Guerrilla Marketing principles
AIDA model in Internet marketing communication
As the literature review shown, three elements of innovate marketing was identified as the most important principles for non-traditional marketing. These elements are: a high degree of innovation and originality, divergent thinking and risk taking. By comparing this definition to variety of guerrilla marketing definitions available online a set of common elements may be found as the ground of the guerrilla marketing. By fulfilling the goal of internet marketing, to satisfy customers in profitable way by using Internet and other digital channels, the business objectives transformed into marketing activities of the company can be reached by combining the characteristics of the traditional marketing and internet marketing with elements of effective marketing communication models. One of such is AIDA model, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Following diagram shows how the AIDA model may be used on Internet.
Image 9 AIDA model in Internet marketing, Vit Horky
Guerrilla Marketing Principles
By contrasting from the various definitions of guerrilla marketing which only identifies the main elements of guerrilla communications like unexpected, drastic or cheap, the author of this research adopts definition of Guerrilla Marketing of Alexander Reidl, former marketing director of Volvo Cars Middle East. According to his thoughts there is a set of six characteristics that every guerrilla campaign has to fulfil. Not every innovate or shocking campaign means that it is guerrilla marketing campaign. Following diagram identifies the inseparable elements of guerrilla marketing campaigns and further explanation is provided after.
Completely unexpected
The result of completely unexpected situation is a surprise- a moment when the situation that arises was not expected and the participant of the event was not prepared to witness or be part of such situation. There are many ways how to catch interest of people by putting usual objects to unusual places or using usual objects in unusual time. Unexpectedness may be used as an advantage. By witnessing a surprising situation people tend to raise their attention. Therefore, the marketers may use such situation to attract the visitor, on Internet in particular, to receive a message which contains the marketing message.
Guerrilla marketing trades effort for money (Krawder, 2009)
Very important fact is that unexpected campaign can be taken negative by the target audience eventually. The marketer should build the campaign in such way that will minimize the negative effects of the element of surprise in the campaign as a part of the Attention phase, the first phase of AIDA model. A process of segmentation and proper profiling of target audience can be identified as one of the most important part of preparation for building a guerrilla campaign which use the moment of unexpectedness effectively.
Drastic
A word "drastic" is defined by Oxford Dictionary as having a strong or far-reaching effect (Oxford Dictionary, 2009) . Any guerrilla marketing campaign should work with a form of drasticity in order to reach maximum relevant target audience. The element drasticity enables the marketer to reach large number of message receivers without necessarily large marketing budget. It is the element that may significantly help the campaign to be cost-effective with high degree of Attention and Interest element. The negative aspect of any form of drastic behaviour is that the marketing message can be automatically rejected of the target audience, or its part, because it can assess the campaign as impolite or strongly negatively affecting their individual values.
Humorous
Humorous effect in the marketing communication helps to diminish the barriers between the sender and receiver, the business organisation and the customer respectively. Moreover, entertainment in the marketing communication can significantly increase the efficiency of the campaign by reaching larger number of receivers. Humorous effect is in promotion and marketing communication difficult to create however by looking at the video coverage of chosen guerrilla campaigns in the end of this section as a part of this work shows that the effect is in guerrilla campaigns is commonly used. The humorous aspect is also one of those that differentiate the campaign from most of others. However, as the secondary research indicates, many so called guerrilla marketing campaigns have not proved that humour was one of the elements of the campaign. According to the research can be stated that those guerrilla marketing campaigns that contains the effect of humour reach more receivers and helps to create interest. Humour is used commonly in viral marketing campaigns distributed over Internet uncoordinated by the Internet users.
One shot game
One shot game, meaning that the guerrilla marketing campaign is performed only in strictly limited period of time, indicates that the receivers of the guerrilla messages understand that the campaign is only temporary the concept should not be used again on the same market. This aspect has in Internet marketing great importance because variety of interactive tools and techniques can make long-term guerrilla campaign for users that will be allowed to see the campaign only temporarily. The campaign can last several months but once the visitors watch it, it never appears on his/her screen again.
Cheap
The cost of guerrilla campaign can be often the purpose of attractiveness for the businesses. The objective is to create rumour, buzz effect and immediate impact on target group but still keeping the budget tight. This means: creativity, innovation and saving processes come necessarily to place in the marketing planning. The principles of innovation and creativity in marketing explained already in the literature review reveals its importance because cost-effectiveness and creativity may be the major factor influencing the marketing managers or SME business owners to apply guerrilla marketing principles on Internet, as the primary research findings indicated. The cost is relative parameter when it comes to comparison of cost to target group impact. The large number of internet users and technical accessibility of the Internet content indicate that the impact of any guerrilla marketing campaign can be large and therefore the cost of the guerrilla campaign highly depend on the planned targeted segments to be reached and type of the guerrilla marketing campaign. However, there should be still clearly identifiable difference between the necessary budget for guerrilla campaign and a traditional marketing campaign (for example Internet banner ad) with the same target group.
Goodwill and customer benefit
Goodwill can be defined as a disposition to kindness and compassion (Princeton University, 2009) or more specifically as an intangible asset which provides a competitive advantage, such as a strong brand, reputation, or high employee morale (BT Group, 2009).
Customer benefit can be the most difficult aspect to reach in applying to the marketing activity. When a customer buys a laptop in a store, he pays for his own benefit to work and communicate anywhere. He gets benefit immediately because he purchased the laptop and opened it up in his car and started immediately to use it. However, the customer benefit may be less visible when another customer is travelling to her office by tram and she is exposed to several numbers of billboards, big boards, light boards or flyers during the way. The benefit for her can come at the time she uses the business message from an advert for her own benefit by purchasing new laptop for 25% discount for example than in the store where she was planning to buy it. However, for those people who do not need any of the products and services aggressively communicated in most of the advertising places outside the benefit is very difficult or even impossible to find.
Guerrilla marketing campaign should always give the target audience something that will make them feel richer or satisfied. The literature review revealed that those campaigns that use creativity and innovation which build trust and self-satisfaction of the customers may significantly help to efficiency of the marketing campaign. The benefit can be delivered by giving something for free or just giving them reason to smile.
Analysis of all principles on an example
Resource: YouTube, visited on August 6, 2009,
accessible on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSx5SiXmdZM
