. It simply painted its logo on people's foreheads and they wore it for a specified amount of time. They showed up all over the place for several months, gaining serious exposure. This is another perfect example of guerrilla marketing. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it can show up just about anywhere, from the side of a building to a person's face. It's quirky and memorable.

Another example of quirky marketing is an advertisement that furniture and housewares giant Ikea created for a new line of furniture. The company literally transformed a bus stop into an intimate living room, complete with window coverings, comfortable throw pillows, and an area rug. Photos of it spread wildly across the Internet.

Come up with your own creative solutions to market your business and you'll build buzz, customer satisfaction, and renewed interest in your products.

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