Large corporations have large advertising budgets and big marketing teams but small businesses may only have a small budget and they have to be a bit more imaginative. It’s not just a matter of cost however, but of results and the recent trend for gorilla marketing is proving successful in many cases.
Conventional TV campaigns, billboards and press advertisements are all expensive and the public is used to them and may have become desensitized to them. Niche marketing or aiming at a target audience is the modern way of doing things, aided by technology. The younger generation is particularly receptive to different sorts of promotions. Gorilla marketing, sometimes referred to as buzz marketing or stealth marketing, has also been taken up by bigger organizations.
This sort of method puts an emphasis on building a relationship that feels personal to the customer. Some tactics are inexpensive or free and a lot of companies have come to value word of mouth recommendations. The Internet plays a big part in this and potential consumers of a product may not even realise that they have been targeted in this way. Chat rooms, blog pages, messages and chain email are all portals for promotion. Sending text messages to cell phones is another method. The act of sending personal messages to a bluetooth has been dubbed ‘bluejacking’.
Communication has always been the tool of publicity departments and it’s easier than ever for people to share information, opinions and ideas. With the Internet, it is literally a global market. Gorilla marketing takes note of the fact that families have fragmented as far as their leisure time is concerned. Instead of gathering round the TV together, families are apt to be doing their own thing in different parts of the house. Mom may be watching her soap in the living room, Dad is listening to his baseball game on the radio in his den and their teenage kids are social networking in their bedrooms.
There are other ways besides high tech solutions to get the message across. Urban dwellers are familiar with sticker campaigns. They pop up everywhere and sometimes in unexpected places. They may be in subway stations, telephone booths or stuck in the cab of a truck. Advertisements are printed on receipts or on the reverse of bus tickets. The art of gorilla marketing is making use of the everyday things that we all take for granted. A slogan on a T-shirt is often a walking advertisement.