Marketing Communications and Developing Marketing of Guerilla Marketing Techniques (Essay Sample)

GUERILLA MARKETING
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Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u INTRODUCTION PAGEREF _Toc290316168 \h 3GUERILLA MARKETING AND TRADITIONAL MARKETING PAGEREF _Toc290316169 \h 4Technical PAGEREF _Toc290316170 \h 5Emotional PAGEREF _Toc290316171 \h 6Niche Marketing PAGEREF _Toc290316172 \h 7Mix Promotions PAGEREF _Toc290316173 \h 9Examples IBM PAGEREF _Toc290316174 \h 10CONCLUSION PAGEREF _Toc290316175 \h 12BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGEREF _Toc290316176 \h 14
Critically discuss what is meant by Guerrilla Marketing, showing how it is different from Traditional Marketing. Illustrate your answer with detailed and relevant examples of your choice.
INTRODUCTION
Guerilla Marketing is another promotion tool which is characterized by surprise effect. This tool of marketing promotions has become a very popular marketing strategy in current times. "Guerilla" originally denotes or represents a group that uses a violent approach to achieve the implementation of their beliefs and ideology. The Guerilla fighter’s only advantage is the fact that only they know where and when they will strike. Guerilla marketing has been used to advantage by many small firms for reaching a target group of audience and obtain larger market share. "Guerilla" appeared during war of independence in Spain and Portugal at the beginning of the 19th century. It is a Spanish expression which is meant as "battle”. The term and the connected operations became famous through Ernesto Che Guevara Lynch de la Serna (1928 – 1967), best known as Che Guevara, who used and defined this military tactic. This group of rebels were having weaker position and only chance to achieve a successful revolution in Cuba was to fight the national military. The group based their operations on the surprise effect and on acts of sabotage. The usage of unconventional weapons and activities helped them to destabilize their rivals and led them to their final success.
Levinson who has been dubbed as the father of guerilla marketing has said -"I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which is achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods”. Guerilla marketing techniques were later studied by trout and ries who have had a different and developing idea on guerilla marketing - market size also has to be manageable with the limited and available resources (Kraus, Harms, & Fink, 2010, p. 19). Therefore they suggested specializing and investing in a niche product and/or market niche.
Even Kotler has had a different opinion on guerilla marketing which suggested that a competitive strategy adopted by market challengers increasing their own profitability by gaining more market share from other companies in the same industry is the likely cause for such marketing tactics.Kotler maintains that competitive advantage over the challenged company is the foundation for a good strategy, but also involves high risks, especially when the potential gain is high. The competitive strategy employing guerilla marketing is thus a good tactic approach but cannot be completely a marketing tactic. The guerilla marketing must have specified alternative explanations and qualities specifying the necessary details of such a marketing promotions. Guerilla marketing has increased in utility across many firms and necessitated use of surprise element in strategy because of following three aspects (Dahlén, Granlund, & Grenros, 2009, p.155-163):
Due largely from big business downsizing, decentralization, relaxed government regulations,
affordable technology, growing awareness people have tended towards smaller businesses.
Small business failures have increased where one of the main reasons is a failure to understand
marketing.
Guerrilla Marketing has again proved that for success in small businesses action to work is the essence.
GUERILLA MARKETING AND TRADITIONAL MARKETING
Technical
Guerilla marketing differs from traditional marketing in many ways, it was always the aim of marketers to attract new customers and to keep the existing customers loyal, but since the market and the environment have changed so immensely, the way to get through to the customer has also changed. Guerilla Marketing fits these needs of today - away from uniformity and insistency towards creativity and flexibility (Baltes & Leibing, 2008, p.46-55). It creates brand awareness more easily than do the other traditional advertising and promotion efforts. The techniques under guerilla marketing are altogether different than those for traditional promotional tools. These are classified as the following:-
* Out-of-Home Weapons
* Ambient Marketing
* Guerilla Sensation
* Ambush Marketing
* New Media Weapons
* Viral Marketing
* Guerilla Mobile
* Low Budget Weapons
* Clever ideas for small and medium-sized companies
Ambient marketing techniques involves cranes, pizza cartons, free postcards in bars and so on.
Ambush marketing technique involves promotions without paying a sponsorship fee. At many major events one brand of a particular category pays a high price to be the exclusive sponsor, which leaves their competitors out. Ambush Marketers then still find a way to make notice of their brand in connection with the event. Pepsi for instance placed a huge oversize Pepsi bottle close to a soccer game which was sponsored by Coca Cola. Word-of-mouth technique of viral marketing is indeed required for the new marketing of small products and which are profitably developed within the context of marketing. Since the number of mobile phones exceeds the number of inhabitants in many countries, the cell phone is a permanent companion of prospects.
Even though they often rely on a classical marketing mix, advertising campaigns make use of the Guerilla surprise effect and its witty ideas. With the help of only a small budget, the maximum attention is drawn to their advertising. Although companies of all sizes utilize the same new defined approaches of Guerilla Marketing, the reasons why they opt for that instrument differ. For small and medium sized companies the advantage from the cost-effectiveness makes it much more interesting to implement. Guerilla Marketing is an additional marketing instrument, which provides additional value in form of attention. Classical advertising alone often fails to provide extra value. Guerilla Marketing is not a guarantor of success. A design framework is needed to make campaigns as effective as possible, since people in the modern world have a rather negative attitude towards advertising (Lin & Smyrnios, 2007, p.67-88). Thereby it is fundamentally important to create an advertisement that does not praise the obvious advantages of low prices and high qualities. The creative idea is fundamental and is supposed to reflect positively on the brand. Since many companies face decreasing marketing budgets lately, Guerilla marketing is a cost-effective alternative to traditional marketing strategies.
Emotional
The purchasing process is always fairly emotional. This distinguishes the guerilla marketing from various other marketing techniques like personal selling, exhibitions, advertisements etc. The process for purchasing of marketing and advertising needlessly requires estimating budget costs from other costs, determining given needs and wants of consumer product, likely nature of product or service quality etc. Thus where the purchasing for a normal product becomes based on financial, selling value, repeat purchases the purchases for the guerilla marketing needs is more emotional (Ashwin, 2006, p.5-7). This indicates that lower expectations from traditional marketing are based more from market behavior than expected from guerilla marketing needs.
Niche Marketing
Maintaining focus (sticking to your niche) is a characteristic need for the marketing of the niche segmentation that is essential and important while the traditional marketing focuses only on the marketing to varied population and may not be advertised to only the given focused segment. Thus the elementary requirement for the traditional marketing focuses more on determining goals of customer positioning while these may not necessarily alleviate any changes between guerilla marketing and marketing mix. Thus guerilla marketing eliminates need for any changes in marketing mix where the positioning remains sturdy with the niche only. Grow your business geometrically with Guerilla Marketing while this may not be possible from the techniques of traditional marketing concepts of advertising and marketing. The marketing from tactics of guerilla marketing are usually never unable to market the product or service linearly or progressively to a normally increasing level whereas the guerilla marketing techniques are maintained and help the marketing of the product or services in a geometric progression itself. Enlarge the size of transaction (units and $) within the services and products division the guerilla marketing tends to enhance transactions limits by leaps and bounds (Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants. Breakthrough tactics for winning profitable clients, 2005). This is achieved not from traditional marketing mix which makes the commodity scalable with a frontier of given transactions which remains valid for the traditional marketing technique. The guerilla marketing on the other hand somehow typically brings a enlargement of transactions of budget and marketing costs for the commodity by first being low and then being transformed into a larger scale budget. Network and ask for referrals from each customer is a basic need for the guerilla marketing where linkages and customer connectivity from the networking increases brand promotions and visibility. This is different from tradit...