What is guerilla marketing and how can UK businesses use it?

Summary/Overview

Guerilla marketing can help you drive publicity and brand awareness by thinking outside of the box. It can be a great tool for small businesses looking to use creative and unconventional marketing tactics to promote their brand and evoke audience emotion.

What you need to create a guerilla marketing campaign will depend on your industry. But Adobe Express can help you tap into your creativity and bring your own strategies to life.

Read on to explore some guerilla marketing examples, and learn how your business can utilise these tactics to boost your brand.

Try Adobe Express for free now

What is guerilla marketing?

Guerilla marketing is used to boost brand awareness and audience engagement by using unconventional marketing methods. The aim is to drive publicity by evoking powerful emotions – like shock and surprise.

The term was coined in the 1980s by Jay Conrad Levinson – a business writer who was inspired by the idea of ‘guerilla warfare’. Guerilla warfare itself is a military strategy based on the idea of surprise, or catching people off-guard. Guerilla marketing takes a similar approach – albeit with less extreme results.

Why use guerilla marketing for your brand or business?

While the idea was created in the 80s, when the marketing world looked much different, guerilla marketing remains important for brands today. In fact, with the rise of short, hook-dependent social media content, it’s perhaps more relevant than ever.

As an accessible marketing tactic, UK small businesses can utilise guerilla marketing to create memorable campaigns and boost brand engagement. Some practical benefits include:

• Low cost. Guerilla marketing tactics today rely on simple and effective methods, usually driven by virality. Using ‘unusual’ interactive tactics on social media means you can keep things cost-effective, but still generate great results.
• High-impact and memorable. Being experimental and creative means you’re more likely to stand out from the crowd. The end result is often a memorable marketing campaign that can naturally snowball through word of mouth or online interaction.
• Tailored to specific audiences. As guerilla marketing is flexible, you can tailor campaigns to your audience as they develop. If you notice a change in attitude or engagement levels, you can tweak your approach with a creative solution.
• Ideal for building partnerships. An unexpected and delightful partnership with a local business could work well as part of a guerilla marketing campaign. Out-of-the-box thinking can inspire you to approach brands you may not have considered previously, and build all-important local partnerships.

Editable guerilla marketing materials for UK businesses.

Types of guerilla marketing options to explore.

As with any marketing tactic, it’s important to tailor your guerilla marketing strategy to suit your brand. What works for one business might not work for another – it all depends on your industry, audience and the products and services you provide.

There are several guerilla marketing options to explore when looking for the approach that suits you best.

Street Marketing.

Street marketing involves taking your campaigns to public places. You’ll often see this in the form of face-to-face advertising, road shows and pop-ups. If you don’t think your audience would respond well to in-person tactics, artwork, posters and flyers are other street marketing alternatives.

Ambient Marketing.

Ambient marketing uses visual methods that draw on the context of their environment to elicit a reaction. For example, you might place your logo or a poster somewhere people might not expect to see marketing materials. The purpose of the ad itself and the use of space are often thought-provoking or ironic. This could include places like bathrooms, buses and billboards.

Viral Marketing.

Viral marketing relies on social media interactions to spread content and campaigns, which would have traditionally travelled through word of mouth. Brands utilise the rapport between themselves and their audience and lean on this to encourage further engagement outside of their usual target demographics

Stealth Marketing.

Stealth marketing uses subtle techniques to advertise products and services to people, without them realising they’re being advertised to. A classic example of this would be product placements in film or TV. Today, a more common use of this technique is influencer marketing, where people naturally discuss and recommend products they’ve been paid to promote. Though it’s important to adhere to the relevant ad regulations and disclosures within the content.

Free samples for guerilla marketing tactics.

Guerilla marketing examples from the UK.

UK brands continue to use guerilla marketing in their campaigns. Whatever the business size, these techniques can be incredibly useful when building brand momentum – especially online. Let’s take a look at a few effective guerilla marketing examples used by UK organisations.

Specsavers.

Specsavers often play on their tagline of ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’ by using it to design funny and ironically placed posters and billboards. They often utilise ambient marketing techniques to create public campaigns that elicit an immediate humourous response.

For example, one of their billboards was a large advertisement placed at a 90-degree angle intentionally leaving part of the poster out of the billboard frame. Meanwhile, the poster simply reads ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’, though you have to tilt your head to see it. There’s no need to advertise any products – the brand pulls on its established audience rapport and ‘inside joke’ to further build overall brand engagement.

These campaigns create something a little bit different, and appeal to a British sense of humour. They play on the shared ironic laughter of an ‘accidental’ brand blunder.

Urban Tandoor.

Urban Tandoor is an independent Bristol restaurant whose TikTok musical parodies have taken the platform by storm. They’re a great case to illustrate the power of viral marketing for small businesses. These low-budget videos tap into a shared sense of humour that spans multiple demographics and utilise classic guerilla marketing techniques.

They simply don’t take themselves too seriously, which creates shock and delight as people engage with their chaotic and haphazard music videos. One of their most popular TikToks – a parody of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John’s ‘You’re the One That I Want’ – or, as they say, ‘You Got the Naan That I Want’ – has over 3.7 million views. And their DIY style shows that you don’t need budget to go viral: it was filmed on a phone with a few pink wigs just outside their restaurant.

The proof is in the pudding with this tactic. Urban Tandoor is currently rated 4.6/5 on Google out of over 2.4k reviews, with people travelling across the UK to visit them.

ALDI

ALDI has always liked to get experimental with street marketing. They aren’t afraid to get a little cheeky and are known for their expert placement of street ads. For example, their ‘Colin all cake fans’ trailer ad referenced M&S’ Colin the Caterpillar cake, while advertising their own Cuthbert the Caterpillar. They parked the trailer outside an M&S for extra buzz.

They’re also known to develop this technique with viral marketing. Their social media accounts are direct and tongue-in-cheek, encouraging shares and virality. As an example, they paired their well-placed bus stop ad for their Big Stack burger (located outside a McDonald’s), with a bold tweet that said, ‘All we need now is an ice cream machine that never works’.

Try Adobe Express for free now

Useful things to know.

What are the rules of guerilla marketing?

There are no strict ‘rules’ to guerilla marketing techniques. It simply requires you to think outside the box, and approach campaigns from unexpected angles. You should focus on low-cost ideas and strategies, and those you think will surprise people.

What makes guerilla marketing effective?

Guerilla marketing uses unexpected strategies and novel thinking to create memorable experiences. This can increase the chance of your campaigns being shared, either online or by word of mouth. Plus, unique strategies can help evoke unexpected reactions from your audience, which they may not experience with other ‘safe’ traditional marketing methods.

What could be the problem with guerilla marketing?

Because guerilla marketing is often dependent on trends, this means that virality can be tricky to achieve – and can also be short lived. Both guerilla and social media marketing can be risky and unpredictable, which is why it’s usually best to stick to low-cost projects and test out your approaches.

Explore more related posts.