Guerrilla marketing
Introduction
Nowadays it becomes more and more difficult to win your target audience’s attention using only ATL communications. And every person who starts out as a business man, who begins thinking about the advertising campaign, faces the following question: how to avoid the overloaded advertising communications?
The second topic problem is money. It is natural enough that beginners in business face the lack of money and the second topic question is: how to introduce the advertising campaign without big costs?
The answer to some extent to these questions is guerrilla marketing. So, guerrilla marketing – what is it?
Definition
First there's marketing. Then you have direct marketing, consumer marketing, B2B marketing, buzz marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, online marketing...really, the list is endless. But one form often left out is guerrilla marketing.
The term "guerrilla marketing" was first mentioned and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his popular 1984 book, Guerrilla Marketing. The term guerrilla marketing was inspired by guerrilla warfare which is a form of irregular warfare and relates to the small tactic strategies used by armed civilians. Many of these tactics includes ambushes, sabotage, raids and elements of surprise. Much like guerrilla warfare, guerrilla marketing uses the same sort of tactics in the marketing industry.
This alternative advertising style relies heavily on unconventional marketing strategy, high energy and imagination. Guerrilla marketing is about taking the consumer by surprise, make an indelible impression and create copious amounts of social buzz. Guerrilla marketing is said to make a far more valuable impression with consumers in comparison to more traditional forms of advertising and marketing. This is due to the fact that most guerrilla marketing campaigns aim to strike the consumer at a more personal and memorable level.
In the words of the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson, this describes guerrilla marketing: "I'm referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always -- achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.”
The key principles
Jay Conrad Levinson has laid out some key principles to help explain the essence of guerrilla marketing: * Guerrilla marketing is based on human psychology and the way people think and react vs. judgment and guesswork. * With guerrilla marketing, there's an emphasis on profits, not just sales. * A good measure of guerrilla marketing is the number of relationships you build over a particular period of time. * Guerrilla marketing employs a focus on markets and target audiences vs. trying to be all things to mass markets. * There's a concentration on three specific ways to increase business: new referrals, more transactions from existing customers and larger transactions from existing customers. * Instead of out-and-out competition, guerrilla marketing supports cooperation with other businesses. * Guerrilla marketing is made up of many elements all working together and supporting each component of the program. * Technology is the guerrilla marketer's friend. Use it. Leverage it. Profit from it.

How guerrilla marketer should act?
This type of marketing is primarily designed for small businesses and independent professionals. Other organizations such as nonprofits have also found it beneficial. It's great for small business because it's important for a guerrilla marketer to be flexible and agile to react to marketplace environments and influences-- without layers of bureaucracy to go through, small businesses can change course as needed.
Guerrilla marketing has a major profit orientation and emphasis. Since guerrilla marketers don't have unlimited funds, they must employ smarter rather than harder ways to work. This is done through the full use of time, energy, information, knowledge and, most of all, imagination. The guerrilla marketer must use all of his or her contacts to network, find creative publicity stories, angles and outlets, and generate ideas that'll get noticed and talked about.
The main types (methods) of guerrilla marketing.
Life placement. The essence of this market instrument is that advertisements of some products are introduced into our life. Unlike the traditional TV, radio, outdoor advertising, this approach is meant to contact with people. As an example, people can notice the advertisement of soap nearby the handrails in a bus...just an example.
Shocking marketing. The approach when companies play on the brink of breaking the rules. They are trying to attract their customer’s attention by doing something shocking, unethical.
Hidden marketing. The essence is that customers don’t realize that some actions are aimed at them. They don’t recognize the adverting as advertising but they get the necessary information about the product.
Viral marketing. Its point is to make the customers pass the information about the product by word of mouth. Some person gets excited of some video from YouTube and right away wants to share it with his or her friend and so on.
The examples * Chipotle's offer of a free burrito to anyone dressed up like one of their football-size burritos on Halloween * A business owner associating himself current event as an expert so he can get quoted in the media * Sonic DriveIn Restaurant's magnetic cups that adhere to the trunk of a car as it drives off, making it appear as if the driver forgot to remove his drink from its temporary resting place. This marketing stunt really got talked about, and word-of-mouth marketing took over and helped spread the word about this restaurant.
Conclusion
So, guerrilla marketing is very useful and up-to-date phenomenon: it can be implemented, when it is a lack of money, when it is impossible to solve the problem by traditional methods, when it is necessary to deal with specified group of customers, when standard “market” of advertising campaigns is overload.
It helps the beginners to keep afloat and to compete with more strong companies.
References
1. Jay Conrad Levinson "Guerrilla Advertising", 1984 2. What Is Guerrilla Marketing Anyway?/ Entrepreneur Internet source URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/193490 3. What Is Guerrilla Marketing?/ Creative Guerilla Marketing Internet source URL: http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/what-is-guerrilla-marketing/ 4. Guerilla Marketing/ Wikipedia Internet source URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/