Top Guerrilla Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business

Whether they’re digital or physical, traditional advertisements tend to focus on the value, quality, or usefulness of the product or service they’re promoting. Guerrilla marketing is an alternative advertising strategy that takes a completely different approach, using imaginative, often low-cost methods to grab the viewer’s attention, without immediately revealing that it’s an advertisement.

Guerrilla marketing can be used to draw attention to events, political causes, or brands and businesses. As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you can leverage guerrilla marketing campaigns to generate buzz, increase visibility, drive customer engagement, and stand out from your competitors, even if you’re working with a limited marketing budget. 

In this guide to guerrilla marketing for business owners, we’ll explore four popular types of guerrilla marketing techniques, break down some reasons why it is particularly effective for small businesses, and share practical tips for creating a successful guerrilla marketing campaign. But first, let’s start by defining what guerrilla marketing is.

Headline idea: Key Takeaways: Guerrilla Marketing That Gets Attention on Any Budget

• Guerrilla marketing uses unconventional, low-cost tactics to create surprise and generate buzz without relying on traditional ad spend.
• Four core approaches drive most campaigns: street marketing, viral marketing, ambush marketing, and experiential marketing.
• It works especially well for small businesses because it delivers high impact with a limited budget and helps brands stand out from bigger competitors.
• Social media is the multiplier; the more shareable and memorable the idea, the more likely it is to spread organically.

What is Guerrilla Marketing? 

HubSpot defines guerrilla marketing as a form of marketing that aims to “drive publicity and, as a result, brand awareness…using unconventional methods designed to evoke surprise, wonder, or shock” in the audience. Shopify offers a similar definition, summarizing guerrilla marketing as “a promotional strategy that involves using the element of surprise to generate interest in your product or service.” 

Compared to conventional advertising campaigns, which are often expensive to develop and launch, guerrilla campaigns offer a more cost-effective option because their main goal is to go viral, be memorable, and generate buzz. This empowers marketers to use creative, innovative, outside-the-box tactics without needing to rely on a large budget. 

Types of Guerrilla Marketing Strategies

There are multiple types of guerrilla marketing strategies. Four of the most common include: 

1. Ambush marketing 
2. Experiential marketing 
3. Street marketing
4. Viral marketing 

Let’s take a closer look at these four tactics, including their benefits for businesses and a few examples of each. 

Street Marketing 

Street marketing involves interacting with or performing for consumers in live, public spaces. Some examples of street marketing include promotional stunts, like Red Bull’s space jump, or pop-up events, like IKEA’s pop-up campaigns. 

We’ll circle back to both of those examples later in this guide. First, let’s look at a few other examples of street marketing tactics: 

• Creating street art or other public art exhibits 
• Handing out branded materials in high-traffic areas
• Organizing flash mobs 

The benefits of street marketing are that it’s highly and immediately visible, draws instant attention to your brand, and creates a unique, unforgettable experience for prospective customers.

Viral Marketing 

Whether it’s shocking, hilarious, or downright bizarre, there are plenty of different reasons why content can go viral. But no matter what sort of emotional response they’re meant to provoke, viral marketing campaigns are ultimately designed to get shares and engagement on social media. A common example is creating a funny or emotional video that encourages shares and likes by making the audience laugh or cry. 

By generating organic buzz on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, viral marketing campaigns can rapidly boost brand awareness, enabling businesses to widen their audience and reach new potential customers virtually overnight. Other benefits of viral marketing are that it’s low-cost and highly scalable, which is a major advantage for growing businesses. 

Ambush Marketing 

Ambush marketing is a type of guerrilla marketing that involves associating your brand with a major event or public gathering without directly sponsoring it. An example could include setting up a pop-up booth outside a large event, such as a football game or concert, where competitors have invested heavily in sponsorship. The main advantage of ambush marketing is that it enables brands to get exposure by association with a well-known event, without the high cost of a formal sponsorship deal. 

Experiential Marketing

Mailchimp describes experiential marketing as “a hands-on experience designed to encourage individuals to engage and participate in an event.” An example could be organizing an interactive demo or launching a surprise giveaway event where prospective customers can physically interact with the product. 

The purpose of experiential marketing is to create a fun, positive, interactive experience for potential customers that directly engages them with your product or service. This strategy’s main advantage for businesses is that it builds strong connections with customers and encourages word-of-mouth referrals.

Why Guerrilla Marketing Works for Small Businesses

Small businesses face different challenges from midsize companies or large enterprises. There are two key reasons why guerrilla marketing strategies are effective for small businesses, which we’ll explore in more detail below: 

1. Guerrilla marketing is a low-cost, high-impact strategy that enables businesses to make a powerful impression on a minimal budget
2. Guerrilla marketing creates memorable experiences for audiences, which helps brands generate buzz and stand out from well-known competitors.  

Low Cost, High Impact 

Because it relies on creativity more than financial investment, guerrilla marketing is typically more cost-effective than traditional approaches to marketing. That means it’s accessible for small businesses and startups who are working with limited marketing budgets. Whether campaigns are carried out online or in person, guerrilla marketing enables businesses to generate significant brand awareness without needing to spend heavily on traditional advertising channels.

Memorable and Shareable

Guerrilla marketing campaigns leverage the element of surprise to catch their audience off-guard, creating a highly memorable experience the viewer will want to share with others. While consumers are often quick to forget about “normal” commercials and ads, the unexpected nature of guerrilla marketing ensures that consumers remember your brand long after the initial interaction. The uniqueness of these campaigns encourages social sharing on platforms like Facebook, which amplifies the campaign’s reach without racking up additional costs. 

Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Small Business Owners 

Guerrilla marketing is all about thinking outside the box. However, following some basic principles can help you achieve success when designing and implementing your campaign. Let’s go over three best practices for creating a successful guerrilla marketing strategy:  

1. Think creatively and focus on innovation 
2. Use social media to amplify your campaign’s reach and impact 
3. Track the right metrics to measure campaign success and outcomes

1. Focus on Creativity 

Guerrilla marketing blurs the boundary between advertising and art, using unconventional marketing methods to deliver an impactful message. Guerrilla marketing campaigns rely on creativity to stand out and grab the audience’s attention, making it crucial to prioritize innovation and originality instead of falling back on familiar, overused themes and motifs. 

No matter what sort of campaign you launch, your message is more likely to resonate with its target audience if it has been tailored and personalized for them. That’s why it’s important to use analytics tools, which can provide you with detailed insights into your audience’s wants and needs, to help guide and inform your creative brainstorming sessions. 

2. Leverage Social Media 

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you already know that social media is one of your most powerful digital marketing tools. But did you know it can also be used to support your guerrilla marketing efforts? 

Platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and X (formerly Twitter) can amplify the effects of a guerrilla marketing campaign by encouraging users to share photos, videos, and other experiences from the event or campaign. For example, your business can encourage users to share hashtags, reviews, or other user-generated content (UGC). The more engagement it receives on social media, the more likely the campaign is to go viral. 

3. Measure Your Success 

It’s essential to monitor the results of any guerrilla marketing campaigns you implement, like tracking the impacts on foot traffic, social media engagement, and sales. Some of the most important marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to watch include: 

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) 
• Cost per lead (CPL) 
• Customer lifetime value (CLV) 
• Email open rates
• Email subscribers
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) 
• Return on advertising spend (ROAS) 
• Return on marketing investment (ROMI) 
• Sales qualified leads (SQLs) 
• Social media follower counts

There are various platforms and types of software designed to help businesses track and optimize their marketing campaigns, from simple customer survey builders to sophisticated analytics tools. Here are some of the best business tools to track marketing campaigns and boost ROI: 

• ActiveCampaign 
• Google Analytics 
• Hootsuite 
• HubSpot
• LuckyOrange
• Mailchimp 
• Salesforce CRM 
• Semrush
• Sprout Social 
• SurveyMonkey 
• Typeform 
• Zoho CRM

Examples of Successful Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns

Now that we’ve gone over some of the basics of guerrilla marketing, let’s look at two real-life examples of successful campaigns that major companies have used. First, we’ll revisit Red Bull’s 2012 Stratos skydiving event, then shift gears to the retail industry with IKEA’s pop-up rooms. 

Red Bull’s Stratos Jump 

Red Bull is an energy drink company whose revenue approached $11 billion in 2023. However, the brand is arguably just as well known for its unique advertisements as it is for its actual product.

In 2012, Red Bull took its reputation for fueling extreme sports to new heights by sponsoring skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s “Stratos” space jump from nearly 23 miles above the Earth’s surface. Not only was the space jump an unprecedented feat, it was also a hugely successful marketing campaign for Red Bull. The event was broadcast live to millions of viewers worldwide, including over 8 million viewers on YouTube,  giving Red Bull a significant hike in global brand awareness.  

It goes without saying that the Stratos jump wasn’t exactly a low-cost campaign. However, it teaches guerrilla marketing lessons that can be scaled back and applied to small businesses: by delivering a bold, memorable experience to consumers, brands can increase their visibility and convert new customers. 

IKEA’s Popup Living Rooms

Over the past few decades, IKEA has run multiple pop-up campaigns where living rooms were installed in public spaces. These pop-ups enable consumers to physically interact with IKEA furniture in an everyday environment, boosting brand awareness and creating a buzz on social media. Small businesses can emulate this strategy by creating interactive displays of their own, which not only engage passersby with a fun and novel experience but also encourage social sharing with photos, videos, and hashtags. 

When executed successfully, guerrilla marketing packs a powerful punch and leaves a lasting impression on its audience. Through an online or in-person guerrilla marketing campaign, your business can generate buzz, boost customer engagement, and stand out from competitors, no matter what your budget looks like. By experimenting with creative techniques and following some best practices, like tracking the right marketing KPIs, you can find the optimal approach for your business. 

Explore Online Business and Marketing Degrees at National University 

Implementing a successful marketing campaign requires skills like thinking creatively, analyzing data, managing budgets, and leading teams. Build your career skills at National University, which offers dozens of online and on-campus programs in business and marketing. 

Some of our most popular programs include the Bachelor of Science in Marketing, the Master of Science in Marketing, the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), and the Master of Business Administration (MBA). National University also offers doctoral degrees in business, including the Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (PhD-BA), in addition to various professional certificates. 

With year-round enrollment and four-week courses, National University follows a fast-paced but flexible approach to higher education. Request program information from our admissions office, or apply online to take the next step on your career journey today.