Reaching The Customer In An Untraditional Way Marketing Essay

Reaching The Customer In An Untraditional Way Marketing Essay

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This first chapter gives the reader a background picture of the problem within the thesis. It gives a short briefing what the authors want to find out within the field of guerrilla marketing.

Background

When you are walking towards your school or driving for the work place you often meet several different posters and billboards along your way. We all are surrounded by marketing and advertising and one often is under strong influence by various different kind of messages. In 1965, one could easily reach 80% of a majority target audience with three TV advertisement spots. And by 2002, 127 spots were needed to attain the same reach. While, the most interesting part is actually how much amount of attention do these commercials and advertisements grab from the potential customer?

It has been argued that mainstream marketing methods, like TV commercials coupled with print advertisements are rather getting old and all these traditional methods are incompetent without the support from more unconventional kind of methods. Some argues that audience is getting tired of the same old messages and the need of the hour is innovation in so as to reach new grounds. The consumer is very easily bored with unadventurous and safe way of marketing. Looking from a company's outlook, marketing along with advertising is crucial for acceleration in sales, even though an enterprise is paying large sums for media space and wish to maximize potential buyers. For this reason, in use of mass marketing the waste is often big, companies send countless of messages to the wrong group.

As a result, the need for extra efficient system is current, in order to reach to the right kind of customer by the means of marketing campaign without getting lost in the muddle. Moreover, there is an immediate call for far more innovative methods, more efficient and useful, not as expensive and have a higher spotlight on smaller demographic regions and targeted fragments. The consumers often obstruct the recognized channels used; individuals tend to put out signs on their post boxes declining mass advertisement through mail, when purchasing a new DVD player it may be able to cut out commercial breaks. With the aim of getting through the clutter in the market, one has to choose a different kind of route and focus more innovation and creativity.

Therefore, one shall find new ways and channels to reach the market. An interesting form of marketing is when exposing customers to messages in an unconventional way, for example hire actors to visualize a need for a product in a store. The use of the unconventional marketing approaches was something that previously associated with small business firms due to their limited budget; they had to find new ways.

"The guerrilla problem"

One could argue that guerrilla marketing is communicating a message in an untraditional way. The definition of guerrilla marketing is complex to characterize, although the general view of this approach is when an organization is using innovating marketing techniques that are cost efficient. Each guerrilla campaign has a niche and targets a smaller crowd. When using guerrilla marketing, one should try to find the uniqueness in the marketing approach. In addition, guerrilla marketing is a concept that many marketers use, although the difference of the meaning can be very individual, one element that the different opinions has in common is the cost. Guerrilla marketing is often cheaper than ordinary marketing. Entrepreneurs with a small marketing budget often used it and their only way to compete was to do it in a more matchless way. They did not have the budget to go head to head with their competitors.

Today it is even possible for big companies to take advantage of this phenomenon to compete with their market's leaders. There are numerous thriving corporations that have used the approach, both big and small, but have their approaches worked? Ahmed argues that stealth marketing, another expression for guerrilla marketing, may be the only future that marketing has, at least for some companies. Therefore a study of this marketing phenomenon is of most interest, but is it a big part of the future?

One could argue that this is an innovative and unconventional form of marketing, but is it effective? Though a message spreads through different marketing channels, but in order for it to work there must be someone who listens and decodes it, for the approach to be useful. Getting through all the noise and clutter by using this marketing phenomenon is going to be essential and it is an interesting way of reaching the customer.

Research questions

To summarize this problem discussion, these three research questions will help to fulfil the purpose of this thesis:

What is guerrilla marketing?

How have organizations that have been in contact with the phenomenon experienced it?

Is guerrilla marketing a good way of marketing?

Purpose

The purpose of this thesis it is to examine guerrilla marketing.

Planning phase of the battle

The following enlightens how the case was planned and conducted. The methodology gives a profound picture of how the study was made.

Qualitative approach

In this thesis the authors will apply a qualitative study to gain information and to fulfil the purpose; "to examine guerrilla marketing". The qualitative study was made in cooperation with a marketing firm called Miami Advertising Agency, it is located in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The authors conducted additional interviews with influenced people from USA. Since the authors wanted a diverse picture of guerrilla marketing and the choice to have some respondents from USA was necessary for the thesis, the concept originates from there.

Furthermore, a Swedish marketing firm with their clients, this to create a better understanding and connection of guerrilla marketing in Sweden. A large part of the scientific research use mainly two types of methods, they are positivism and hermeneutic. Positivism starts with one well defined knowledge as an ideal, while hermeneutic methods relates to different knowledge.

To clarify, the positivism method is formal logics and facts, and results from the measurements performed. To further shed light on the positivism method, it goes under the name quantitative approach.

Rules of the battleground

Beneath the authors builds up a theoretical framework to support the analysis and to also give the reader a good picture of marketing with the focus upon guerrilla marketing.

Terminology

It explains the important terminology for the thesis, to present the rules and previous experiences from the battleground, in order to enhance the chances of winning the war of the consumer's mind. The rules of the battleground is based on the communication process, and what tools one could need in order to communicate the right message in the best way without losing too much in the process. The authors argue that guerrilla marketing is an efficient way to deliver the right and relevant message. Though, the tactics of guerrilla marketing is one way of gaining advantages in the war, the authors will in this chapter present theory in order to build up the phenomenon of guerrilla marketing from the ground. Communication is an essential word within marketing, since it is about communicating a message from the sender to the receiver. The developments of integrated marketing communication are presented because it summarizes the development within marketing in a good way and gives the reader a picture of how marketers act and thinks. Therefore, this framework is built upon the communication process, starting with the ways to create a relevant message.

Communication - Winning the war

Marketing is about communicating a message to the customers/end users. Therefore the communication phase is one of the most central within the field of marketing, therefore also in this thesis. The basic model of communication consists of two important elements; the sender and the receiver are first ones. The second one is the major communication tools, also known as message and channel. Within this model are some other functions known as encoding, decoding, response, feedback and noise.

Basic model of communication Sender/Source is the one in the process in need of sharing information with someone else. It could be either as an individual (salesperson) or as a non personal entity (cooperation). The process of communication starts when the source selects words, symbols, pictures that they want to represent their message sent to the receiver. The form of the process is also known as encoding. This does involve putting thoughts, ideas or information into a symbolic form. One could say that the sender's goal is to send out a message that the receiver understands. By doing so the sender should use symbols, words, signs that are eminent for the target audience, these could also be seen as the weapons that organizations uses today in the war of the customer's mind.

Forming the message

Marketing communication

The message that an organization communicates is a form of marketing. Marketing is to help support the exchange process within a company and to endorse the awareness of the organization. Though, the entire marketing process summarizes within the marketing mix, consisting of four P's, product, price, place and promotion. The basic of this is a combination that could form a marketing program for an organization. For a viable marketing program the P that stands for promotion is of most concern for this thesis, especially since one often uses guerrilla marketing in this kind of activities. During the 1980's, the development within marketing plans strove towards a strategic integration of the promotional tools used. The concept of integrated marketing communication (IMC) arose, whereas the promotional tools where used together as an entire campaign. American Association of Advertising Agencies developed maybe the first definition of IMC: "a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines - for example, general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations - and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communications impact".

Promotional mix

Starting with the first thing someone reflects of when hearing the word marketing, is advertising. It is and will be an important way of delivering a message. Advertising is defined almost like as any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor. Breaking down the sentence the word paid, means that one have to buy space somewhere in order to send out the message. The non-personal could be described as advertising as a mass medium, in other words there is no immediate way for feedback. Therefore, when one sends a message to the advertiser one must consider how the audience reacts to the message. Advertising is a form of reaching a larger mass by sending out a message, though one should have in mind by doing so, a lot of people are reached but there is a lot of waste within the grouped reached, since most of them are not a part of the target market that the company is going after. Today customers have a love-hate relationship with advertising, since it is in close relation to entertainment and art. Further, advertising could focus either on consumer markets or towards business and professional markets.

Live buzz marketing

Live buzz marketing is about people talking to one and another, the word is actually a slang, but originally it comes from the sound a bee makes, a buzzing sound. Although, mostly used in the entertainment business, like for instance: "the latest buzz from Hollywood" in other words "gossip". Basically, people offer free samples and other rewards if they are willing to talk to other people about the products.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is as much else hard to define, although according to Marsden and Kirby : "describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, perhaps to millions". The key parts in this definition are exponential growth and to pass on messages to others.

Choosing the right channel: Channel management

In order for an organizations message to reach the customer some kind of tool must be used and also a channel in which the message can be sent through. The channel could from one point of view be connected to how the products reach the market, in several cases it is not the marketer that controls the actions within the network of all the channels and therefore trust must be put in someone else, that makes the channel management even more important for the marketing managers and marketing decision makers. At the same time, channel management is of most concern though it is constantly developing and there is always room for improvement and for differential advantages. Channels could be divided into two parts; direct/indirect. The direct channels consisting when contact with the customer is taken directly, examples could be face to face communication, phone conversations, mail and also in an electronic way. The indirect approach often goes through a second part before reaching the end target, examples of this could be an agent that delivers the message to the customer, furthermore could wholesalers or distributors also work in the same way, final example of an indirect channel is a retailer or a dealer. Using the direct channels tends to be preferred when the needs for information are high, this often due to high technological complexity. Also, when the product customization is important, furthermore one recommends using direct channels when the quality assurance matters. The two final concept when it is better for the marketing to go through direct channels is when the purchasing orders are large and when the transportation and storage issues tend to be complex. The direct channels compares to a more personal communications channel, where information received from personal influenced channels is generally more persuasive then information received from a more indirect channel such as mass media.

Guerrilla Marketing - winning the war?

The following explains the concept of the Guerrilla marketing and to build this reading simpler to pursue we shall present unlike definitions of theory by other author previous to stating out definition which we have applied for the thesis.

Regarding guerrilla marketing, via Ives the description guerrilla marketing be: A wide range of publicity methods that strive to strike as people slightest expect it although publicity stunts include been turning head forever, mainstream marketer are increasingly turn to guerrilla strategy as consumers confirm more difficult towards reach with conventional advertising.

Therefore, guerrilla marketing is a growing advertising method in New York, particularly for companies so as to want to location themselves to a younger and additional modern crowd. To boot, Levinson, who be a well-known novelist in the theme, define guerrilla marketing at the same time as: going subsequent to the conformist goals of returns, sales and development but doing it next to using unconventional way, such as growing offerings during murky economic days to motivate customers to augment the size of every purchase". This case encompass developed their characterization of the experience guerrilla marketing, that shall be used throughout the thesis while referred to: "a debatable marketing state of mind, implemented with fewer resources then traditional marketing rather than more time, creativity and innovation is invested, that results in a focused and niche market."

Further, explaining that guerrilla marketers are often not as vulnerable as other marketers since they require fewer resources and they can regularly work in a little time frame. According to Levinson, guerrilla marketers spend energy, time, knowledge and imagination rather than investing money, as in guerrilla marketing one calculate profits and not sales. Additionally "Guerrilla marketing", emphasis on the fact that originally the phenomenon was primarily used by smaller businesses who did not have a large marketing budget. On the basis of this reasoning, guerrilla marketing was their opportunity to compete one-on-one with bigger corporations having smaller means. Also, guerrilla marketing is much more firm, persistent and targeted than traditional marketing on some particular fragments.

Hence a very significant aspect is to maintain the focus on the same fragments, continuously targeting on the existing customer base, which can lead to even stronger brand value along with additional sales figure. One could additionally argue that the goal for guerrilla marketing is to ground something into the consumers mind without them realizing that they have been exposed to marketing and make it stay with them. This would consist of everyone you meet, every single phone call you make, every sign and every communication. In other words, marketing does not necessarily need to be something expensive, but having this in mind creates a guerrilla marketing attitude, that is important for your business. For the entire guerrilla marketing approach to work, everyone using it needs to identify marketing opportunities, even in the smallest scale.

Ideas of guerrilla marketing

To additionally explain the concept an example could be: a company leaves discounts for a carwash on the windscreen of the cars on a big parking lot; one could see this as a quite simple way of guerrilla marketing. Kirby and Marsden, presents an interesting approach that was made by Sony Ericsson who hired troops of actors to pose as tourists in New York City and in Los Angeles to ask people in the streets to take their picture with the company's new cell-phone camera.

Moreover, even the small person could be a tool in the guerrilla marketing toolbox, a couple of years ago students sold advertising space in their foreheads in order to get money for paying college tuition and it created publicity for the companies that presented their logo, this could be one way of attacking the market Simple ideas such as putting more than one stamp on an important letter could work as guerrilla marketing, though who could possible ignore a letter with several stamps, it must in some way be important.

Also, one can realize this with the use of "freebies"; anything one could give away for free opens doors for potential customers. Not only products but also consultations, seminars, tours and speeches are techniques that people gives away for free, in order to create awareness around you and this does not have to be costly.

Conclusion

This case concludes the entire thesis and gives the reader a final picture of what guerrilla marketing is. The purpose of this thesis is to examine guerrilla marketing. It was found that there was a lack of previous studies concerning the topic and the concept was intriguing, hence we wanted to examine it further. After performing the interviews and reading the theory written about the subject, the authors understood that there was something unique about guerrilla marketing. Consequently we came to the conclusion that guerrilla marketing is not a model one can study in the textbook or a marketing method described as one practice; it is a state of mind, a way of thinking, a mindset for marketers and business people. The ones who use guerrilla marketing have a more open mind then the ones not using it, the people that believe in the phenomenon of guerrilla marketing is open to new and creative ideas. When we first started to work with this thesis we wanted to investigate the clients using this phenomenon and what affects guerrilla marketing had to them. Today we can say that they are enlightened to new ideas, to original ways of reaching the end customer and aware that marketing does not necessarily needs to be expensive advertisements in the media.

Instead, a guerrilla campaign creates free publicity in the media world. Guerrilla marketing is a good compliment for organizations using a more traditional approach, it is a way to spice up the consisting marketing and a way to get attention which will make it easier to come through the clutter and reach the target market. Furthermore, if one was to pitch an idea for a new marketing campaign and the idea are unconventional and do not look like any campaign ever made before, instead more bold and daring. A guerrilla marketer would be much more enthusiastic and open to the new idea then a traditional marketer would be.

Although it is vital to have in mind that the idea sent out, as a message, needs to be relevant to the target market. Meaning that, the planning and the preparation phase of the campaign is of most importance, in order for it to become successful. This includes a big part of internal communication, everybody inside the company or the organization must be aware of what is going on. One can wonder why we have chosen to call this phenomenon for guerrilla marketing when it could have the meaning of numerous things, such as: creative marketing, innovative marketing, undercover marketing, stealth marketing, entrepreneurial marketing or marketing under the radar.

In conclusion, it started as an examination of a marketing method but resulted in the understanding of a mindset that is pro creativity and innovation and the spirit of being proactive. One should not described it as a method or an approach, it identifies more as a mindset willing to gain market share through innovation and creativity.