Social Networks in Guerrilla Marketing

The term Social marketing was first used in the 1970s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman, the marketing specialists, realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviours. Kotler and Andreasen define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviours not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society." (Weinreich, 2006)

The small business can be in an advantage ahead of large companies in the area of social media marketing by using guerrilla marketing principles that Internet marketing and tools of interaction, as it was presented, can be applied. The input of the small or mid-sized company can be only when considering activity on social networks an investment of time and individual effort that will be at least equal to the return of investment. The objectives of the business can be: increasing brand awareness, website traffic or search engine optimization that has also impact to the previously mentioned website traffic.

The Global Online Media Landscape, a survey of Nielsen Company, global information and media company, reveals that social networking sites ("Member Community") eclipsed E-mail in global reach at 68.4% vs. 64.8% in February 2009. The steady upward march of micro-blogging site Twitter will likely be the biggest online media story this year (The Nielsen Company, 2009 (PDF, 4.99 MB).

Audience Utilities, Video and Social Media

Image 15 Audience Utilities, Video and Social Media, The Nielsen Company, 2009

From time spent perspective, Member Communities surpassed e-mail usage and social networks increasing attraction of users from around the world as Nielsen research shows. As the secondary research of statistics shows, the use of social networks have been increasing and member communities is currently one of the most important sources of potential target customers on Internet.

Social Networks ranking

Image 16 Social Networking is Big, The Nielsen Company, 2009 (right); Social Networks ranking, Compete.com, 2009 (Compete.com, 2009)

Use of guerrilla marketing on Facebook, the largest social network according to research, is introduced on example of guerrilla marketing online campaign below.

Creative concept #4

Guerrilla marketing on Facebook for an Italian film

Guerrilla Marketing activities has become a tool for alternative promotion of cultural events and movies. This is an example of an innovate marketing for the Italian film Feisbum, released in May 2009. In Rome, these posters have appeared to promote the film with the quote “Thank heavens I discovered the kind of animal traitor you are! Before marrying you…” On the Facebook, the social network, visitors can find out more of the story between Antonio and Valeria, two characters whose marriage doesn’t work out before it even starts (Alison, 2009)

Image 17 An example of guerrilla marketing with use of Facebook, Alison, 2009

Image 18 Guerrilla Marketing campaign on Facebook for Italian Film, Facebook Group, Feisbum Film, Facebook, 2009

The guerrilla marketing campaign performed on Facebook with combination to street wild-posting is an example of such guerrilla marketing online campaign including all guerrilla principles: unexpectedness, drasticity (radical in nature), humorous, one-shop (temporary), cheap and containing customer benefit (entertainment). Any particular potential large risk of such campaign cannot be identified when the creative concept of the campaign is properly performed. 

Creative concept #5
Tagged in the game - Guerrilla Marketing on Facebook

This campaign is based on an article "'Hacking' Facebook Photos in the Name of Guerrilla Marketing" by Sam Lessin. The key factor on this Internet marketing strategy in the example is that people that the cause promoter has “tagged” in the image are not actually in the image and have not actively lent their support to the message however they become automatically part of the campaign when their identity in social network is linked by tag into the image. Rather, the individual supporting the given cause is hijacking a friend’s name to broadcast a message to the friends of their friend (Lessin, 2009).

Background: In this new example of the guerrilla marketing on social networks the marketer promotes new social network for students and passionate readers called K4U, a website provided by Municipal Library in Prague and developed by Inspiro Solutions, a Prague-based web design studio. There was a new game for community members launched in the middle of April 2009 and the Inspiro Solutions company had worked on promoting the game to new potential members of community.

Description: There was a photo gallery album with couple of photos from the game environment published on Facebook and I tagged 150 of my friends on the three photos where small figures of library visitors are depicted with a description "You have the honour to be depicted on a new game on K4U.cz. Defeat others and go to http://www.knihovna4u.cz/cs/hra/polozka:8/".

Image 19 Tagged in the game, The Facebook page containing the photo with tagged persons, the photo created by Inspiro Solutions, Vit Horky, print screened on Facebook, 2009.

Image 20 Tagged in the game, Guerrilla Marketing on Facebook, The campaign objectives, created by Vit Horky

Evalutation

...However, It is very important to say, that using names of other people as a tool of creating a buzz may be defined as an unethical and it is essential to create such a campaign where negative impacts are limited to minimum. In this case, there were only close relatives and near friends tagged and almost everybody had know before that I am involved in the K4u, the website server, development and promotion.

Image 21 Tagged in the game, Google Analytics statistics of the webpage; captured in Google Analytics in August 8, 2009 for the period from May 4, 2009 to May 11, 2009 with comparison to (green colour) period from April 29, 2009 to May 3, 2009. Statistics of the page: http://www.knihovna4u.cz/cs/hra/polozka:8/

The campaign raised website traffic from the Facebook website by 189% at the week the campaign was launched. There were total of 361 unique visitors captured. The campaign fulfilled its objectives to raise attention on the website K4U among the target audience of young people and it can be assumed that the photo containing message and link to K4U viewed more than 500 unique visitors (tagged friends and their networks).

The campaign was designed with respect to all guerrilla marketing principles. However, It is very important to mention, that using names of other people as a tool of creating a buzz may be defined as unethical and it is essential to create such a campaign where negative impacts are limited to minimum. In this case, there were only close relatives and near friends tagged and almost everybody had know before that the author of the campaign has been involved in the K4U, the social website server, development and promotion.

Instant Messeging in Guerrilla Marketing?!