The advertising business is dynamic and marketers need to come up with new advertisement ideas every often. Particularly, this is the only way that they can remain relevant in a market whose demands keep shifting. However, it is not easy to create new ad ideas. Why?
In the first place, one must deeply understand the nature of the target audience. Without this information, whatever ad one creates might not achieve desired results. If you do not have enough funds to obtain the information, you might never be able to create new ideas. Secondly, new advertisement ideas must be creative to interest the target audience. Therefore, an advertiser that is not creative might not be able to create new ad ideas.
What challenges does a guerilla marketer face?
A guerilla marketer is an important professional in the current advertising landscape. This is because he/she creates marketing opportunities that cover for the deficiencies of traditional advertising. Still, these experts face many challenges in the process of their work.
Firstly, unconventional marketing techniques are untested. This implies that the guerilla marketer does not have a solid foundation to rely on for benchmarking. Subsequently, their ideas are sometimes a gamble that might not pay off. Secondly, guerilla marketers face the challenge of coverage limitation. Given the nature of unconventional marketing techniques, the marketers cannot cover a large geographical area.
Guerilla Marketing
There is an increased competition in crowded advertising spaces. The average US-consumer is exposed to approximately 3,000 advertising messages in only one day (Kimmel, 2005). Most of the digital ads barely get noticed with such high volume of ads. The industry has been witnessing a shift in the advertising concept to more tangible and memorable ad techniques.
Some tactics win by introducing elements of surprise and creativity as strategy to provoke consumers attention and to make it memorable. The guerilla concept has been applied by niche advertising agencies that lately have been targeting consumers by placing ads on daily consumables as door hangers, pizza box toppers, prescription bags, drink coasters, Custom Coffee Sleeves, hotel key cards, valet tickets, restaurant placemats and dry cleaner hangers as advertising space placing the message in the hand of the target audience.
This innovative method has been used by such niche agencies focus on the unconventional nature enhances the assimilation of the message that has a direct impact on increasing the brand recall rate
Here some practical examples:
- A beer snack manufacturer that promotes a new product launch on beer coasters in NYC bars
- The pharmaceutical companies can promote the new medication by placing a message on branded pharmacy bags in reputable pharmacy venues close to hospitals
- A new museum offering a coupon discount on coffee cups targeting millennials
- A high-end product advertised on hotel room key cards targeting high-end consumers
- The new fitness center offering a promo code on pizza boxes after ingesting a decent amount of calories!
Unconventional advertising: how to succeed
The fact that the advertising tactic is unconventional implies that marketers face numerous challenges during implementation. However, it is possible to attain the set objectives if the marketers adhere to certain things. First, they need to adhere to relevance. Relevant material will attract customers and push up engagement rates.