Guerrilla marketing warfare strategies

In marketing and strategic management, marketing warfare strategies are a type of marketing strategy that uses military strategy to form a marketing and advertising campaign. Advertising guerrilla techniques, undoubtedly successful in practical applications, are still new and fresh and not as explicitly explored academically as other marketing methods, a more tacit approach is used in the gathering of competitor information to use tactics to undermine a competitors legitimacy and increase the exposure and sales of the offensive organisation. Jay Conrad Levinson wrote 'Guerrilla Marketing' on aggressive marketing tactics in 1984. The 6th century BC, 13 chapter book Sun Tzu’s 'Art of War' which may have been used by Napoleon, remains relevant and has been accredited with being valuable to both army generals and strategic business directors alike over 25 centuries later. See marketing warfare strategies for further background and an overview.

Method and execution

Aggressive marketing techniques are used more covertly by large organisations to improve advertising impact and reduce the likelihood of competitors’ retaliation. Sponsoring the Indian cricket team failed for Nike, as Reebok managed to put branded stickers on their bats, at far less cost but for a much greater return. Third party market research companies are often used to gather corporate information and guerrilla advertising agencies are contracted to market products in aggressive media, and companies are used to improve the impact of an aggressive marketing strategy and target consumers directly while not directly being responsible for the aggressive marketing execution.

Guerrilla Marketing Warfare Tactics are often the best, most cost effective methods to reach consumers. Often Guerrilla tactics are used against a company by advertising to their competitors’ customers directly for the most impact. (See Leapfrog Marketing Strategies.)

Successful aggressive marketing

The docile nature of a business may require substantial change management and as such only a highly aggressive method will succeed. Škoda Auto, a well known car manufacturer, nearly changed its name in 1997, instead it kept its £350m UK sales and followed an aggressive marketing campaign to change its perceived image during the 1990s and early into the 21st century, to great success doubling its car sales in 11 years, 1997 336,000 sold, 2008 saw 674,000 vehicles sold. Specialist media companies offering directed advertising using guerrilla tactics are often used in this way by large companies for corporate ambiguity and by small companies to benefit from their field expertise and market knowledge.

Low Level Tactics

A list of tactics identified for Guerrilla Strategies:

Business Cards Inserts Invoice Speed Enthusiasm Ease of doing business

Name Color Quality Theme Location Pricing

Selection Package Phone Demeanor Neatness Smiles

Follow-up How say hello & goodbye Community involvement Reprints of info Books / articles Newsletters

Credit cards accepted Credibility Satisfied customers Inside Signs Special Events Reputation

Retaliation

If an expert agency is not used bad press can be generated from aggressive marketing, Large companies are not exempt from such press, The BBC has been in trouble for advertising to children directly. The media attention generated from this aggressive technique, arguably is more valuable to the BBC than the original technique of advertising directly to children with very little disposable income.

See also

• Marketing
• Strategic management
• Marketing strategies
• Strategic planning
• Marketing warfare strategies
• Defensive marketing warfare strategies
• Offensive marketing warfare strategies
• Flanking marketing warfare strategies