9 Steps for Designing Guerilla Marketing Campaigns for Event Planners

Guerilla marketing, which was introduced by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1983 in his book with the same name, is popular in the retail and luxury sectors. It has been making inroads in destination marketing and hospitality and it has great possibilities for the events industry.

What is Guerilla Marketing? Priscilla Dominguez of Creative Guerilla Marketing captured the essence of this “out of the box” marketing approach:

“Guerilla Marketing is an alternate and unconventional form of advertising that combines the elements of shock, involvement, and unconventional wrapped up with a strategic intent.”

Event planning firms and independent meeting planners who are interested in using guerilla marketing to promote their own services and events should keep a number of strategies in mind.

  1. Set very clear objectives.
    Strategic intent and the action you want people to take is a key success factor for any guerilla marketing initiative.
    Do you want people to:
  • visit your website?
  • purchase a ticket?
  • download your app?
  • provide a business card to receive an e-mail, catalogue, or brochure
  1. Select your target market.
  • Is this a B2B or B2C campaign?
  • Who is the decision maker?
  1. Determine when and where you can connect with your audience.
    It’s most cost effective to select a location where members of your target already gather in groups. Professional associations, conferences, trade shows, and even workshops geared towards your target audience and demographic are great bets
  2. Get professional advice and plan the campaign thoroughly.
    Guerilla marketing may seem impromptu but, when it’s effective, it’s the result of carefully crafted strategy and tactics
  3. Scale the campaign based on your objectives and budget.
    Perhaps a public campaign would be cost prohibitive but a campaign at a conference, in the lobby of an office building or as part of an event that is already taking place may be viable.
  4. Think of an issue or challenge that your product or service will solve for members of your target market.
    Come up with an object, metaphor or theme that represents that issue and build the campaign around it.
  5. Integrate guerilla marketing with your other marketing and communication efforts.
    For the Get All Right campaign, tweeps who tweeted with the #GetAllRight hashtag were entered into a draw to win a trip to Jamaica.
  6. Avoid tunnel vision. Get inspiration fro other industries and sectors.
    One of the main aims of guerilla marketing is to stand out from the crowd. If you just replicate what other event planners are doing, you’ll never stand out.

 


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