Favorite Offline Guerrilla Marketing Tactics

i Don' think these techniques will be worth the time

It depends on the nature of the business, social media does not work for everything.

Another idea similar to your stickers to use vinyl decals for your car, and to print up some yard signs and put them in areas on the highways, similar to how people do this with political signs.

There are a couple guys that get paid to paint logos on their faces for the day.

You could try that. It will get peoples attention

I'm not exactly sure what you budget is, but facebook ads could do a lot for you. I say this because you can geo target your exact audience using FB so only those ppl see you ad. My company is doing this for a guy run for the house of representatives in a town of 16,000.

Beside that you could print off some yard signs with interested copy and nail them to telephone poles. Make sure to check your local laws though before going out and doing this. In my area you see this all the time although I'm not 100% sure it's even legal. However, the signs stay up for months in super busy intersections.

Hope that helps!

Sean

Because Guerrilla Marketing is a true marketing methodology and principle set, I encourage you to take a true marketing approach.

Many people think Guerrilla Marketing is all about "gimmicks", "street marketing" or some sort of unexpectedly creative tactic. While this may be a result of a Guerrilla Marketing plan, GM is far more than that alone.

Guerrilla Marketing is unconventional strategies, secrets, and tactics for earning conventional goals -- big profits from your small business.

Guerrilla Marketing is all about using Time, Energy and Imagination to increase the amount of money one makes in business.

Beyond recognizing a "limited budget", come up with a number. Then make a plan from that number.

Make sure you understand your target audience and then go after them in a way that makes sense to them.

HOW YOU USE the tools you select for marketing is much MORE IMPORTANT than WHAT you use to market.

Be sure your goals are measurable.

Waste of time and money. You might as well hire someone to stand on a street corner yelling out your website URL.

The best method, as well as best bang for your buck, is direct mail to targeted prospects. End of story.

~Dexx

Gimmicks have their place because sometimes they do work.

It would help if you told the forum what type of website it is. Then it would be easier to come up with a gimmick that is more likely to work for your target market. As several of our resident experts here have indicated, it starts and ends with your targeting.

I gotta go with the majority here. Especially Dexx. In fact, everyone is saying what they think, but you simply made a statement in your original post and asked no questions.

Are you asking for more brainstorming ideas? Are you asking us if these are good ideas? Are you suggesting these are the best ones out there? What was the purpose?

If it's your opinion, then no one's opinion here matters. If it was to ask a question on if your idea was good, then you've got some good advice here...there are better ways.

However, if your market is the people walking down the street looking for stickers on buildings and walls, staring at a random wall with your logo in lights on it, getting pegged by ping pong balls while looking down reading sidewalk chalk art...then I'd say you've found the best way to reach them.

Most people now walk while looking at their phones...so I'd go with something mobile.

Im not sure if you want opinions or are just telling us what you are going to do, but this could be a pretty fun thread so here is what I think of each of these as it relates to what you have said regarding small budget and guerrilla tactics.

-100 Stickers (stick them in high traffic walking areas such as universities, outside malls, large apartment complexes, traffic light intersections)
Just what we need, sticker spam all over shit. Probably will need more than 100 though.

-T-Shirt Marketing - could actually be pretty pricey, even if you can get shirts made for about $5-$6 ea, how are they going to be distributed? Are you going to have scores of people walking around wearing your t's, they want to get paid too.

-Chalk Marketing on sidewalks -seems like a lot of time to do these to get a fairly small number of looks. Are people going to be like "hey what are you writing on my sidewalk?"

-Ping Pong Ball Drop- besides the litter I not really sure how this works so no opinion.

-Craigslist-How many people are looking on CL for city info, especially mobile?Maybe not many but since its free, probably can hurt to test it out.

-"Ninja" business cards or (even just printouts of your url)- place them in books in the library and book stores that relate to your site. Very time consuming , are bookstore owners going to be calling you saying , "Quit putting your cards in my books".
Are that many people buying books about things to do in New Orleans when they can just look it up on internet, if they are buying books are they the kind to look up on internet?

-Project your website's url onto a wall where people can see it. I guess if you have a projector and and access to wall where people are going to be passing by it cant hurt.

-Temporary Tattoo - Not sure how this is going to be implemented, are you going to stop people and ask if you can put a tattoo on them?, Are you going to put them on your face and walk up to people and say "look at this?".


In all honesty , I appreciate you wanting to hustle but the reality is that you may want to reconsider how you approach this because right now you are just pissing in the wind. You are coming up with ideas that sound good when you read a blog post like "10 guerrilla tactics to expose your business", but are not very practical or effective compared to other things that can be done.

If you are going to do it anyway please come back and tell us how things worked out for you.

Well sir, looks like you already have all the answers and was just sharing your knowledge with us, my bad I totally misunderstood your post.

I'm going to go against the majority here and say that guerrilla marketing is definitely very effective for building brand awareness and marketing. However, you said that your target audience is tourists. I'm not sure how effective your techniques will be for people coming from out of town. Most tourists do research before they reach their destination. Once they get there, they get their information from locals (hotel staff, restaurants, etc.)

One of my FAVORITES!!! depending on the target and location.

BAR HAND STAMPS...Tip the Door Guy if needed

Ninja Business Cards, I like that too. that's new to me.

Um, why would anyone go to a mystery website? To think that
people will see any of the above devices and remember/write
down the url, go online and take interest is silly.

Why would anyone want to go to the url? This failed in the
90's and is totally futile these days. There are a billion websites
and people don't arbitrarily get bored and visit them.

Push a QR code with some kind of offer (something tangible
they can understand and want).

The method above will be a total bust. The days of 'get your
name out there' ended around 1986.

Seeing marketers debate something is like being in the eye of a tornado while your head bounces back and forth.

Some people hate guerilla marketing, and make a damn good arguement why.
Others love it, and make a damn good arguement why. I think we can do that for any form of marketing guerilla or not.

I don't have any solid opinions on it myself (or maybe I do?). I do want to address 1 of the arguements made in this thread however. People are saying that guerilla marketing can't be tracked. Well thats bs. I think it depends more on what you're doing.

I work for a few remodeling companies. Maybe I order 10,000 plastic hammers wholesale from china. Then I use the OP to get stickers made up to put on the hammers. On the stickers we put our company name and an SMS code to contact us. Then we hand them out to people.

AFAIC, thats tracked guerilla marketing.
You can put the stickers on books if you want, and hand books out.

Selling something to college students? Put your SMS code and business name on ping pong balls (if it fits lol).

My real issue with guerilla marketing, is that it seems to be done more for branding purposes than anything. I tend to prefer direct response/emotional based marketing. Sure you can create an emotional reaction with guerilla marketing. Afterall the idea is to be creative. But I think overall I prefer concepts that have more "substance" to them, like someone else noted.

On the other hand, that may be a really ignorant remark. I'm not honestly sure what defines guerilla marketing. If street fairs are considered "guerilla marketing", then hell yes I recommend it. When I first came to these forums, our business was doing street fairs for cheap, and getting an excellent response from them. I assume thats guerilla marketing & again, those results were trackable. The ROI was massive. We'd spend $175 to be on a street jam packed with people, and some days we'd leave with 20-30 phone numbers.

So in that respect, I think its awesome. I also know a real estate agent (cousin) who use to use "guerilla marketing". Although once again, I'm still not sure what really defines it. When she was at the drive through in starbucks, she'd buy coffee for the person behind her. Then she'd give the cashier her business card, and tell them to give it to the person she bought the coffee for. She would do this every single day when possible, and struck quite a few deals just from something stupid like that.

So seriously, whats the problem with it? I do personally prefer marketing online. But if someone likes guerilla marketing, by all means, don't try talking them out of it.
=]

-Red

PS before people take urban legend as an understanding of what Guerrilla Marketing Is...i suggest actually buying one of the books first...it is NOT what majority of people think, especially if they are under 30

GM is the absolute best way to generate profit in ANY BUSINESS...this is time-tested and PROVEN.

I think these are some nice tips.
The only downside is, this would require a budget that most people are afraid of spending because these method do not promise results.

One particularly successful method ive tried is placing a banners by traffic lights near suburban areas.

But anyways good luck with your success, do report back.