Insights · Create Bold Moves
What guerrilla marketing actually means for a local business
Guerrilla marketing is not a stunt. It is presence without a budget: one message, in the right places, repeated until people expect it.
Guerrilla marketing is not a stunt. It is presence without a budget.
What it is not
It is not a flash mob. It is not a viral video plan. It is not a trick that makes the news once and is forgotten by Friday. Most of what gets called guerrilla marketing is theater for other marketers.
What it is
It is the poster on the board at the coffee shop your customers already use. It is the sticker on the case at the venue. It is the shirt your regulars wear to the grocery store. It is one message, in the places your people already stand, repeated until they expect to see it there.
A local business does not need reach. It needs to be recognized by the few hundred people within driving distance who could become regulars. Guerrilla marketing is how you get in front of those people without paying a platform to do it.
Four rules
- Be where your people already stand. Do not build a new place and hope they come. Go to the venue, the market, the shop, the game. Ask before you post.
- Say one thing. A name and what you do. If it takes a paragraph, it is not a poster.
- Repeat it past the point of comfort. You will be tired of the message long before your customers have noticed it. Keep going.
- Put it on something people keep. A post is gone in a day. A shirt gets worn for years. A sticker stays on the laptop. Physical things carry a message longer than a feed does.
Do this this week
Write your one line. Print fifty of something. Walk them to the places your customers already go. Then do it again next week, and the week after that.