Guerrilla marketing panders to sensationalism and eccentricity, and might just be what you need to spice up your monotonous content marketing. It has the potential to sweep your audience off their feet and alter their perspective on your brand image. 

And the bar of entry is low enough for small businesses. Online guerilla marketing can be as effective for small brands as much as for big names. Studies show that industry powerhouses barely spend up to $500 on great online guerrilla marketing campaigns. 

Also, its versatility makes it well-suited to both B2C and B2B brands. Content is the lifeblood of any marketable online presence, and guerilla tactics, which border on innovation and surprises, invigorate your content marketing. Guerrilla tactics make your content marketing campaigns pulsate with life, and they work in just about any niche.

In this dossier, we’ll examine the ins and outs of the intersection between guerrilla marketing and content marketing. Wondering what are the leaps and bounds of their synergy? How best can you combine both concepts to improve your bottom line? 

Before we delve into the intricacies, first, let’s examine the basics.

Guerilla Marketing and Content Marketing: Covert Meets Overt

Guerilla marketing and content marketing are two time-tested and proven types of marketing. But they differ immensely in terms of methods of execution and tools for implementation. However, it’s possible to co-opt the two ideas to create hybrid, unorthodox online marketing campaigns.

Content is king. It takes preeminence in internet marketing. However, on its own, it doesn’t guarantee that customers will come filing up on your doorstep. It only promises unlimited potentials, and it’s up to you to determine how best to harness those potentials to woo potential customers.

On the other hand, guerilla tactics border on the discrete, the subtle, the unexpected, and the unconventional. In warfare, guerilla tactics are all about taking the enemy by surprise, from ambushes to sting operations, sabotages, etc. 

Rather than generate massive waves at a go, online guerilla content marketing makes little pockets of impact per time, culminating in massive aggregate effects over time.

An online marketing strategy that co-opts both content and guerilla techniques requires a balanced mix of creativity and objectivity. The end-game is to surprise or shock your customers, but in a way that’ll most likely leave a positive, memorable impact on them. It requires an in-depth understanding of your customers’ behavior as well as some ingenuity to project your brand image in a unique way that leaves a positive impact on your customers. 

However, if you miscalculate and rub your audience the wrong way, your guerilla online marketing strategy can backfire and hurt your brand image.

Sizing up the Benefits vs the Risks of Online Guerilla Marketing Ideas

If done right, guerilla content marketing strategies can pay off in spades. 

• It can help your brand acquire that ‘X-factor’ needed to stand out in your space. Going against the grain in a calculated way can help your brand capture the limelight.
• It can help reinforce your bond with your customer base. By giving your customers an experience they’re not likely to get anywhere else, you enhance your chances of consolidating on your existing user base.
• It’s relatively inexpensive. With a good dose of creative juices, you can whip up an awe-inspiring guerilla online campaign with a low budget. Think of the positive press from a surprise live Q/A webinar.

However, if things don’t pan out well, guerilla content marketing might cost you not only your investment but your reputation as well. Your audience might misunderstand your motive, and a lot of damage can be done before things get cleared up.

There’s no guarantee that things will always turn out perfectly 100% of the time, even if you’re using the tactics recommended below. But thankfully, some implementation hacks can help further increase your chances of success.

5 Time-Proven Tactics for Incorporating Guerilla Tactics in your Content Marketing Campaign

Controversial Contents:

Don’t be afraid to contravene conventions, broach sensitive topics, and stroke sensitive nerves. Be the harbinger of reality checks. Give your audience the timely wakeup call they need to appreciate certain things that’ll help them achieve their goals. Debunk certain fallacies or misrepresented facts in your industry.

Compelling Customer Stories:

This tactic is more like testimonials on steroids. We’re not just talking about a statement or two praising your product or services. This entails using highly-detailed anecdotes of a user’s experience, with elements that will likely resonate with your audience. Stories like these can easily help reinforce consumer confidence. 

Carpeting Competitors:

This is quite the quintessential content marketing tactic of controversy. But it’s also a sharper double-edged sword compared to the others. If it pans out well, then the results are tremendous. But if it flops, you’d have to go into damage control mode. 

You need to ensure that your intentions are clear enough, with you showing up as the people’s hero who swings by to rescue them from your rival’s flaws. 

What you’re doing in essence here is product positioning. If you take a chip at your competitors and prove your superiority in any respect, you’re likely to score points and warm your way to the hearts of a few in their camp.

Casual Q&A

Another tactic that sweeps your audience right off their feet. It’s also a much safer bet than the others. Your audience most probably have lots of questions concerning their unique needs that they just can’t address through regular channels. You can put together a fun, interactive online Q&A webinar to help shed light on those issues. It has to be informal, chatty, and inviting. You’ll be giving your audience a listening ear in a laid back, supportive setting.

Co-opting Brand Ambassadors

You can enlist big influencers to serve on the frontline of your online guerilla campaign. You can have them hand out your freebies to get more people to accept them and follow your brand. It’s especially effective for product launches. The collaboration might end up generating a massive amount of traffic – enough to compensate the Influencer without cash.

Hacks for Implementing Guerilla Tactics in Content Marketing

You can use the following hacks to prevent the possibility of fallouts when implementing any online guerilla marketing campaign:

Sync with your Audience: It’s imperative to have a good understanding of the psyche of your audience. You need to know their common preferences, what makes them tick. 

Stick to Trends: Try to confine your campaigns to trends. And you need to get very predictive as you go trend-hopping. It ‘s a boon for your reputation when you beat everyone in your industry to exploiting trends. 

Sway with Visual Appeal: Visual contents are generally more powerful than written or audio ones across all mediums of content marketing. Explore diagrams, graphs, infographics, custom graphics, etc in your guerilla online marketing to maximize the impression you make within those flickering moments you get in front of your audience.

Stay Proactive: If a plan falls out, go back to your drawing board and come up with something else. You business is not too different from your competitors who’re succeeding at online guerilla marketing.

Set on Content Marketing? Go Guerrilla!

You might need to recalibrate your mindset and think out of the box to incorporate guerilla tactics in your online marketing. There might also be some risks of possible fallouts. But with guerilla marketing, it’s possible to assemble the plane while flying it and land safely at your destination. 

That means you have the freedom to try many different things to figure out what works best for you. If you succeed in the very least at it, you’ll most likely come off with big wins. Guerilla content marketing can help infuse your content marketing with the energy and vibes it needs to spring to life. 

You can start creating your guerilla content marketing today using any of the proven methods and hacks listed above. Happy marketing!

Guest article written by: Mark Usen